M&D - How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I've been too busy to chime in during this leg of the read (and probably the next few weeks as well), but I appreciate your keeping the discussion going, and glad that so many responded. 

Laura

-----Original Message-----

From: Johnny Marr 

Sent: Mar 26, 2015 2:38 PM

To: Becky Lindroos 

Cc: kelber , David Ewers , Elisabeth Romberg , Mark Kohut , pynchon -l 

Subject: M&D - How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'



Just wanted to add a post script now that I've finished my stage of the group read.
That was my first stab at leading the discussion, and it was hard work. TRP's writing is so dense at times that you fear you're not doing justice to his wordplay or references. Sometimes I felt a bit inadequate in my responses to the text, especially when all I felt I could do was sand back and admire the writing.Yet, perversely, some of the erudition can suffocate my instinctive response to the text - often it can distance you from the heart of the text as much as provide extra information and insight. Because, for all the jocularity and whimsy, M&D contains moments of real tenderness. My rereading of it has confirmed how strong the prose is but also how finely spun the relationship between Mason and Dixon.In going to be relatively busy for the next two or three weeks but I'll definitely try to contribute a few thoughts if the group read continues. I've only just come to appreciate what hard work it is, especially as a voluntary endeavour in your own limited spare time. Full respect to anybody else who follows, and if you still want people to take the lead in a month or so then I may very well stick my hand up again. I enjoyed it, but I'm something of a glutton for punishment.

On Thursday, March 26, 2015, Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Just to pop in here although I’m unfortunately still a couple chapters behind in the reading -



The Cock Lane Ghost of (1762)  appears in passing in the very first few pages (“The Period”)  of Charles Dickens’ historical fiction,   "A Tale of Two Cities”  (1859).   Dickens is really setting the stage there.



Just a tid-bit I happen to remember from my studies of the Dickens - and to let you all know I’m still here.   :-)



Becky





> On Mar 25, 2015, at 8:20 PM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:

>

> Rebekah isn't the only apparition haunting M&D. The Cock-Lane ghost is a real life tale of fraudulent ghost sightings in London's red light district, carried by a Landlord and his daughter to frame one of their Tenants for the alleged murder of his ex-wife - the scandalous headline event of 1762 London, for which they were brought to justice. In further Pynchonian overtones, it served as the starting point for a national debate on the differences between Methodists and orthodox Anglicans:

>

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_Lane_ghost

>

> I'd highly recommend reading the wikipedia entry if you haven't heard of this before. It's classic Pynchon material, which makes it partly surprising that he should throwaway such apparently choice material in just a couple of quietly allusive lines. Even if he'd decided that he needed to focus on the main narrative for M&D, surely this would be worthy of one of his digressions? Or else something he could return to in a later book or short story? Yet experienced Pynchon readers soon come to realise that TRP loves briefly mentioning obscure but outlandish real life events and institutions, and casually tossing them into the great salad of his stories as mere vinegar dressing. It's what makes the closer reading and rereading so much fun, and also a sign of how much he credits his readership with the capacity to follow his lines of thought, catch his fleeting references and to make their own imaginiative links for themselves.

>

> Mason is denied any such ghost sighting, whether of the Cock Lane Ghost or of his beloved Rebekah. He soon comes to realise that Rebekah only visits him if the circumstances are correct - without the Winds of St Helena, he needs to return to Sapperton in order to converse with her.

>

> Mason does chance upon the celebrity acting couple of the day - Margaret Woffington and David Garrick (one of the great Shakespearian actors, whose name survives in Britain to this day - several theatres are named after him). Formally connecte in the 1740s, Garrick has by now married another woman but they are supposed to have remained 'emotionally bonded' - Garrick wore the shoe buckles she gave him until his death.

>

> Garrick was also a successful if undistinguished playwright - he cashed in on the Cock Lane ghost story with his hugely profitable, now forgotten 'The Farmer's Return To London', a thinly veiled fictionalised account of the story.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l