M&D Deep Duck Ch. 3: Innocent merriment

[Monte Davis]

This need not contradict, negate or undercut more somber readings of this
and other brushes with the gallows -- but if _Media vita in morte sumus_,
so also in the midst of death we are in life, betting whether Lord Ferrers
will get a hard-on as he's hanged.

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Well... death and mourning and suicidal thoughts and metempsychosis having
> had their say, let's add what we'll learn on pp. 109-110, when a brightly
> outfitted Florinda arrives at St. Helena and greets Mason as "Tyburn
> Charlie":
> "The year after Rebekah’s death was treacherous ground for Mason, who was
> as apt to cross impulsively by Ferry into the Bosom of Wapping, and
> another night of joyless low debauchery, as to attend Routs in Chelsea,
> where nothing was available betwixt Eye-Flirtation, and the Pox. In
> lower-situated imitations of the Hellfire Club, he hurtl’d
> carelessly along some of Lust’s less-frequented footpaths... ’Twas then
> that Mason began his Practice, each Friday, of going out to the hangings
> at Tyburn, expressly to chat up women, upon a number of assumptions, many
> of which would not widely be regarded as sane."
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 6:09 PM, <msacha1121 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So many suggestions of death in this section, popping up amidst otherwise
>> lighthearted scenes of pre-departure. Tyburn can probably be attributed to
>> mood, but there's a lot to do with the sense of passage and the
>> significance of getting back from the traverse - Mason, in the company of
>> Hepsie, is eager to reach his late wife but not to stay there. Pirate ships
>> are "Bullies (that) shift about in the dark", but it isn't the French at
>> the helm of boats that "wait with muffl'd Oars to ferry them against their
>> will over to a Life they may not return from." The principle word here, I
>> think, being "may".
>>
>>
>> > On Jan 12, 2015, at 3:14 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Life Against Death....and Dixon fearing he is unfit for being with
>> > others in public.
>> >
>> > Then, related, Mason's Puritanism sees joke-telling Dixon as perhaps
>> > dicey to be in public with.
>> >
>> > a lot in its way....major contrasting temperaments and each seeing a
>> > different public self.
>> > has to lead someplace in the book.........
>> >
>> >> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 3:05 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> I think the implication is that Mason's grieving has brought on a
>> >> depression, generating a morbid fascination with death. I don't know
>> how
>> >> much deeper one could examine this.
>> >>
>> >> David Morris
>> >>
>> >>> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> 15.10: "Mason explains, though without his precise reason for it,
>> that,
>> >>> for the past Year or more, it has been his practice to attend the
>> Friday
>> >>> Hangings at that melancholy place ..." (Tyburn)
>> >>>
>> >>> Anybody care to venture a "precise reason"? This first meeting is in
>> 1760
>> >>> or 1761, so his habit might date to his wife Rebekah's death in 1759
>> >>> (although later we'll get reasons to think he had tended to the
>> >>> Melancholick well before that). And yes, the Tyburn hangings were an
>> >>> acknowledged Sight of London.
>> >>>
>> >>> Is that enough to explain it? Mason is rather gentle, neither
>> sadistic nor
>> >>> vindictive; I for one don't see an obvious or direct connection
>> between
>> >>> mouning and a desire to watch excutions.
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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