M&D CH 6 Notes

[Mark Kohut]

The unity of the Pilgrim & the American Ranger--the religion-based self justification of Duty. "American exceptionalism" --God's on our side--in the service of adventurous imperialism--that word ' honor' so often associated with war conduct. 
( if I remember right, TRP does a savaging of " honor" in ATD. Reminded me of same in the Henry 4 plays) 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 7:31 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> CHAPTER 6
> 
> 
> 
> p. 47
> 
> “patently a warning to the Astronomers, from Beyond. Tho’ men of
> Science, both now confess’d to older and more Earthly
> Certainties[…]the Royal S. wrote back in the most overbearing way, on
> about loss of honor.”
> 
> 
> 
> The stuff about the warning is interesting enough. But the Royal S.’s
> words somewhat echo the narration later in talking about the forces
> that send (specifically American) pioneers on their way into the
> unknown:
> 
> 
> 
> Cf p. 212: “The Pilgrim, however long or crooked his Road, may keep
> ever before him the Holy Place he must by his Faith seek, as the
> American Ranger, however indeterminate or unposted his Wilderness, may
> enjoy, ever at his Back, the Impulse of Duty he must, by his Honor,
> attend.”
> 
> 
> 
> “’Philadelphia Soap’[…]often leaves things dirtier than they were
> before its application.”
> 
> 
> 
> Feels somewhat metaphorickal, unless someone knows of a historical
> verification? But also funny, and paradoxickal enough that we might
> keep it in our heads going forward.
> 
> 
> 
> “Loxodrome”
> 
> 
> 
> Google’s ngram suggests anachronistic?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 48
> 
> 
> 
> “pretends to weigh his Choice.”
> 
> 
> 
> A really funny and recognizable moment, but also thematickally
> relevant, performance of free will when none exists.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> “’’Tis the Holy Bible, Sir.’
> 
> “’No matter, ‘tis Print,--Print causes Civil Unrest,--Civil Unrest in
> any Ship at Sea is intolerable.’”
> 
> 
> 
> As we think more about what ships represent on these voyages, cf. p.
> 220, “[Emerson] has devis’d a sailing-Scheme, whereby Winds are
> imagin’d to be forms of Gravity acting not vertically but laterally,
> along the Globe’s Surface,--a Ship to him is the Paradigm of the
> Universe. ‘All the possible forces in play are represented each by its
> representative sheets, stays, braces, and shrouds and such,--a set of
> lines in space, each at its particular angle. Easy to see why
> sea-captains go crazy,--godlike power over realities so simplified….’”
> P thinking both systematickally and symbolickally
> 
> 
> 
> “Coffee [causes Civil Unrest] as well”
> 
> Coffee, I think, comes in for variegated treatment here. Perhaps as a
> kind of blanket (but artificial, in its way) accelerant of human
> energies, it is a technology that can be put to ends as good or bad as
> the humans imbibing
> 
> 
> 
> “How is any of this going to help restore me to the ‘ordinary World’?”
> 
> 
> 
> Cherrycoke seeking restoration, a kind of death-wish yearning for
> innocence, for an innocent soul and an innocent world==as we all are.
> Of course, he wisely instructs us: “these are the very given
> Conditions of the ‘ordinary World.’”
> 
> 
> 
> “Take me back to the Cross-Roads,/Let me choose, once again”
> 
> 
> 
> THIS part is important, I think, because here we see the emphasis on
> alternate paths—alternate future histories, etc—as being related to
> the wish for innocence, for return, for death.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 49
> 
> 
> 
> We see the malevolent aggression of the sea captain, and then Mason’s
> objections. Then our astronomer from the north notes: “’A Quaker might
> say, ‘tis war that’s insane, and Frigate captains only more open about
> it…?’”
> 
> 
> 
> War is a force that moves through people, uses them for
> instruments—we’ve seen this time and again in Pynchon
> 
> 
> 
> “’You go about in this,--forgive me,--this Coat, Hat, and Breeches of
> unmistakably military color and cut,==’
> 
> “’Upon the theory that a Representation of Authority, whose extent no
> one is quite sure of, may act as a deterrent to Personal Assault.’”
> 
> 
> 
> I guess this is kind of Hobbesian? State as monopolist of violence,
> etc. But also we see that these kinds of authority—“whose extent no
> one is quite sure of”—achieve, advertise, and obfuscate the nature of
> that extent by preying on/appealing to the self-interest and fears of
> those who can align with it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> “’==not to mention this Ocean of Ale flowing thro’ you’”
> 
> 
> 
> The big step forward in closeness they took post-near-death is fraying
> somewhat—or perhaps allowing for more intimate kinds of disagreement.
> But we’re seeing Mason’s temperance (sorta), stuffiness is more like,
> judgment, elitism, so forth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 50
> 
> 
> 
> “Yet a Shark is a Shark, in the day or the dark”
> 
> 
> 
> I haven’t even seen West Side Story and I recognize this reference
> 
> 
> 
> “There’s nought an Astronomer won’t do for Work.”
> 
> 
> 
> Astronomers seem to be kind of bohemian in terms of their attitudes
> toward what apparently meager astronomy work is available, at least if
> you ask an astronomer’s father, e.g. Charles Mason, Sr.
> 
> 
> 
> “the Immortality of Ships,--new masts stepp’d in and Yards set,
> Riggers all over her[…] yet slow as Clock-hands, Wood, Hemp, and
> Canvas Resurrection would proceed. Three weeks and she was whole
> again.”
> 
> 
> 
> So more on the sea as providing some kind of resurrection, or some
> boundary between life and death. Also, this seems to be referencing
> the paradox of Theseus’s Ship
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 51
> 
> “Capt. Grant surreptitiously flicked the Quill, trying to spatter ink-drops[…]”
> 
> Seems to be both extending and parodying the notion from earlier in
> the chapter of print being any kind of potent weapon, especially on a
> ship.
> 
> 
> 
> “Admiralty Fopling”
> 
> 
> 
> The name marks him as a comic character, but who is he working for, exactly?
> 
> 
> 
> “’Truth’…?[…]Perhaps I am not your ideal Confidant[…]divided Loyalties
> sort of thing….”
> 
> 
> 
> Who else is he loyal to that impels a will to disbelief?
> 
> 
> 
> “the Rumor that my Predecessor was order’d there in full knowledge
> that ‘twas already in the hands of the French”
> 
> 
> 
> Fate, fate being known and decided not only for you—but before you
> even have your own job. Feels also like it relates to the question of
> elect v preterite
> 
> 
> 
> “so much more swiftly than the Trade Winds, these Days, do the Winds
> of Diplomacy blow.”
> 
> 
> 
> Somewhat mysterious line for me. I can understand the notion that the
> ambitions of colonial governments keep extending farther and
> farther—but don’t these ambitions also include ambitions for commerce?
> One thing happening in the 7 Years War is that mercantilism, through
> the filter of war, is translating into capitalism.
> 
> 
> 
> “a Source of pre-civiliz’d Sentiment useful to his Praxis of now and
> then pretending to be insane, thus deriving an Advantage over any
> unsure as to which side of Reason he may actually stand upon.”
> 
> 
> 
> Lots of resonance here. One: Cherrycoke’s holy insanity. Two: isn’t
> there a big recurring theme of people pretending to be idiots in GR?
> Three: this comes shortly after Dixon’s idea about pretending to be
> affiliated with an authority in order to derive advantage. Insanity
> and obedience to military authority are kind of tied together here?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 52
> 
> 
> 
> “till the final eight Bells, when Mason reaches for a Loaf and a
> Bottle and becomes upon the instant convivial as anyone has ever seen
> him.”
> 
> 
> 
> Mason is compelled to keep not only Rebekah’s memory alive—but also
> his own grief? She lives in his pain, at least he might think. Also:
> interesting that his grief ritualistically ends with the final bell.
> Goes to show how powerful our notions of the day are.
> 
> 
> 
> “and what is a Village, without Village Idiots? Ev’ryone on board
> knows who the Madmen are, and that they are here as security against
> the Forces of Night”
> 
> 
> 
> Furthers the notion of the uses of insanity—except it makes the object
> of the advantage of insanity not merely the individual but the
> ship/village/community
> 
> 
> 
> Other kinds of beings who are thus far described as USEFUL (to adult
> humans): children, dogs
> 
> 
> 
> “that Other World of which Wapping is the anteroom”
> 
> 
> 
> Anteroom from GR, obviously. The notion of the earthly world around us
> conforming to some of these archetypal structures (as defined by our
> psychic forces), realms, etc
> 
> 
> 
> “understanding that nothing would go away now, and that Shot was
> inevitable, ‘morphosing to extensions of a single Engine homicidal”
> 
> 
> 
> Recalls one of the central metaphors of the book, the idea of America
> as a kind of engine. I’m not sure what kind of traction the idea of an
> engine would have around 1760—but certainly they are in some kind of
> collective reservoir of mechanickal ideas-to-be. Also, again, the
> emphasis on homicide.
> 
> 
> 
> And the notion of inevitability is not new in the book, but the
> inevitability of violence seems so.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 53
> 
> 
> 
> (cont’d from 52)
> 
> 
> 
> “in that general and ungovernable Tip of Soul, what allow’d us to hear
> the Musick so keenly?”
> 
> 
> 
> Ungovernability at the core (or just the edge?) of the soul is
> important to note as we try to build a potential moral/thesis.
> 
> 
> 
> In this rhetorical phraseology I hear echoes of the national anthem, also.
> 
> 
> 
> “the Fife being of standard Military issue, tun’d in that most martial
> of Scales[…]the fam’d Hanoverian Fifer Johann Ulrich, whom the Duke of
> Bedford had brought in after the previous War to instruct his
> Regimental Winds.”
> 
> 
> 
> The idea of musical instruments being an instrument of continuity for
> the greater winds that move men. Also of music being, like technology,
> only as morally good/bad as the ends it is put to.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 54
> 
> 
> 
> “’Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads….’”
> 
> Obvious continuity with the opening to AtD.
> 
> 
> 
> p. 55
> 
> 
> 
> “Mr. Higgs’s Obsessedness as to Loose Ends”
> 
> 
> 
> “alternatives to Ennui[the steps from Boredom to Discontent to Unwise
> Practices are never shorter than aboard a Sixth-Rate upon a long
> Voyage, Sir”
> 
> 
> 
> Ennui, according to the ngram viewer, doesn’t start coming into
> English usage until…right around this period, actually. Right
> around—maybe we ought notice—the industrial revolution. DFW has a
> similar riff (delivered via a ghost in The Pale King) on the
> increasing usage of the words BORE/BORING as we think of them now,
> starting in the industrial revolution as an apparent take-off on BORE
> meant in the more mechanickal sense.
> 
> 
> 
> The conflation of idleness and sin (and their analogous opposition to
> usefulness and…whatever the opposite of sin is, probably understood as
> some kind of spiritual currency) a theme in this book (many of P’s
> books, really) and to the best of my knowledge seems especially
> emergent around this time?
> 
> 
> 
> p. 56
> 
> 
> 
> “’But that for one Instant[…]our Shadows lay perfectly beneath us[…]
> Tolls exacted for passage thro’ the Gate of the single shadowless
> Moment[…] So must there be a Ritual of Crossing Over, serving to focus
> each Pollywog’s Mind upon the Step he was taking.”
> 
> 
> 
> Reminds me of the solar sound shadow bit from GR (which will pop up in
> other ways later in this book). Also, more on the kinds of realms
> humans pass between, and the use of ritual as a means of either
> marking, paying toll for (i.e. earning/securing), or perhaps creating…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> p. 57
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> “as if secure forever in a warm’d, melodious Barcarole of indolent days”
> 
> 
> 
> Recognizable—when we find ourselves satisfied we often can’t conceive
> of the satisfaction ending. In fact, the ego—the instrument that makes
> and understands time—often can’t properly conceive of impermanence or
> present circumstances/emotions changing.
> 
> 
> 
> Also reminds me of the Sirens.
> 
> 
> 
> “in denial of all we thought we knew, to smell the Land we are making
> for, the green fecund Continent, upon the Wind that comes from behind
> us”
> 
> 
> 
> In one of the books I read in the run-up to M&D, it mentioned that the
> first English settlers to America could smell the evergreen trees out
> on the ocean for something like fifteen miles before they reached
> shore.
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