M&D - Chapter 16 - Star-Gazing

[Johnny Marr]

Thanks for that, I really ought to have consulted wiki. <slaps himself on
the wrist>

Although getting carried away with an outlandish paranoid theory is very
much part of the Jeu d'esprit.

On Tuesday, March 24, 2015, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> From the wiki:
>
> *Mason, Rebekah*
> 52; Charles' first wife, who died young; her tombstone at Sapperton Church
> gives her date of death as February 13th, 1759, and the epitaph includes
> the phrase "Wife of Charles Mason, Jun'r. A. R. S. (Associate of the Royal
> Society); 109; 164; story, 167-84; 346; 536-41; 703
>
> 2015-03-24 19:43 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mark.kohut at gmail.com');>>:
>
>> Wonderful conceptual gambit that: IS Rebekah real?
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','eromberg at mac.com');>> wrote:
>> > Spooky and weird. I hadn't thought of it like that. You think she's not
>> > really real? Uncle Ives did state <<There's no record of her in
>> Gloster>>
>> > didn't he. Which I thought was a weird thing to say when I read it at
>> the
>> > time. It was like the voice of the author came through, like HE hadn't
>> found
>> > a record of her in Gloster.
>> > But they had children? Where are they? (I had to skip a couple of
>> chapters
>> > to ketsjap, it was a terrible decisio but it had to be done) Have they
>> been
>> > mentioned?
>> >
>> > 24. mar. 2015 kl. 05.01 skrev Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','marrja at gmail.com');>>:
>> >
>> > Mason, lost and alone, lovesick for glamorous Susannah and having
>> apparently
>> > lost interest in the day's festivities, nearly finds himself The victim
>> of
>> > Cheese malevolent when the Vicar's mild roll of a Double Gloucester
>> sets off
>> > a near catastrophic chain of unloosened cheeses, with Octuple breaking
>> out
>> > of its Wagon and nearly singling out CM for 'Misadventure'.
>> >
>> > Instead, in the best mock-epic romantic fashion, Rebekah dives into the
>> > story to save CM. Dressed in Taffeta rather than Silk, suddenly life in
>> > Aleppo doesn't seem quite so unappealing.
>> >
>> > TRP is kind enough to explain his wordplay for us: '"Were it Night-time,
>> > Sir, I'd say you were out Star-Gazing" ... [which] in the those parts
>> was a
>> > young man's term for masturbating'. Unusual for TRP to make the jokes so
>> > explicit (I can't help but wonder how many other similar jokes am I
>> missing
>> > out on?), but perhaps he wants to emphasise that, for all the
>> brilliance and
>> > sublimity of Mason's profession, he is prone to becoming self-absorbed
>> and
>> > wrapped up too exclusively in his own world. (I might well be straining
>> for
>> > meaning here over a mere double-entendre - rather onanistically so).
>> >
>> > Mason almost reproaches Rebekah for her blunt comment, but founds
>> himself
>> > "stupefied" by her beauty. TRP describes her mouth in ambiguous detail:
>> > "Lips slightly apart, in an Inuiry that just fail'd to be a Smile,-
>> like a
>> > Gate-Keeper aout to have a word with him". Yet this is the only detail
>> that
>> > TRP, lover of verbose descriptions, offers about Rebekah's appearance.
>> He
>> > tells us that she's not an English Rose like Susannah, nor a "rugged
>> Blossom
>> > of the Heath", but he doesn't tell us what she does look like.
>> >
>> > Admittedly TRP might have elaborated a bit more in a now forgotten
>> earlier
>> > passage, but the lack of physical description resonates all the more
>> when we
>> > start to question whether Rebekah's a ghost. The Gate-Keeper comment,
>> and
>> > Mason's reverie about "black Fumes welling from the Surface of her
>> > Apparition, heard her voice thickening to the timbres of the Beasts ...
>> the
>> > serpents of Hell, real and swift, lying just the other side of her
>> Shadow".
>> >
>> > This furthers the connection to Eurydice - does Charles fear that
>> Rebekah's
>> > been consigned to Hell because she gave birth out of wedlock? The
>> children
>> > are registered as Gloucestershire born, but Mason and Rebekah hadn't yet
>> > been registered as married - presuming they hadn't got married
>> elsewhere,
>> > like Greenwich instead ... or that she is the mother of his children
>> ... or
>> > that she existed in the first place ... "I am outside of Time"
>> >
>> > Is Rebekah Mason's muse? His guiding light in his life and his career?
>> > '"Look to the Earth," she instructs him. "Belonging to her as I do, I
>> know
>> > she lives, and that here upon this Volcanoe in the Sea, close to the
>> forces
>> > within, even you, Mopery, may learn of her, Tellurick Secrets you could
>> > never guess"'.
>> >
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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