M&D Observing at the Cape

[Monte Davis]

"During those five years they [M&D] wrote their names on the heart of
America."

I'm too old and lazy to devote scrupulous, scholarly months (years?) to
building a never-conclusive argument that P must have seen the Cope article
by such-and-such a date. (Remember all those years when a granule of gossip
about his interest in the M-D Line led to confident assertions that he had
a big Civil War novel in the works?)

Instead, based on a score of turns of phrase and thought in congruence and
correspondence between the article and the novel, I'll just say I *know* he
read and used it, and 'fuck off' to anyone who doubts it.

On Sat, Jan 6, 2018 at 9:31 AM, bulb <bulb at vheissu.net> wrote:

> Very nice 1944 article on M&D & the Venus Transit (article which mentions
> to
> my surprise the star Fomalhaut, the ship in Against the Day; and also: "The
> only report from the Western Hemisphere was made from St. John's,
> Newfoundland, by Professor John Winthrop of Harvard College who had been
> sent to this post by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay").
>
> https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/viewFile/21511/21280
>
> THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION OF CHARLES MASON AND JEREMIAH DIXON*
> By THOMAS D. COPE
> University of Pennsylvania
>
> Michel.
>
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20180106/aad9aff7/attachment.html>