M&D CH 5 Notes

[David Morris]

Gmail from me to the P-list has never been a problem.  Years ago when I was
using my business email, and had to set it to plain text for this list.
Not since Gmail.

David Morris

On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 7:05 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> Apologies to those for whom the Plain Text solution hasn't solved the
> jumbled text problem. I await more ideas. Meantime, I'll keep sending
> these out for whoever might find them interesting/useful, or for no
> one.
>
>
> CHAPTER 5
>
>
>
> P. 42
>
>
>
> “’’Twas all so out of the ordinary,’ Mason declares, ‘that it must
> have been intended,--an act of Him so strange, His purposes unknown.’”
>
>
>
> Unintelligibility, mystery, unlikeliness = design, = mystery
>
>
>
> “Each had met the other’s Gaze for a slight moment before Duty again
> claim’d them,--the Vapors rising from the Wounds of dying Sailors
> smoothing out what was not essential for each to understand.”
>
>
>
> The clarity of mortality and trauma. In fact each of them somewhat
> possessed by them—delivered to each other. Repetition of the
> steam-off-the-bodies thing from last chapter, as our astronomers get
> newly close to one another.
>
>
>
> Also the conflation of duty with mortality.
>
>
>
> “The Candles tremble with the Vehemence of their Speech.”
>
>
>
> Echoes of the sensitive flame.
>
>
>
> “we should be happy to proceed to war upon any people”
>
> Not exactly true, or not in a way we want to imagine our astronomers,
> but then evil travels by channels reluctant, bureaucratic, linguistic,
> deferential—avenues of complicitness
>
>
>
>
>
> “’Technically no longer a Quaker, as they expell’d me[…]
>
> “’But Quakers are a bit matier, the idea being to look for something
> of God in ev’ryone…?’”
>
>
>
>
>
> “Out in the hall they keep running into each other, Wraiths in
> night-clothes.”
>
>
>
> Reminds me of the Qlippoth
>
>
>
>
>
> p. 44
>
>
>
> “’Of Forces less visible, I fear.’”
>
>
>
> As ever.
>
>
>
> “In what each is surpriz’d to note for the first time as a
> companionable Silence, they prepare Pipes, find a Dish in the Cupboard
> and a live Coal in the Fire, and light up.”
>
>
>
> If evil can take many forms, so can communion—and smoking wouldn’t be
> an uncommon means. Also, the ability to be silent with each other is
> an important development, indicating an ever-increasing proximity (and
> will be echoed later in Dixon teaching Mason about finding God the
> Quaker way, in stillness and silence).
>
>
>
> “Wrapt tightly, as within Vacuum-Hemispheres, lies the Unspoken,--the
> concentration of Terror and death of but two afternoons ago,
> transpir’d without one word, in brute Contempt for any language but
> that of winds and masses, cries and blood.”
>
>
>
> More about what can’t or oughtn’t be expressed in words.
>
>
>
> “It seems not to belong in either of their lives. ‘Was there a mistake
> in the Plan of the Day?’”
>
>
>
> Echoes of Against the Day, here. Also, just two pages ago this kind of
> mistake was taken for the hand of God. Is God the only Force less
> visible working here?
>
>
>
> “Did we get a piece of someone else’s History[…]”
>
>
>
> Colliding histories and destinies. Also hints at some of the stuff
> that will be explored in the missing eleven days.
>
>
>
> “’Happen,’ Dixon contributes in turn, ‘we wer never meant at all to go
> to Bencoolen—someone needed a couple of Martyrs, and we inconveniently
> surviv’d…?”
>
>
>
> Who needed martyrs, and for what?
>
>
>
> Destiny as not the product but the negation of free will.
>
>
>
>
>
> p. 45
>
>
>
> “And what they cannot speak, some of it not yet, some of it never,
> resumes breathless Sovereignty in the wax-lit Rooms.”
>
>
>
> More unspeakability—do the things unsaid have their own unexplored
> destinies, alternate future histories, etc?
>
>
>
> “’Not even the courtesy,--Damme! Of a personal Reply,--‘tis rather the
> final draft of some faceless committee. To my Heart’s Cry, my appeal
> to Bradley for Guidance[…]’”
>
>
>
> What has happened to Bradley? Mason’s betrayal by the man and family
> Bradley will be explored more in about 150 pages after Bradley’s
> death. What has turned Bradley away from him? Others, more powerful
> than Bradley?
>
>
>
> “’Bradley cannot write like this, even simple social notes give him
> trouble. “…Whenever their circumstances, now uncertain and eventual,
> shall happen to be reduced to Certainty.”’”
>
>
>
> This is one of several mentions of possibility reducing to
> certainty—lines (of potentiality, potential future histories)
> singling. But the vocabulary is used by the narrator elsewhere, and by
> (apparently fake) Bradley here. Who’s writing on Bradley’s behalf that
> would conceive of time and possibility this way?
>
>
>
> “’As if…there were no single Destiny,’ puzzles Mason, ‘bu rather a
> choice among a great many possible ones, their number steadily
> diminishing each time a Choice be made, till at last “reduc’d,” to the
> events that do happen to us, as we pass among ‘em, thro’ Time
> unredeemable,--much as a Lens, indeed, may receive all the Light from
> some vast celestial Field of View, and reduce it to a single Point.”
>
>
>
> Obvious resonance with Iceland Spar, and just a presentation of one
> vision of fate, of time, of possibility vs eventuality, that will keep
> being toyed with, presented and subverted, throughout the book
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20180125/bb274f29/attachment.html>