M&D Ch. 16: Cheese Worship, The Coercions of Death, the Earth as Owner

[Smoke Teff]

CHAPTER 16



The previous chapter offers a prolepsis to Mason telling Dixon about
Rebekah—her ghost and then Mason’s memory of her. Then it moves
forward in time to Mason’s time with Maskelyne. Then Mason leaves
again to meet up with Dixon, fulfilling the prolepsis. Very windy
chronology.



This chapter will have lots of waves, resonances, and currents.



p. 167



“Reason run amok”



This is something we might hold onto. It seems like it could be a
subtitle for the novel. The concept of amok seems to involve a strange
confluence of reason and chaos. We’ve had it suggested elsewhere that
there are certain laws of human density that tend to, beyond a certain
threshold, create chaos and violence. Where reason gets transmogrified
into amok. Is this threshold the zero point? Or…was it fallacious to
believe in un-amok reason to begin with? In this context, the “Reason
run amok” refers to the giant wheel of Gloucester cheese—perhaps the
result of “an unreflective Vicar, worshiping at the wrong Altar.” So
worship is conflated with reason? Maybe in that they are both a kind
of human magickal thinking?



BUT we should also note—is the whole notion of REASON itself not
similar to AMOK in that they are both consequences of a certain kind
of human arrangement and density? Did we not require the onward forces
of urbanism (with its human density) and collective intellectual
endeavor to arrive at the age of reason?



p. 168



“As gatherings of the People, in this part of England, often produc’d
gastro-spiritual Distress among the Clothiers”



Funny; also: apprehensiveness about human gatherings/density.



“Neighbor Folk of all conditions lined the route, at first, as the
great Cheese swayed and loomed into view, silently in awe,--then,
presently, as if strangely calmed by the Beams of a Luminary rising
anew above each dip in the road, calling out to the Cheese and its
conveyors, calls which after not too long became huzzahs and even
Hosannas.”



Cheese worship. Anyone catch any particular scriptural references
people here? Easy to see this part—reason/worship run amok—as being a
comic exemplar of people’s ability to engage in idolatry, or to bring
the energy of worship to just about anything.



“the majestic food product”



Food product sounds like a modern euphemism for highly processed
food—is this a joke about processed American cheese?



“She would appear, as always, in silk. Her father, Samuel Peach, was a
silk merchant of some repute, and a growing Power within the East
India Company.”



Want to track this idea about the silk==a sacred category of material
that gets some exploration throughout the novel.



“Silks without limit from the furthest of the far Eastern lands”



Special because exotic because distant



“the fatty yellow light of a tropical sun”



With some divine notes of Octuple Gloucester



“Savage flowers of the Indies, demurer Blooms of the British garden”



Projecting man-made categories/traits onto nonhuman plants



“foreign colors undream’d of in Newton’s prismatics, damasks with
epic-length Oriental tales woven into them, requiring hours of
attentive gazing whilst the light at the window went changing so as to
reveal newer and deeper labyrinths of event”



History and narrative woven with microscopic intricacy, with only
special and meditative methods of elucidation



“Velvets whose grasp of incident light was so predatory and absolute
that one moved closer to compensate for what was not being reflected,
till it felt like being drawn, oneself, inside the unthinkable
contours of an invisible surface.”



Overall this is a very Pynchonian passage, Mason’s fantasy about the
silks. Imbuing them with history, exoticism, with his own systems of
classification and iconography, and ultimately with some element of
mystery and impossibility.



“He had knelt by her Bed and press’d his face to the Counterpane of
Silk to inhale what he could of her Scent.”



Mason was as sensual as Dixon as a younger—pre-widowered—man



p. 170



“His father’s birthday gift to him had been a day off from duties at the Mill.”



More on Mason’s relationship with his father, his relatively humble
origins, and maybe also just the insanity of work as religion



“All ‘round him, ev’rybody else his age was flirting, chasing, and
larking, whilst he trudged about, waiting at last only for the giant
Cheese.”



The young stargazer, inevitably exiled from his peers. “The Big
Cheese” is a not-uncommon euphemism for God. And the cheese has been
deified. So, translation: Mason is alone, “waiting at last only for
God.” The coming God. This is what the stargazers are looking for?



“The Victim of a Cheese malevolent”

anyone catch a reference here?



“an energetick Rustling of Taffeta”



Wikipedia suggests Taffeta can be made from silk?



170/1



“’Were it Night-time, Sir, I’d say you were out Star-Gazing.’”



She can see into him immediately.



171



“She put upon her r the same vigorous Edge as his Father on a
difficult day[…]If she was not, like Susannah, a Classick English
Rose, neither was she any rugged Blossom of the Heath.”



Conflation of the man-made categories projected onto plants with those
projected onto…humans. Rebekah is outside this classick-v-rugged
binary.



“an Inquiry that just fail’d to be a Smile”



A kind of ambiguous, or ambivalent, gesture



“like a Gate-Keeper about to have a Word with him. What shadow’d Gates
lay at her Back? What mystick Residence?”



This is obviously archetypally loaded. Does anyone note any references
or connections here? Makes me think of the ante-chambers from GR.



“yet Rebekah’s innocence of Mortality kept ever intact…oh, shall this
divide my Heart? she saw nothing, that May-Day, but Life ahead of
her.”



Noting the idea of innocence of Mortality. This has been mentioned
elsewhere. Ignorance of the future as innocence. Who is un-innocent of
Mortality, really? Those who have killed, and those who have died? Or
those who have seen into the future?



“’There are no records of her in Gloucestershire,’ interrupts Uncle Ives.

“’What, none? Shall none ever appear?’

“’With respect to your Faith in the as-yet-Unmaterializ’d[…]’”



Cherrycoke is outside time



“’Unless ghosts are double,--‘ ‘—one walking, the other still,’ the
Twins propose.”



Ghosts as doubles—people as having two spirits, or potentially
bifurcatable spirits.



“Country Wife open and fair, City Wife a Creature of Smoke, Soot,
Intrigue, Purposes unutter’d”



Country-v-city binary. Country : city :: exposure : enclosure?



“representing Rebekah at her most vital and belov’d.”



The idea of representation here taking on new meaning.



“Is this, like the Bread and Wine, a kindness of the Almighty, sparing
him a sight he could not have abided? What might that be, too
merciless to bear? At times he believes he has almost seen black Fumes
welling from the Surface of her Apparition, heard her Voice thickening
to the timbres of the Beasts…the serpents of Hell, real and swift,
lying just the other side of her Shadow…the smell of them in their
long, cold Waiting….”



The ambiguity of Rebekah’s ghost. Is it really her? Is she
representing the truth about Rebekah and the universe? Is the fact of
her apparition good—or is there some secret of hell that she’s
concealing from him?



It’s interesting how this ambiguity in her ghost’s character comes
just after we get some details of ambiguity (aversion to binaries) in
Rebekah’s living person—as if whether another person represents
paradise or hell, benefit or threat…is always unknowable?



171/2



“She occupies now an entirely new angular relation to Mercy, to those
refusals, among the Living, to act on behalf of Death or its ev'ryday
Coercions,— Wages too low to live upon, Laws written by Owners,
Infantry, Bailiffs, Prison, Death's thousand Metaphors in the World,—
as if, the instant of her passing over having acted as a Lens, the
rays of her Soul have undergone moral Refraction.”



Is this the only such definition of Mercy—such an important Pynchonian
concept—that we get in his books?



Mercy as protest, mercy as refusal to be complicit with the (sometimes
agonizingly slow and hidden) forces of death.



So Mercy is what keeps the Living from acting on Death’s behalf.
Rebekah, after her moral Refraction, now has a new angular relation to
Mercy. Does this mean that she is still refusing to act on Death’s
behalf? But presumably Death now wants her to, even more nakedly (to
her) than it wanted her to in life?



p. 172



“’Measuring Angles among illuminated Points, there must be more to it,
‘Bekah, you see them as they are, you must.’

“’Oh, Charlie. “Must.”’”



Rebekah making fun of him for his use of the language of coercion and
inevitability—complicates the exchange on p. 165 where she makes fun
of him for saying something about his everyday coercions.



It seems that one of the important metaphysical elements P is
exploring with this blurring of the life-death boundary is that of
coercion. Coercion in life is the force of death. Rebekah seems to
suggest either that death, however, is the end of coercion—or that
it’s a totally different kind of coercion, that makes mortal concerns
about coercion seem laughable.



“Laughter does not traverse easily the baffling of Death,--yet he
cannot harden his heart enough to miss the old Note within,--‘tis
sure, ‘tis his own Rebekah.”



Another line with complicated implications for P’s death metaphysics.



“Her voice affects him like music in F-sharp minor, drawing him to the
dire promise.”



Wikipedia says: Very few symphonies are written in this key, Haydn's
Farewell Symphony being one famous example.



Also, “the dire promise” remains ambiguous but must relate to the
language of death and coercion that’s been developing



“’You believ’d, when you were a Boy, that the Stars were Souls departed.’

“’And you, that they were Ships at Anchor.’”



Complications of departures and arrivals. The ranger versus the
pilgrim. The permanent destination versus the waystation. Also, the
conflation of souls and ships and stars.



“our Sky, a Harbor to Travelers from Ev’rywhere.”



Sounds like a post-colonial dream of America?



“’Look to the Earth,’ she instructs him. ‘Belonging to her as I do, I
know she lives, and that here upon this Volcanoe in the Sea, close to
the Forces within, even you, Mopery, may learn of her, Tellurick
Secrets you could never guess.’”



This is a crucial endorsement of the validity of these Tellurick
Secrets which will be elaborated as the novel unfolds. Rebekah is
owned by the earth—is this the coercion of death? How does death
relate to the earth? Especially the earth that has some form of
consciousness (and will?) as we might increasingly come to see



“’I am past Light[…]I am outside of Time.’”



Realities askew to our own.



“Between them now something like a Wind is picking up speed and
beginning to obscure his View of her. She bares her Teeth[…]”



Is the Wind forcing her to reveal the beastliness that was being
hidden on the last page?



“Great Waves of Melancholy, syncopating the Atlantick Counterparts not
far away, surge against him.”



Ocean as pulse—and as medium for feeling.



p. 173



“Mason[…]is abruptly certain that Dieter is a ghost as well.”



He did have the big white eyes.



“hearing in the Wind entire orchestral Performances, of musick
distinctly not British[…]The Wind seems to be blowing cross-wise to
the light[…]producing false images, as if, in Bradley’s Metaphor for
the Aberration, the Vehicle, Wind, has broken thro’ some Barrier, and
enter’d the no-nonsense regime of the Tenor, Light, whilst remaining
attach’d to it.”



The ability of wind and light to affect each other. The treachery of
images. The Aberration.



“’I haven’t your resistance to this Wind. It is driving me insane.’”



Is M running away, maybe, from the unbearable difficulty of
confronting Rebekah’s ghost? Or has she encouraged him to leave?



p. 174



“’Break-neck,’ whispers a Voice clearly, tho’ no one is there.’”



Is this Rebekah, trying to take Mason from the island? Then the boat
operator seems intimidated by the voice. Was it even Rebekah talking
to Mason to begin with? The Wind and the Light—all the phantom images
and sounds, and the sense of one’s own sanity starting to fray.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l