M & D Group Read (cont.)

Tue Jan 23 03:48:35 CST 2018

I suggest there is, never was, one. That is obvious at one level from
its anachronism. At another, I suggest TRP never intended it to have a
punchline.

It is akin to wanting to know the "real" ending of C of Lot 49--who is bidding?

The joke is about America's never-finished .....present.
"Three men walk into a bar".....

On 1/22/18, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l