M&D CH 13: Fear and Loathing and Horniness and Astrology on St. Helena

[Smoke Teff]

CHAPTER 13



p. 125



“Fog begins to stir against the Day swelling near.”



AtD. In Gravity’s Rainbow, it felt like day had the potential to be a
sinister force—climaxing in noon’s evil hour. The sterile light of
clinical observations. The oppressive panoptick gaze of the midday
sun, the war machine, the light of inspection and consciousness. It
felt like Day was associated repression, with opposition to/ignorance
of the subconscious, deeper ways of being.



In M&D, it feels somewhat different, at least in the earlygoing here.
Day still bears the light of inspection, of consciousness…but things
that obscure the day (night, fog) often portend, well, not exactly
doom, but certainly confusion and the feelings of danger. Perhaps
because this is earlier in the Enlightenment? The potential negative
extreme expressions of the light of consciousness and reason have not
reached their terminus in GR’s War quite yet. Of course, maybe this is
just contemporary perception—maybe in the post-Enlightenment,
pre-Freud west, the day has come to take on some of GR’s meaning.



But of course, our astronomers are ever drawn away from the Day here.
And we see the ways that the Day has been, like the world of men,
striated—a hypnosis increasingly shared by all, clock-time, the
stratified day, divided into units for monastic obedience but also for
commercial and capitalistic purpose.



Does (P’s sense of) history account for the change in the Day between
M&D and GR? Discuss.



“’It certainly isn’t Cape Town,’ Mason marvels.”



Just tracking this.



“no Curfew”



Because the local conditions here don’t impel that kind of anality,
the oppressive time-level control of the inhabitants on the part of
the ruling trading company? We’ve seen some of the Dutch insanity
regarding time and control—is this because “John Company,” i.e. the
English East India Company, is not so hypnotized by the intersection
of power and time as the Dutch company is?



p. 126



“[…]recognizes here the primacy of Tide Tables, and, beyond them, of
the Moon,--ceding to her de facto rule over all arrivals and
departures, including Life and Death, upon this broken Island, so long
ill us’d.”



The tide, the moon’s gravitational pull—external, sky-born vectors of
force, of cosmic desire—the subconscious, astronomickal counterpart to
the earthly forces moving underneath is, Ley lines, etc. The moon
being classically associated with the subconscious (in a kind of
photonegative, underbelly sort of way consistent with some of the
book’s other entangled binaries of presence and absence) you’d think
that would mark the upcoming journey as being one where logick and
reason might fail us (aligns with the previous page’s suggestion of
the fog working against the day)



“’Tho’ small in secular Dimenstions[…]yet entering, ye discover its
true Extent,--which proves Mazy as an European city…no end of corners
yet to be turn’d. ‘Tis Loaves and Fishes, here in James’s Town, and
Philosophy has no answer.’”



Evoking Christian mythology when the loaves and fishes, Maskelyne here
paints James’s Town as one of miracles and the unknown—which, in the
sense of loaves and fishes, might lead to abundance? Or lostness—the
labyrinth? Pynchon’s trope of suggesting something, by virtue of its
complexity or unknowability, contains more space inside than its
exterior suggests is possible.



“The first two or three days’d be easy,--assuming one had a perfect
knowledge of the Town and the Island,--for the initial Search-Parties
would be of younger Writers and ‘Prentices, too new here to know even
the Castle in its true Extension, disruptive lads, intimidating,
alerting ev’ry Soul to the Imminence of a Search Island-wide,--that
is, thro’ this entire World,--“



Here Maskelyne and Mason discussing the possibility of disappearing,
purposely. Maskelyne as bipolar and Mason as depressive?



Also: the Castle preys on the ignorance of its younger subjects (to
“its true Extension”).



And Pynchon doing more work to establish the apparent world-insularity
of this place. The world sometimes segments into differentiated
realms—the human mind sometimes provides the boundaries that make this
effectively true.



p. 127



“I don’t do Satellites of Jupiter, all it says in my Contract is one
Transit of Venus,--and that’s what I did. If you wish me to observe
the next, there’ll have to be a new Contract.”



There have been a lot of indications, thus far, that the fledgling
trade of professional stargazing is young enough that it’s not really
a wise route for those who would seek profit or security or
advancement of some kind—for the most part, it seems to be (perhaps
like the early days of the internet) a pursuit only undertaken out of
love.



This refusal suggests, to me, that reducing human initiative to the
strictures of a Contract inhibits the ability of the human to feel
natural love for what s/he is doing.



p. 128



“’For a while I firmly believ’d this Place a conscious Creature,
animated by power drawn from beneath the Earth, assembl’d in secret,
by the Company,--entirely theirs,--no Action, no Thought nor Dream,
that had not the Co. for its Author.’”



More about forces working underneath the surface to influence human
affairs. Are these forces necessarily sinister? I don’t get that
impression elsewhere—it seems that these particular forces, in this
part of the world, in combination with the actions of the Company, the
hypnosis of the people under the Company’s spell, combine to produce
something sinister. Does it have something to do with a) natural
subterranean forces and b) some of the laws of human density and
collectivization suggested elsewhere in the novel?



“’All[…]go about most softly. What Authority enforces the
Practice?[…]I suggest that more than either, ‘tis the awareness of
living upon a Slumbering Creature, compar’d to whose Size, we figure
not quite as Lice,--that keeps us uniquely attentive to Life so
precarious, and what Civility is truly necessary, to carry it on.”



Civility as impelled by…just the (forces working inside the) earth? Or
by those forces as translated through the Company?



Seems Hobbesian, to me—civility as impelled by the obvious monopoly on
violence held by some much more powerful thing. Can this “Civility”
(without the servile connotations of obedience) be achieved through a
more positive kind of worship? Is it necessarily fearful when the
monopolist transitions from the realm of the deistic to the realm of
the…incorporated, the profit-seeking, the diffuse and faceless…



“Hence, no Curfew. To live, we must be up at all hours. Every moment
of our Waking, pass’d in fear, with the possibility ceaseless of
sliding into licentiousness and squalor,--“



A kind of mythology of English propriety? Just as we compulsively
maintain the monastic/clerical class even in secular times, because we
subconsciously feel the divine or the mysterious or the asecular must
be beheld by some, even if not by us….so must the Company, or the
beast sleeping underneath it here, be beheld by the eyes-open fear of
its subjects



“You have not yet seen Squalor, Sir,--be advis’d that you now live in
the Metropolis of that Condition.”



Rome, the zero point, of all squalor



“Obs of Sirius must be taken as far apart as possible, mustn’t
they,--at least six months of what the World no doubt sees as
Idleness[…]”



More work drawing upon this idea that the kind of attention necessary
for beholding the important mysteries looks useless, like Idleness, to
those hypnotized by the profit-hunger and the apparently secular.



p. 129



“miniature mirrors set inside the Covers, that allow them to View ther
Features, tho’ one at a Time. All that is not thus in Fragments, is
Invisible.”



Cosmetologickal equivalent of not being able to see the forest for the
trees—a resonant idea, here in the Age of Reason, and a rather
beautiful metaphor of self-interest and superficiality. We can only
glimpse the smallest part of creation at any given time.



“Ornamental Lanthorns scarcely bigger than the Flames they hold,
dangling from the Wrists of young Ladies with business at this Hour.”



Just noting this because I find the image compelling. Dangerous and
elegant both.



p. 130



“We need Men, in The Moon”



To my ear, this song conflates the fantastic imagery of the day with
WWII-era enlistment propaganda, anticipating not only that propaganda
(possibly also related to the enlistment pushes going on for the 7
Years War—and about to go around for the American war for
independence)



“that extremity of Quidnunc which, given enough time, necessarily
emerges upon a small Island surrounded by Ocean for thousands of
Soul-less leagues in ev’ry direction, where the village-siz’d
population have only one another to talk about, and anyone newly
arriv’d is feasted upon with an eagerness match’d only in certain
rivers of South America.”



The hyperlocal relationship to gossip. For an external relationship to
gossip, cf. p. 293: “enjoying viciously as any recreational Traveler
the quaint Stridencies of a Politics not his own”



“Everyone comes to know what everyone else knows,--and the strange
mind-to-mind Throb may be felt distinctly, not to mention
apprehensively, by the New-comer.”



Some of the recent chapters have dealt with concepts that reminded me
of the collective unconscious mind. This feels somewhat relevant
here—except it’s a collective consciousness, one that is shared and
comes to form a kind of psychic border/force-field tangible to the
outsider. The throb of the island hive mind. Minds making/bordering
their realms together (as opposed to individuals perceiving borders
around and realms around themselves).



“’That’s Clive of India’s brother-in-law,’” referring to Maskelyne,
who, as the reader now knows, is juiced with the higher powers of the
East India Company (or is he?).



p. 131



“In return for suffering the familiarities of a celebrity-mad
Knit-wit, Maskelyne is allow’s to run up a Tab[…]Maskelyne may also
feel the weight of Family Tradition[…]Maskelyne is still trying to
work out what [his sort of place] might be.”



An interesting moment, where we get a kind of extended period of
interiority with Maskelyne. Especially as we feel so uncertain as to
his motivations toward the two characters with whom the reader has
most identified—M&D. Of course, malevolence/benevolence is never
itself a category Pynchon much obeys when deciding which characters’
psyches to really investigate. Still, this moment stands out to me.



“Dr. Halley’s difficulties with the early Fog that often fill’d the
great Ravine.”



Here the vaporous material continuity trope connects different
astronomers across time—like the skies do? A different kind of
continuity. Fog is like half the unchanging sky, half the
ever-changing (and so unchanging) river.



p. 132



“’Aren’t you feeling, I don’t know,--disturb’d?’”



Maskelyne’s paranoia.



“’Disturb’d? Why, no, Maskelyne, after the Cape I find it quite
calming here, in a Tropical way, pure Air, Coffee beyond compare.’”



Interesting to refer to the clear air given how much attention has
been paid to the fog.



“’Ahhckk! Mason, can y’ not feel it? This place! this great
Ruin,--haunted…an Obstinate Spectre,--an ancient Crime,--none here
will ever escape it, ‘tis in the Gases they breathe, Generation unto
Generation,--Ah! ‘Tis it! There! Look ye!’”



Maskelyne’s paranoia, or schizophrenia, or simple witness, or terrible
revelation? The description of the great “Ruin” contrasts with the
idea that the island is atop a slumbering consciousness—unless that
slumbering consciousness, like Nietzsche’s god, is dead? “Ancient
Crime” brings the notion of original sin to my mind, which, given some
of the mentions of collective un/conscious in the novel thus far,
makes me wonder if a buried dead consciousness/ancient crime isn’t
suggested to be somehow part of our firmware. The crime being
connected to the death/ruin of the island, of the consciousness
underneath it? What killed that consciousness? Not just colonialism…it
doesn’t seem right to call colonialism ancient, at this point.





p. 133



“He already suspects that the Island enjoys a Dispensation not perhaps
as relentlessly Newtonian as Southern England’s,--and as to whose
Author’s Identity, one may grow confus’d, so ubiquitous here are signs
of the Infernal.”



Mason starting to be affected/infected/hypnotized/possessed by
whatever has gotten into Maskelyne.



“a patch of Nothing”



Feels relevant, especially given Mason’s enthusiasms and difficulties
with meditation



“against What approaches, Shot is without effect.”



More apocalyptic prophesying from Maskelyne, also known (on this page)
as “Maskelyne’s Sermons upon the Unknown.”



“Soon the Rain-Fall is spouting from all three corners of his Hat at
once, regardless of what Angle he places his Head at.”



I believe this is the second time this has been mentioned?



“A little traveling Stage-Troupe, is St. Helena really, all
Performance,--a Plantation, sent out years since by its metropolitan
Planet[…]Many here, Descendants of the first Settlers, would never
visit the Home Planet”



More language of interplanetary travel, extraterrestrial migration.
Conflating it with the language of colonization



“this place till then serving as an Aide-Mémoire, a Representation of Home.”



More on the theme of representation—here representation as a memory
aid, representation in/of a place, representation as transcending not
only oceans, national boundaries, or the life-death boundary, but as
transcending time, and serving an important psychic function—we make
the realms we require out of the environments that surround us. With
little regard for the ability of someone else to construct a meaning
for the shared environment that totally differs from ours.



p. 134



“some notion of the Garden in Genesis, as an instance of
extra-terrestrial Plantation.”



This is an obviously big conceptual moment. The notion of the source
of life, innocence, happiness on earth as being somehow unnatural, a
colonization. And if colonization inevitably corrupts the world,
colonizer and colonized, then the fall in Genesis happened before the
actual fall. Game was rigged, sort of thing. The original sin was
already baked into us. Baked into our subconscious.
Extraterrestriality here as elsewhere being used in conversation with
the workings of the unconscious.



“Maskelyne is the pure type of one who would transcend the
Earth,--making him, for Mason, a walking cautionary Tale.”



Mason is totally earthly—fallen. Likes looking at the stars, does not
want to be among them.



“For years now, after midnight Culminations has he himself lain and
listen'd to the Sky-Temptress, whispering, Forget the Boys, forget
your loyalties to your Dead, first of all to Rebekah, for she, they,
are but distractions, temporal, flesh, ever attempting to drag the
Uranian Devotee back down out of his realm of pure Mathesis, of that
which abides.”



Cf. Dixon re: the spirit on p. 101: “’It abides,--‘tis we who are ever
recall’d from it, to tend to our various mortal Requirements…? and so
another such Visit soon becomes necessary,--another great Turning, and
so forth…? Howbeit, ‘tis all Desire,--and Desire, but Embodiment, in
the World, of what Quakers have understood as Grace…?’”



“His realm of pure Mathesis” is where the spirit abides, at least as
far as Mason is moved to worship. This is a complicated moment. Mason
is, on the one hand, feeling some repulsion from Maskelyne’s yearning
for transcendence, though he is also suggested to, perhaps
repressedly, resent the worldly anchors of his life, and yearn for his
own transcendence. Interestingly, his grief for Rebekah does not
deliver him from but anchors him in the material world.



“For if each Star is little more a mathematickal Point, located upon
the Hemisphere of Heaven by Right Ascension and Declination, then all
the Stars, taken together, tho' innumerable, must like any other set
of points, in turn represent some single gigantick Equation, to the
mind of God as straightforward as, say, the Equation of a Sphere,— to
us unreadable, incalculable. A lonely, uncompensated, perhaps even
impossible Task,— yet some of us must ever be seeking, I suppose.”



The equation of all the stars. Everything apprehended at once—by God.
Our inability to perceive but the most meaningless fragment of all the
stars—yet we are compelled to seek. Some of us.



Does this relate to the language of extraterrestriality also? We are
compelled, despite (because of?) our limitations, to regard
exterrestrial and possibly deistic powers greater than and beyond our
world.



“the last Orange-Grove upon the Island,--a souvenir of a Paradise decrepit”



The fall, which brought down the Garden, has not totally succeeded in
obliterating all hope. Though not much: “all, with the volcanic Meadow
where the two stand, circl’d by the hellish Cusps of Peaks unnatural.”
Another kind of bull’s eye—a little island of life.



“’Saint Brendan set out in the fifth century to discover an Island he
believ’d was the Paradise of the Scriptures, and found it.’”



We see how long this has been going on, and realize the crime
Maskelyne is lamenting actually is ancient—like original sin. And it
starts with…seeking paradise? Of course paradise was fallen and
unnatural even before it got to this planet.



“So will the Reign of Reason cheerily dispose of any allegations of Paradise.”



Can’t help but hear the opening to AtD in “cheerily” here. But mostly
I note the rather naked suggestion here of how the Reign (is that what
we’re calling it now? Sounds suddenly rather sinister) of Reason is
working against the credibility and potency of many of man’s dubiously
natural notions of paradise, of the otherworldly.



p. 135



“’Serpent, Worm, or Dragon, ‘tis all the same to It, for It speaketh
no Tongue but its own. It Rules this Island, whose ancient Curse and
secret Name, is Disobedience. In thoughtless Greed, within a few
pitiably brief Generations, have these People devastated a Garden in
which, once, anything might grow. Their Muck-heaps ev’rywhere,
Disease, Madness[…]whilst the unremitting Wind carries off the last
soil from the last barren Meadow, with nought but other Humans the
only Life remaining then to the Island”



Here we get a received myth about what slumbers underneath the
ground—inside the Volcanoe. Like other forces of either mysterious or
malevolent (or even benevolent, maybe?) power in the novel thus far,
it is functionally resistant to gnosis (“speaketh no Tongue but its
own”) and the people exist in a relationship of Disobedience and
antagonism to it.



The destroyed Garden here obviously relates to the “Garden in Genesis”
mentioned on the previous page. “anything might grow”==land fertility
is a relative strong recurring trope in P, I think, as the land/soil
is one of the primary sites of generation.



I’m not sure how the “unremitting Wind” is functioning in this vision,
exactly. The Wind, elsewhere, is something that literally and
metaphorically drives the actions (and thoughts) of men—it is one of
the purest manifestations of the will (or powerful willlessness) of
some extra-human kind of being. Here, is the unremitting Wind
contributing to the Madness? Or just exacerbating by carrying off the
barren soil?



“[…]how will they take their own last step,--how disobey themselves
into Oblivion? Simply die one by one, alone and suspicious, as is the
style of the place, till all are done? Or will they rather choose to
murder one another, for the joy to be had in that?’”



A really haunting apocalyptic vision here. People dying alone and
paranoid (i.e. with delusions of connection, albeit sinister) or by
murder. Perhaps this is the flowering of the recurring motif of Murder
as a kind of ultimate human crime—murder is ever a grave Disobedience,
ever a march toward the species’ ruin. Though it’s done for the joy to
be had in it—because disobedience of the highest kind is the
only/intensest remaining joy?



So who’s being Disobeyed? The volcano/dragon? God?



Also—there’s an emphasis here on humans being the last animal
remaining. Cities are the realm where humans dominate especially, so
this may be expanding on the notion of urbanity/human density tending
toward murderousness?



“’How soon is this, that we’re talking about?’”

“’Pray we may be gone by then’”



Maskelyne’s death wish for the species—apocalypse wish. (Not an
uncommon yearning among believers in a fallen world.)



“’Against my father’s wishes I study the stars.’”



More positioning astronomy as somehow disobedient, irreverent,
subversive—again, like rock & roll.



“’Reason, or any Vocation to it,--the Pursuit of the Sciences,--these
are the hope of the Young, the new Music their Families cannot follow,
occasionally not even listen to.’”



Using a recognizable sign of impending cultural change to reorient us,
again, to the beginning of the Age of Reason. Maybe to remind us that
change is ever unwelcome—as reason and science must have been to many.



Also, Reason and music are both depicted as being kind of subversive
and having culturally disruptive potential (in addition to its
military potential, p. 53)—cf. Chapter 26 especially for a family-wide
discourse on the different potential uses of musick, including (pp.
261/2): "How not?" protests Ethelmer. "Excuse me, Ma'am,— but as you
must appreciate how even your sort of Musick is changing, recall what
Plato said in his 'Republick',— 'When the Forms of Musick change, 'tis
a Promise of civil Disorder.'''



p. 136



“’Kepler said that Astrology is Astronomy’s wanton little sister, who
goes out and sells herself that Astronomy may keep her Virtue”



Unwinding the Age of Reason back to its sources, we see some unlikely
convergences like this, as Maskelyne and Mason bond over their old
astrology days. Astronomy and astrology being positioned according to
some of the same belly/underbelly schema we’ve seen so far.



“Star-Gazing's ever a Whore's profession,—/(Isn't it?)/Some in a
Palace, all Marble and Brick,/Some behind Hedges for less than a kick,
tell me/What's it matter,/The Stars will say, /We've been ga-zing,
back at ye,/Many a Day,/And there's nothing we haven't seen/More than
one way”



After another comment on the debased status of the stargazer, we get
an inversion of that particular gaze, with the stars looking back and,
seeing everything “more than one way,” becoming ambivalent. All
differences (and meanings?) are obliterated by the totality of…
time/creation?



p. 137



“[…]Maskelyne flush’d with Song, ‘what say I do yours now, and you do
mine later?’”



I read a little bit of cheerful homoeroticism into this.



p.138



“’First of all, doesn’t it seem odd, that you and Mr. Dixon, with your
natal signs rul’d by Venus and the Sun respectively, should have
lately, as partners, observ’d the conjunction of those very two
bodies,--the Event occurring, as well, in the Sign of the Twins?’”



M&D are astrologically tied together—here we see a slightly more
mystical offering of the paranoiac speculation on what brought them
together.



This moment reminds me of the extent to which twinness is a recurring
theme in the novel (fits with the construction & codification of the
system of binaries)



138/139



“Tho' it takes Mason a while to recognize it, Maskelyne has been
trying to convey the Dimensions of his Curiosity. As a man of
Religion, he has often enough sought among the smaller Probabilities
for proofs of God's recent Attendance, has practis'd Epsilonics for
the sake of stronger Faith, as what deep-dyed Newtonian would not? One
in seventy-  two, or point zero one four, is not a figure he can be
quite comfortable with. Tis not quite Miraculous enough, there's the
very Deuce of it. And if not quite a clear Intervention by the
Creator, not quite from Heaven, then what Power is this an Act of?”



Here we see the complicated ways Faith and Reason work
interdependently—perhaps convergently, confusedly—inside one person.
“’Tis not quite Miraculous enough,” to me seems like a kind of warm
representation of the absurdity of trying to bring Reason to Faith. Of
course, this absurdity (where there is no meaning) leads to paranoia
(where the mind supplies meaning).



p. 139



“a common Acquaintance but lately withdrawn”



As if God has departed—a deistic view. A kind of temporal reverse of
the Rilkean view of the coming (but not yet arrived) God.



“you make [Dixon] a truculent and wary neighbor.”



More exposition on the danger-in-proximity of things that might
otherwise have bonds of affection



“His shiny-eyed, vixenish Phiz peering out of all that loose Hair.

“’You take a deep Interest in Mr. Dixon?’”



More homoeroticism here, to my reading.



“’Shallow curiosity, Sir[…]have there been others, who…have taken an
Interest in him?’”



Maskelyne deflects this toward the apparently credible suspicion that
Dixon has drawn the interest of many outside players (thinking here
about the Jesuits primarily).



“’As much as you. There being the fitful Rumor that your Mr. Peach
will be nam’d a Director.’”



Each speculating on the other’s power and relationship to the East
India Company (another God-like power of questionable proximity).



p. 140



“We are[…]both Subjects of the same Invisible Power? No? What is it,
think ye? Something richer than many a Nation, yet with no
Boundaries,— which, tho' never part of any Coalition, yet maintains
its own great Army and Navy,— able to pay for the last War, as the
next, with no more bother than finding the Key to a certain iron Box,—
yet which allows the Bri-tannick Governance that gave it Charter, to
sink beneath oceanick Waves of Ink incarnadine.”



Referring here to the East India Company. Though the idea of the
Panoptick Invisible Power suggests it’s in some competition with God.
Of course the real danger explicated here isn’t exactly the EIC itself
so much as the form of the corporation as a superhuman power.



“’He’s not yet ready to make use of me, that’s all. Someday he
must…I’ve been paid for…it shan’t cost him anything.’”



No wonder Maskelyne is so apocalyptick—he understands his own fate to
be, essentially, doomed. He is a living preterite.



pp. 140-141



“’Englishmen in the bloom of Sanity, being snatch'd away, one by one,
high and low, ev'ryday, like some population of distraught Malays
waiting for the call of Amok,— going along, at what we style Peace
with the Day,— all at once, Bang-o! another 'un out in the Street
waving the old Krees,— being British of course, more likely a
butter-knife or something,— yet with no Place, no  Link upon the Great
Chain, at all safe,— none however exalted[…]’”



Amok as a call that people wait upon (as if some are already chosen
for it—for insanity). The idea of being “snatch’d away” resonates both
with the chosenness of the elect/preterite binary, and with the
language of rapture (Cherrycoke’s holy insanity) and with the language
of extraterrestrial abduction. But also: the particular insanity
referred to here has no reverence for the stratification or hierarchy
of the Great Chain.



p. 141



“[…]Maskelyne has ever presented an Enigma. Long before they met,
Mason felt his sidling Advent, cloak’d as by Thames-side Leagues of
Smoke and Mists.”



The city—home—are increasingly coming to be seen, to Mason, as
themselves sources of mysterious power, of subterranean and superhuman
influence & obfuscation.



“Since the Longitude Act”



Dana Sobel’s book Longitude talks about Maskelyne in great detail—he
apparently went to great lengths to discredit Harrison’s (ultimately
prize-winning) clock, and even to sabotage its functioning, and
Harrison’s claim to the prize money & recognition.



“For many, it was at least a chance to Rattle at length to a World
that was ignoring them.”



This kind of angry quackery reminds me a lot of the alienation on
display in 2018, actually. Are the people mentioned in the book being
ignored because…the forces of power are becoming increasingly
centralized, increasingly disdainful of the human? Because…the Age of
Reason has stratified humans into hierarchies of sense-making, some of
which no longer find any public purchase? Or have most people
basically always been ignored by the centers of power?



“Many[…]claim’d to’ve ben told the Secrets of the Longitude by God”



Introducing here some more parageography (with deeply spiritual inflection)



p. 142



“Others told of Rapture by creatures not precisely Angels, nor yet
Demons,--styl’d ‘Agents of Altitude.’”



With obvious connotations of extraterrestrial abduction. The name
Agents of Altitude feels of a cloth with Chums of Chance.



“[…]More than happy to share details of this toilsome Conversion, upon
duly authorized request.—  Yet, as there now exists no further need
for a foreign expedition to obtain the Earth's Solar Parallax from the
Transit of Venus, You would oblige me by recalling your own Parties
and using what influence you can with Astronomers of other
Principalities, as well as among the Jesuits &c."



This is a really mysterious passage to me—it gets a lot of page-space
for a kind of throwaway reference to some threads that don’t really
require extrapolation here, which makes me think it’s more purposeful,
as if we can almost deduce the intentions (if not the actual identity)
behind this correspondence. Though I haven’t really figured it out
myself.



“an invisible Grain built into Creation”



Love this—quintessential P, for me, weaving wonder, spirituality, and
scientific curiosity into cosmic-quantum mythmaking.



“my Zero Meridian not upon Greenwich, nor Paris, but a certain
Himalayan Observatory, in Tibet”



More hinting toward the Sino-Jesuit connection.



“the very slow Progress of what is undoubtedly a Planet, though no one
else claims to’ve seen it, near ŋ Geminorum"



The first part reminds me a lot of many different kinds of invisible
forces extrapolated thus far. As to what the significance of this
particular planet might be, I leave the Wikipedia page as my
contribution, for anyone who can make more sense of it.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Geminorum



p. 143



“some kind of blur…a greenish blue.”



Sounds Earth-like.



“make sure you fix it with your Lady, they don’t like it when you’re
up at night you know…prowling about…believe in their Hearts that men
are Were-wolves”



Were-wolves are a conflation of the lupine and the human. We’ve had a
conflation of the canine and human before (the LED). There’s a lot
more on were-wolves in ch. 23, including one suffering from the
condition becoming generally more civilized and erudite as he becomes
more lupine/canine.



“Was that Oinking upon the Rooftop?”



Funny, kind of absurd line, amid M’s fixation on Susannah Peach/Bradley.



p. 145



“Mason understands that he may if he wishes see himself thro’ Duty at
St. Helena by baiting Maskelyne thus, any time he has a Velleity to.
He also understands how quickly the amusement value of this will fade.
‘Usually,’ he feels nonetheless impell’d to suggest, ‘a Messenger
going the other way is returning, after having deliver’d his Message
someplace else.’”



Mason practicing interpretive mercy unto Maskelyne with his star chart.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l