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

Sun Mar 17 07:32:06 UTC 2024

Withnail - jeezly crow what a depressing flick! At least Meatball Mulligan
does the fershlugginer dishes in “Entropy” - okay it’s not in the text but
you know he’s going to get around to it

- I like Mike’s questions & think that it’s hard to tell what might prove a
sticky point in another language where the gosh darn letters are so
complicated and there are so many of them, but “de gustibus” eh wot?

- nice intertextual reference bringing in Dante’s 3rd Canto to buttress a
possible intent for Miller’s “Tropic” (“abandon all hope he who enter her”
- oops, darn spellcheck, “…ye who enter here”)

-  I suggested it might be the case that Miller brings his own
high-dopamine mindset to counter the fatalistic despair encapsulated in
Boris’s statement & continually in word & deed rebuts it or at least
attempts to

- just as Dante made the voyage thru Hell not to glom onto that attitude of
abandoning all hope, but to forge a mighty (& mighty lengthy & involved)
affirmation of hope, mirror for magistrates, vademecum for undergraduates -
or least attempt to

- and the choice of epigraph for “Entropy” is unlikely to be completely
meaningless, so I’m looking for a variation or embellishment on the Miller
quote in the themes of “Entropy” (though I saw something shiny - a possible
CoL49 group read - and have put “Entropy” into the ripening shed for a
minute)

- your extension to Dante is far from absurd imho

- “88” is the chapter

- Ahab’s the loon, not Ishmael, in fact I just realized that “Ishmael”
sounds a lot like “schlemihl”
Coincidence? Like Benny Profane, Ishmael from the get-go is portrayed as
leading a purposeless life of wandering around - and sticks to low-level
non-career-track jobs - is Ahab his Stencil? Queequeg his Pig Bodine (there
is something aboriginal about Pig, isn’t there?)

Billy Idol - “Rebel Yell” I think it’s about a cab driver
https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/12598/
As witness the lines:
Yes, I'm out all night to collect a fare
Just so long, just so long as it don't fuck up my hair

As to what “Mo” means, perhaps she is thinking of Moe Howard.
https://youtu.be/9LZJLTAVV34?si=HlmVTGhi-DrKk4lu

Rebel yell -

https://youtu.be/pkzHHaAJRqA?si=LEpt0oaPBdNUxqNh

A la Chapelle

https://youtu.be/Tmqht_DrXRw?si=pK4oQfnyqk4a1iSu

And hey, Doc Ock -
If you really like the idea of adding questions around Mike’s would you be
open to leading a Dick group read using that format? We could retrofit back
from his earliest questions. Just sayin’ - could be fun?

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
>>
>