M&D - Chapter 16 - outgrowing the moon?

[David Ewers]

1780s, that is...

It's sort of off-subject, but I was doing some M-&D- research noodling online, reading about magic lanterns, and came across this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argand_lamp

Could the idea that the 1790s saw the first, ahem, 'wide-spread' use of artificially amplified light might have any bearing on M-&D-?  Another speculative explanation for the name Wicks, anyone?


On Mar 24, 2015, at 9:51 PM Jolly good day we are having, Johnny Marr wrote:

> Peter Schmidt of Swarthmore College points out in his notes for M&D that Rebekkah is a revenant, in the fashion of Gravity's Rainbow, and that her appearances are stimulated by the St Helena winds
> 
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 3:22 AM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps because, as a supposed Man of Reason, the continual appearances of her ghost are beginning to disturb him, so he wants to escape from these visions, even though he also wants to speak to her and recapture their love
> 
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 3:15 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> But why would Mason desire to escape his life's love, whom he dreams of following into the underworld? Maybe she has become too real? Has her ghost become less romantic?
> 
> David Morris
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, March 24, 2015, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
> Reading chapter 17 makes the theme about the Wind in chapter 16 a little clearer - Mason feels his wife's ghost is following him on the back of the local winds, so he needs to escape to a different microclimate in St Helena 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 3:44 AM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
> "'Well'! What are you saying, Mason? To be not  well over here, is to be dead. How you have avoided that Fate, indeed, puzzles me".
> 
> Poor Mason, suffering misery in earthly paradise. TRP captures him in depression, as a man out of step with his cohorts, resigned to being misunderstood by the well meaning but unreflective Maskelyne and the still unencountered Dieter (another visitor from the Spirit World?)
> 
> Who asks for Break-neck in the taxi?
> 
> What did 18th century Hungarian and Moorish music sound like?
> 
>  And what's the importance of the Wind "blowing cross-wise to the light incoming from Sirius, producing false images"?
> 
> In truth, I'm a bit tired and need to go to bed. Haven't done the last couple of pages justice; will revisit tomorrow ...
> 
> 
> 

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