Not P but Moby-Dick (88) - Questions for "Mike"

Sat Mar 16 17:48:46 UTC 2024

Well I will agree with one part of your response, I definitely did not come
close to keeping cool or caring.  I was not abiding the tendril tenet there.

On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 1:35 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mr O G---
>
> I stopped reading this viciously insulting post....makes me believe you
> don't come close to Keep Col But Care, even in the extended version...
>
> Also CONVINCES me you don't know thing one about translation or you would
> get it...as Mike makes clear, getting it tright is what matters and I
> believe him when he says so many previous translators have gotten it
> wrong.....
>
> Pynchon himself, in his words about the use of tendril and entropy showed
> us how hard he now took getting it exactly right...
>
> Shame.
>
> Mark
>
> On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 1:16 PM O G <octogonalyoyo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Mr. Mike,
>>
>> Can I ask you a few questions about the big dick (great gig) in the
>> waters (sky)?
>>
>> Look, as Withnail once said, We went on this Pynchon list by mistake!
>>
>> I just got here, obviously, and you and your tedious, insidious, insane
>> questions are by far the most, um, interesting, thing, about it.  Someone
>> once recently said here that what the author of a quote that Pynchon lodged
>> onto the top of one of his stories After the quote Tempers our
>> interpretation of Pynchon's temper toward the topic of the story, and I
>> thought that was intresting though I disagreed, if that's the case why not
>> have Dante's Third Canto temper Pynchon's feelings, but then he went away
>> so I am left with you.
>>
>> I have a few problems, in general, about you and your cringing lifeless
>> questions about the Dick.  First off, I haven't read the goddam thing since
>> I was seventeen and I don't remember it, and I surely didn't understand the
>> wickedness of Melville's brilliance when I was seventeen.  That was two
>> years ago.  And I am certainly not going to like, look up
>> contextualizations when you have the infinite courtesy to go, like,
>> "(88)".  What am I supposed to do, read ten pages before 88 and ten pages
>> after 88, then answer your stupid question?  You just assume that I know
>> who the hell the carpenter is.  The guy who made the first leg, or the
>> second leg?
>>
>> One obvious question I have is, something I am certain that these Bailey
>> and Kohut fellows have surely pointed out to you seven hundred thousand
>> times before I ever came around, do you understand, or get, at all,
>> Melville's incessant, inquenchable, indying sense of humor?  Nothing
>> Ishmael says is accurate.  He is a total loon.  And why he is a lunatic is
>> certainly the greatest possible question one can ask of the novel.
>>
>> So, but then, all your questions, they're all nitpicky, like, literal,
>> items, about six words that Melville, obviously high and in a state of
>> divine comedy, threw together out of the mouth of a loon, without really
>> probably having a clue what he even meant by it.  By that I mean, he never
>> had one thing he meant in mind.  No doubt he was aware of a plenty, he
>> didn't care, it amused him to no end, that's why he wrote it, he wrote that
>> book for no other reason than for the divine comedy.
>>
>> Every time you preface a question by "What did Melville mean by..." it is
>> automatickly a bad question.
>>
>> Attempting to render a divine comedy from one language into another is,
>> it's not comical, nor is it divine.  When you continually goldenly fleece a
>> group of the greatest scholars of Pynchon on the planet into hammering out
>> "What Melville meant," in a wanky willy way, it's beyond absurd, and after
>> a few weeks embarrassing to witness.  And I fucking know what absurd is.
>>
>> Plus it totally aggravates me, two things, real quick before I forget.
>> Damn it what were they.  I just remembered them at the end of that last
>> paragraph, and now have I forgotten again.  Oh!  No, damn it, spaced them
>> again.  The ol', in-out.  Oh one, I used to think it was quasicool, because
>> at first I automatickly assumed, that, you took the time and effort to type
>> out all the quotes that you are so concerned with.  Then I finally realized
>> that you simply cut and paste!  Oy, vay.  Takes you three seconds to do
>> something that ultimately annoys me, and no doubt everyone else chained to
>> your inquiries, for the rest of the day.  It's hard, you know, because,
>> just trying to refresh my dim memory with some of your brightest cut and
>> paste hit and runs,
>>
>> Oh right, second, yes yes finally, wait shit I lost it again. God damn
>> it. Oh right it's that thing.  In every little shock and awe quote you
>> bombard these highly respected scholars with, and waste the world's
>> incalculable precious time, there are at least TEN better questions you
>> Could have asked, regarding the words on either side of your quote within
>> the quote.  It's almost indemnifying, you almost have a trenchant, for
>> asking what the least interesting portion of the quote about, is about.
>>
>> I'll show you.  I'll ask you questions about every other part of your
>> quote around your quotes, from now on.
>>
>> I am curious what you think "Melville means".  I'll ask you questions
>> about your wee quotes that you don't quote. I had at least eighty eight
>> questions for you about the one you just sent over the waves (that's
>> boating-whale talk).  But here's one:
>>
>> What did Melville mean when Billy Idol sang:
>>
>> "With a rebel yell, she cried "mo'""?
>>
>> Mo what?  And what is a rebel yell?
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 3:59 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I agree.....did not read right...
>>>
>>> On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 3:49 AM Michael Bailey <
>>> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Yeah but the guy is 50 foot high - so the arms might be up to 25 feet
>>> long
>>> > & the wrists would be correspondingly burly
>>> >
>>> > However, the scattershot nature of the measurements indicates a lack of
>>> > coherent plan
>>> >
>>> > Quarter acre of brains
>>> > 50 foot tall
>>> > Chest modeled after the Thames Tunnel
>>> >
>>> > The Thames Tunnel is a tunnel beneath the River Thames in London,
>>> > connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures 35 ft (11 m) wide by
>>> 20 ft
>>> > (6.1 m) high
>>> >
>>> > I vote for 3 foot wide wrists (-;
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 2:58 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > It is the length of the arms....which are, in general, up to half the
>>> > > height of a man....
>>> > >
>>> > > On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 12:03 AM Mike Jing <
>>> > gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>>> > > wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > > > From Chapter 108:
>>> > > >
>>> > > > Hold;  while Prometheus is about it, I’ll order a complete man
>>> after a
>>> > > > desirable pattern.  Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks;  then,
>>> > chest
>>> > > > modelled after the Thames Tunnel;  then, legs with roots to ’em, to
>>> > stay
>>> > > in
>>> > > > one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist;  no heart at
>>> all,
>>> > > brass
>>> > > > forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains;  and let
>>> me
>>> > > > see—shall I order eyes to see outwards?  No, but put a sky-light
>>> on top
>>> > > of
>>> > > > his head to illuminate inwards.  There, take the order, and away.
>>> > > >
>>> > > > What does "arms three feet through the wrist" mean here? Is "there
>>> > feet"
>>> > > > the width of the wrist? Most of the previous translations
>>> interpreted
>>> > it
>>> > > as
>>> > > > the length of the arms, which doesn't seem right.
>>> > > > --
>>> > > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> > > >
>>> > > --
>>> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> > >
>>> > --
>>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> >
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>