M&D - Chapter 17 - What're Ears for?

[Mark Kohut]

Johnny asks:
Is the ear metonymic for a world which listens but doesn't hear?
Probably one meaning but
I hark back, with the relic nature, like saints' relics and the words
about an absent god to see it
also as a metonym for the Divine, always being invoked but never
(able) to answer....

"God" as Erotic Ground of Being? "Priapic", etc. venerated as such
anyway. That is, His listening
displaces our primal energies?

Can anyone also not think of the Giant Adenoid in GR (with a different
reading spin however?)

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 11:09 PM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
> Through a combination of seemingly divinely ordained purpose and a
> Pickling-Jar of Swedish lead crystal, Jenkins ear hasn't merely been
> preserved as an historical artifact, but is actually listening - a-glow,
> firm and, "in its saline Bath, erect".
>
> TRP hints that the Ear's listening faculties have been "withheld from Time's
> Appetite for some Destiny obscure to all". As throughout the book, he's
> partly mocking the blind faith that even men of stout reason possessed,
> partly highlighting the frequent requirement for us to take our own leaps of
> faith - and, more subversively, even might be suggesting an air of manifest
> destiny even in our supposedly secular age. Sometimes it's hard to know how
> seriously to take Pynchon - but I've read before that he went through a
> period of particularly devout Catholicism when he was a young adult.
>
> Mournival congratulates Mason on being observant enough to have recognised
> the Ear's active engagement in listening - "Some of them never do smoak it".
> Mournival has been stimulating the Ear - which is apparently voracious for
> human speech in any language, yet lackd any great discretion concerning
> subject matter - with readings from "the Bible, the Lunar Tables, The
> Ghastly Fop, whatever comes to hand".
>
> The Ghastly Fop appears to be another of Pynchon's literary apocrypha.
>
> Is the ear metonymic for a world which listens but doesn't hear?
>
> Perhaps not; Mournival is now discussing the Ear in the same terms as a Soho
> club owner enticing customers in with the promise of naked flesh. "[b]een to
> a number of London Clubs in me time, how'd you like to ... get a little
> closer maybe ... tell her something in private?" All for a dollar more, of
> course, under the threat of East India Company-warranted violence ...
> Mournival appears to think that Jenkins' ear has undergone gender
> realignment as a result of its pickling.
>
> Mason reulctantly parts with a couple of Rix-Dollars, an obscure
> contemporary Dutch currency. "Upon legal advice", Mournival sniggers, "I
> must also remind you at this Point, that Ear only listens to wishes - she
> doesn't grant 'em".
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l