M & D: singling up those lines

[Mark Kohut]

I've learned, forgive if old news, that Mason & Dixon actually ran
five (5) lines during their work in the US.
....the three shortest were 14, 3 1/2, and 1 1/2 miles.
Other two we know....

I've also learned that in December 1767 and January 1768, the temperatures
hit --20 and --22 on two recorded nights...
TRP has almost nothing on their physical hardships, amirght? Any thoughts on?

In his NR review, ye olde ( but younger) James Wood sez: TRP is the
most allegorical
American novelist since Herman Melville, which sure sounds like the highest
praise to me but he goes on to say his allegorizing is "tyrannical".......

which lead me to remember how, in trying to puzzle out the associative
allegories
in his work--specifically AGAINST THE DAY, this List reemphased strongly that
'poised' ,almost-agnostic ultimate meaningless; that 'ambiguity' of
Empson's extended
to his poetic prose wherein we learn--as Wood seemingly never wants to
(how could he reread with all the new books he must run to keep up
with?)---how 'open-ended' perhaps as VISION
is so much of his 'stuff'....

it seems to me that allegorical meanings qua meanings are 'tyrannical'
in that they HAVE
those meanings BUT TRP's codedness in the text adds layers of richness
(as we've repeated)
without closure of a pedantic kind.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l