M & D Group Read (cont.)

[Monte Davis]

Agree. I wonder if there's much here beyond the wiki's "We can only assume
that TP intends Dixon's 'joak' to fail, to heighten the characters' mutual
discomfort; Mason's response is no kind of punchline, and scarcely seems to
justify Dixon's assumption that he has 'heard it before', unless the
punchline was too vulgar to be repeated in company."

Maybe just another reminder in this early going that DIxon is a Northern
gawk in the big city for the first time, prone to clowning and sometimes
apt to give offence unwittingly -- and that Mason can be reflexively
uptight. Still, I'd like to know the punchline someday.

On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 2:44 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Yes I realize that I was putting the date of start of the book backward to
> M&D’s meeting. I think however that the choice is intended to reflect the
> association of Corsican with Napolean as  militant revolutionary, and I
> think the best evidence is the refrain of the joke on St. Helena. Still, a
> bit sloppy on my part as to date. Mistakes were made.
>
> Also the joke is by its structure an anachronism, as is apparently the
> word Chinaman. Hardly a major issue though. I think the point is that P’s
> Dixon is a guy who told jokes with a politico-cultural slant, or would if
> you met him in a bar today.
>
>
>
> > On Jan 22, 2018, at 3:49 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > JT> Napolean was already active in the wings
> >
> > But subtly, given that he won't be born for nine years after this first
> meeting between M & D.
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 8:31 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> > I was thinking along similar lines, that the examples are anachronistic,
> though the target audience  is hard to tell. I think Mark is onto something
> with the Corsican. Napolean was already active in the wings, Corsica was
> seeking independence and in a few decades Napolean would be in St Helena
> where one instance of the joke takes place. The Chinaman  seems to me to
> point in a different direction. China a mecca of trade and the culture of
> the east for centuries at the time of M&D and a chinaman would probably
> imply the exotic other. I think Mason’s first love interest was the
> daughter of a silk merchant.
> >
> > What to my mind is deliberately anachronistic for comic effect is the
> structure of the Joke which is widely used now, but has anyone heard of
> this joke pattern from the 18th century? What were jokes like at that time?
> >
> > > On Jan 21, 2018, at 7:51 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Just to check off the obvious: these readings for both "Chinaman" and
> "Corsican" involve stark anachronisms. People of the 1760s or 1780s knew
> nothing about (1) importation of Chinese labor to the American west or (2)
> Napoleon -- Corsica was just another Mediterreanean isle of hot-headed
> banditti like Sardinia or Crete.
> > >
> > > That doesn't mean they don't do the work you say, only that they do it
> winkingly for us rather than the ostensible audience. "Jesuit," by
> contrast, was good contemporary currency, with sinister attachment to
> > >
> > > - Jacobite risings in Great Britain (1689, 1715, 1719, 1745, and
> support for a notional French invasion in 1759)
> > > - Catholic (and Francophone) Quebecois, most of Canada's settler
> population even after British victory in the Seven Years' War
> > > - those sneaky Catholics in Maryland, who had lost toleration in 1692
> and did not regain it until after the War of Independence.
> > >
> > > On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 4:50 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > A Chinaman, a Jesuit and a Corsican....etc.
> > >
> > > Never finished. I offer this 'reading'.
> > >
> > > Jesuit. The spying network in M & D, as also the embodied conspiracy
> > > in American History notion, but also
> > > an invasion of privacy problem (at least) in history, in the history of
> > > America
> > > but also Jesuitical, the common stereotype of able to
> > > find rationalizations for whatever one argues, wants to believe, quite
> a
> > > pattern in the old and new world of religious freedom NOT, where
> justifying
> > > one's own against all other religions is always a reality.
> > >
> > > a Corsican. in M &D (and in the stereotype again), an adventurer. But
> also,
> > > having
> > > read part of an old (1962 Twayne's Authors (!)) trot through
> Churchill's
> > > writings, I learn
> > > what I think I learned here in a previous read but now know was
> extensive
> > > at one time.
> > >  Napoleon was called the Corsican in much common talk and in books. ( A
> > > hero of Churchill's, as one might expect, that :Hero
> > > of the Empire" himself).Take your Napoleon associations
> > > and apply them to America's adventurous spirit--America's self-chosen,
> > > self-justifying Empire
> > > "adventures", much later in history than M & D's American time but
> not, of
> > > course, England's.
> > >
> > > And a Chinaman. The word applied to the many immigrants who came and
> built
> > > the infrastructure of America with their
> > > hard exploited work. Also, as TRP does, another statement of the East's
> > > influence on the US.?
> > > -
> > > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> > >
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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