M&D Deep Duck 4-6: Yet another reason M&D starts at sea

[Mark Kohut]

Rereading these chapters, with the 'madness' in the modern sense as
well, all around them,
and Death as the great fear but all in P's comic mode......

I get Catch--22 whiffs......

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 8:05 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just reread Yeats' THE SECOND COMING...with the world-famous lines
>
> 'The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
> The ceremony of innocence is drowned."
>
> M & D are presented partly as innocents herein and then the battle.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> p. 43....Dixon, the Quaker, sez (now) "We should be happy to proceed
>> to war upon any people, in any
>> quarter of the Globe, etc."....WTF?
>>
>> After being shelled, after the shit-cleansing of Death-Fear, after
>> Death now even in the cabin....
>> Dixon is ready to......do unto others as they are trying to do to him?
>>
>> in War, war is a contagion....?
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 8:11 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> p. 42 "neither has bother'd to keep his defensive works mann'd against
>>> the other."
>>>
>>> The concept may go back to the first two homo sapiens, or Adam & Eve
>>> after that bite,
>>> and I don't have access to an OED as I type,
>>> but 'defense mechanisms'..'ego defensiveness'....defensiveness (as
>>> Psychological term)
>>> goes no further back than the 1950s in GOOGLE BOOKS citations.
>>>
>>> Sort of an anachronous characterization very resonant with the concept
>>> of mann'd ships fighting
>>> herein.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 7:58 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> p. 45 near the bottom....a reduction of possibilities....where did we
>>>> read that before?....in the words on the cattle drives that reduce
>>>> choice and possibility as they are led into the slaughterhouse in AtD
>>>> is one place.                   Cf. "single up all lines"
>>>>
>>>> in a book on Finnegans Wake, the curse of the Kabbalah is said to be
>>>> that it makes mankind 'fearful and dependent"....see lines above these
>>>> on p. 45
>>>> 'the curse of Kabbalah, the root source of the reduction of human
>>>> possibilities"----same book..
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 7:44 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> pp 44-45.." 'Terrible, well, as to 'Terrible'..." And what they cannot
>>>>> speak, some of it not yet, some of it never,  resumes breathless
>>>>> Sovereignty in the wax-lit Rooms.
>>>>>
>>>>> Death......in the equivalent of the Drawing Rooms....
>>>>>
>>>>> Cf. "whereof what one cannot speak, one must pass over in
>>>>> silence"---Wittgenstein (Although he meant something different than
>>>>> Death, which 'was not an event in life", he said.)
>>>>> And Mrs. Dalloway.....how dare they talk about death at my party--paraphrase.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 1:12 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>>>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 28.01.2015 19:28, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Pynchon's navy experience was obviously a formative one, given how much
>>>>>>> ships are used as plot devices, or at least referenced, in his books. So
>>>>>>> many ripe connections and metaphors. Or is it all about Moby Dick, Alice?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ships in his other books (please add to this list!):
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> V: Profane's a Navy man, and there are multiple shipboard scenes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> COL49: Mike Fallopian's recounting of a naval encounter between Russian
>>>>>>> and American ships. More on this from Martin Eve:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.academia.edu/1037657/Historical_Sources_for_Pynchons_Peter_Pinguid_Society
>>>>>>> GR: Well, the Anubis, of course, and the hijacked U-boat, the toilet ship.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then there's the vessel of Frau Gnahb:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "'please, mother,' silent otto plaintive in the window of the pilot house.
>>>>>> in reply the good woman commences bellowing a bloodthirsty ~ sea chanty ~
>>>>>> i'm the pirate queen of the baltic run, and nobody fucks ~ with me--- ~ and
>>>>>> those who've tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath ~ the sea. ~ and
>>>>>> the little fish like messengers swim in and out their eyes, ~ singing, 'fuck
>>>>>> ye not with gory gnahb and her desperate ~ enterprise!' ~ i'll tangle with a
>>>>>> battleship, i'll massacre a sloop, ~ i've sent a hundred souls to hell in
>>>>>> one relentless swoop--- ~ i've seen the flying dutchman, and each time we
>>>>>> pass, he cries, ~ 'oh, steer me clear of gory gnahb, and her desperate ~
>>>>>> enterprise!' ~ whereupon she grips her wheel and accelerates." (pp. 497-498)
>>>>>> ~~~ [copied this from the archives, I have no idea why I didn't use caps
>>>>>> back then.]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Regarding the name Gnahb, Steven Weisenburger notes that it is "a backward
>>>>>> spelling of 'bhang'" (Hindu term for marijuana), --- I do hear echoes of the
>>>>>> name Ahab, too.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Vineland: Well, not much other than a reference to Zoyd working a cruise
>>>>>>> gig for Kahuna Airlines.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ATD: The SS Stupendica sequence, and the Airship.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> IV: the Golden Fang
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Laura
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> BE: If I remember, there's a little scene on a ferry boat.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -
>>>>>>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -
>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l