Two things on Charles Mason & Jeremiah Dixon

For all of those taking the same journey as Mr Quill & me, there is a very rough, incomplete Wiki on Pynchon's pre-postcolonialist epic: http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

Also, the below-referenced Mr Darren Southworth gave me a stack of cds six months ago, several of which finally made it into my computer. Among them was Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia, a 2000 solo album from the Dire Straits singer. Lo, the titular song is based on Pynchon's characters. I'll quote the lyrics in full here - the argumentative tone is appropriate, even if when sung in the song it is sweet & complacent. (James Taylor plays Mason).

I am Jeremiah Dixon
I am a Geordie boy
A glass of wine with you, sir
And the ladies I'll enjoy
All Durham and Northumberland
Is measured up by my own hand
It was my fate from birth
To make my mark upon the earth...

He calls me Charlie Mason
A stargazer am I
It seems that I was born
To chart the evening sky
They'd cut me out for baking bread
But I had other dreams instead
This baker's boy from the west country
Would join the Royal Society...

We are sailing to Philadelphia
A world away from the coaly Tyne
Sailing to Philadelphia
To draw the line
A Mason-Dixon Line

Now you're a good surveyor, Dixon
But I swear you'll make me mad
The West will kill us both
You gullible Geordie lad
You talk of liberty
How can America be free
A Geordie and a baker's boy
In the forests of the Iroquois...

Now hold your head up, Mason
See America lies there
The morning tide has raised
The capes of Delaware
Come up and feel the sun
A new morning has begun
Another day will make it clear
Why your stars should guide us here...

We are sailing to Philadelphia
A world away from the coaly Tyne
Sailing to Philadelphia
To draw the line
A Mason-Dixon Line

Mr Quill, Mr Southworth, & Ms Murphy inside the Boston Globe, pretending an indifference to Melville's tomb.

Three of my bosom friends were quoted in the paper at an event at which many of us have previously made appearances, often for the full duration. Mr. Quill claims he was "misrepresented." (obviously, he may have been among the truest enthusiasts there - unless you read his famous tone into the quote.)

Ahab's apostles

Reeled in by the writing in 'Moby-Dick,' devoted fans give a whale of a reading

By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | January 5, 2007

NEW BEDFORD -- Call them Melville diehards.

They are the ragtag group of " Moby-Dick " enthusiasts who gather each year in the shadow of a whale's skeleton to read for at least 24 hours about the elusive prey of Captain Ahab. The experience, they say, is almost spiritual.

They are young graduate students and aging retirees, descendants of whalers -- some are even descendants of the author -- or they have merely fallen in love with a text that has been called one of the most dense and quixotic of American literature.

When the annual read-a-thon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum started at noon Wednesday, some 400 had showed up for the famous opening line, "Call me Ishmael." By 1 p.m. yesterday, the crowd had thinned to just dozens . They took turns reading aloud, drank grog, ate chowder, and celebrated the anniversary of Herman Melville's departure from the city more than 160 years ago on the whaler Acushnet, a voyage thought to have formed ideas for his most enduring book.

"There are very well-educated people who did not love it in high school," said Lee Heald , the museum's vice president for education. "But here's the deal: 19th -century literature is so gorgeous. The way to read 'Moby-Dick' is to hear it aloud. It's two stories. It's a great maritime narrative, but it's also a story of good and bad and dark and light."

Not all those in attendance were drawn to the event by the text's finer points, however.

"I think it was just the bragging rights that brought us," said James Quill , 24, who grew up in Concord. This year's event went on for 25 hours, trying some of the most ardent fans, who went home to nap and returned later.

Quill and his two companions, Maralena Murphy , 24, and Darren Southworth , 25, were determined to stay until the last word was uttered. Southworth, who said he has avoided the book "like the plague" since he forced himself to finish it in high school, acknowledged that he was riveted when he heard the expressive readers recite the text.

"It makes a world of difference," he said.

The dramatic reading s were not enough to occupy his attention through the night, though. At one point, Southworth crocheted to keep himself awake. Murphy knitted. "I finished a glove," she said proudly.

The marathon began 11 years ago, when museum volunteer Irwin Marks suggested an event that would commemorate Melville's departure from New Bedford on Jan. 3, 1841. Hundreds of readers have signed up since then to take on a chapter of the 400 plus-page book, including professors, high school students, and high-profile politicians such as US Representative Barney Frank .

This year, the coveted first chapter was read by one of Melville's descendants, a Cohasset carpenter named Peter Whittemore , who recalled playing with the author's spectacles as a child.

"My maternal grandmother was his granddaughter," he said, "so I sat on the lap of the lady who sat on [Melville's] lap."

He said he felt no pressure reading his great-great-grandfather's words, even the renowned first line. "It feels like it's in my blood," Whittemore said. "I start reading and I get caught up."

Some, in their nervousness, may stumble over the words. Others, inspired by the tale, wow the spectators with their fine, clear diction.

"That's what I call good reading," murmured one spectator listening to Celeste Bernardo , 43, confidently describe Ahab's final chase of the whale.

But it is the book's thrilling last chapter, when Ahab goes down with his ship, that rattles the most experienced reader. Dana Westover , a sound technician who read the final chapter yesterday, chastised himself for using the wrong voice to recite the final speech by Starbucks, the ship's first mate.

"I read it in Ahab's voice," he said, shaking his head. "I should have known better. Well, whatever. It was fun."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

E-mails: New Years Blogolutions

Date:	Mon, 25 Dec 2006 13:44:42 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Welsch" <______@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Fucking
To:	"Samuel Tear Amidon" <_______@gmail.com>

Dear Sam,

Hey, I was able to get that "I wish" movie onto my fancy new video iPod (xmas present from dad) using a program called "Jodix Free iPod Video Converter". Then we hooked it up to my parents new humungous television set (they're all the rage with the consumer set), & got your face ten feet wide. My mother didn't like what you were doing with lips. It's the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY!

Anyway, I was writing to suggest that you convert your movies to .m4a & post them on your website in that format also, so people can put them on iPods. All your fans that is, like Matthew Fucking Barney & The Gay-Emo Boys & the Fucking Cockassaroos.

Where's your manners! Merry Christmas!

When's Sam Amidon Live in Berkeley? You should come play the Starry Plough. My brother told me he puts your Tears for Fears song on his mixes. He lives in a bus now. You're big with the bus set. You're also TEN FEET WIDE on my parents' TV.

Peace on Earth,

James

Date:	Mon, 1 Jan 2007 23:19:46 -0500
From:	"Sam Amidon"
To:	"James Welsch"
Subject:	Re: Fucking

yo yo

marry christmas. i am in vermont. i am hung over from new years eve.
i mean not so much any more but i was today. new years eve was about
welcoming in 2007. hmmm... today has been about being hungover in
2007. thank you for expanding my video into the television medium. i
am watching a lame indie movie called down in the valley. before that
i was watching an beautiful hollywood film called dead man's chest.
that was good. i'm sick of stupid shit, and flakey stuff, and i'm not
sure what is going to happen this year yet. what do you think? but on
the good side of things marian gave me an old, hardcover, unabridged
copy of gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire. that is
worthwile.

sam

Date:	Sun, 7 Jan 2007 10:45:11 -0500
From:	"Sam Amidon" <___________@gmail.com>
To:	"James Welsch" <________@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Re: Ahab's apostles
CC:	"James Quill" <___________@yahoo.com>

yeah quill!!! good man rock i'm lame because i didn't go this year. but i will next year. in the meantime...

my new years resolutions.
by sam.

-sleep more
-talk more
-read more new yorker articles

my new reading scheme.
by sam

on the subway:
the short novels of leo tolstoy

on the weekends:
the decline and fall of the roman empire, by gibbon, in six volumes.

going to bed:
anna karenina

over breakfast: war and peace

Date:	Sun, 7 Jan 2007 11:58:57 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Welsch" <______@yahoo.com>
Subject:	My Reading Scheme,
To:	"Sam Amidon" <__________@gmail.com>

Dear Sam,

Ah! What readers we are! La!

Your reading plans are impossible. Just one of those would be hard.

I wrote to James Quill that I was at the point in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon where the french chef is being haunted by a robotic duck who may or may not be slowly turning into either an angel or a planet. & wrote back & said he was at the exact same point. (We had never mentioned that book to each other, never mentioned any plans to read it...)

Some day I'll start reading Russian novels. I'm still paranoid that I'm fabulously behind on great American literature. Mason & Dixon is amazing. Like, yesterday in a coffee shop, I read this chapter where Dixon (the astronomer/surveryor charting out the Mason-Dixon line in the 1760s) stumbles into a rustick tavern in the woods inn Pennsylvania, & the locals launch into a bizarre discussion of the gnostic gospels & how the Mason-Dixon line is like a line of Hebrew Scripure, & how this monster ("Golem") Indian spirit in the woods is animated by Jesus & can be summoned by great poetry "somewhat as ye may summon a Star with a Telescope".

Peace On Earth!
Purity Of Essence!

James

Date:	Wed, 3 Jan 2007 20:45:07 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Welsch"
Subject:	"Garden of Pleasure" paging the Vibe Master
To:	<________@gmail.com>

Dear Dan "Communism" Piper.

Well, my mother informed me over Christmas that since moving to Berkeley (three months ago!) I have become "too liberal." It was in response to me telling her the dairy industry is a slave trade. Can't say I'm a communist, but, if you have $230, I suggest you drag your butt to Lincoln Center in New York & watch all three of Tom Stoppard's trilogy "The Coast of Utopia." By February, there should be some 8-hour marathons going on.

I tried to call you a bit ago, to ask what was going on in Israel - but I've been listening to Amy Goodman, & I think I'm more up to date. I may just hide for a few years. Speaking of which, January 25th, 2009, Edinburgh / Ayreshire! That'll be several things: James Quill's 27th Birthday, Robert Burns's 250th birthday (hence the Scottish location), & 5 days after Bush leaves office (at the latest), so by default a several-week all-world party.

MySpace friends! I sent you a request for my music page. I have a new Gospel Album, Gospel Train.

New! Year!
James

Gospel Train on YouTube

From the Archive: Holy Sonnet IV

The waters compassed me about, I was
Within a great within; the deep surrounded
Like out the closing maw of hell, compounded
Extract my soul as high abstraction does.
All radiant dolphins lost their lust for life
When they nor life nor lust without beheld:
The faith of pleasure is experiential.
They long to bear, as does the heaven's wife,
And to deliver, once the sea has swelled
Its mystic womb, relief to belief sensual.
From out the whale did vomit my potential
Imagination, that the forms withheld.
I am, as sailor's home is dirty ground,
A hidden treasure wanting to be found.

Robert Burns on YouTube

"Drink beer!
There's a drought comin' on!"
-Crazy lady on the BART, towards Walnut Creek
(where I was headed for undisclosed reasons),
3 January 2007

"The Indians!
Get sober!
America!
Love it or leave it!
I'm leavin'!"
-ibid.

E-mail: Apocalypto

Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 20:17:33 -0800 (PST)
From: "James Welsch ________@yahoo.com
Subject: A.O.Scott
To: "Gerald Nick Nelson" <_________@gmail.com>, "James Quill" <_________@yahoo.com>

And it is, all in all, a pretty good show. There is a tendency, at least among journalists, to take Mr. Gibson as either a monster or a genius, a false choice that he frequently seems intent on encouraging. Is he a madman or a visionary? Should he be shunned or embraced? Censured or forgiven?
-A.O.Scott, N.Y.Times review of Apocalypto

His life was what it was. Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child.
-Tom Stoppard, Shipwreck (The Coast of Utopia, Part II)

But is come from a far country for thy great name's sake...

I thank my loyal readers for their barrage of comments & e-mails, mostly saddened outcries about the scarcity of postings on this weblog in recent weeks. Here I'll respond to a few.

My old friend Sarah, a college comrade with whom I bonded primarily over a shared appreciation of imported rums, just e-mailed me: Dear James, it's been a week, there's been so much election news, you've only posted an old poem and a few dumb e-mails. My plan was to read your blog all day at work, now I'm just going to read celebrity news.

Well, Sarah, this weblog doesn't often discuss politics – not that it aims to be “nonpartisan” in our increasingly polarized country. Perhaps the political landscape is changing with the emergence of the blogosphere. But the political climate is always changing with every new decade, with shifts of culture, technology, &, most importantly, different people. The internet is drastically & subtly rewriting political rules as it reshapes our world. Our culture has the largest “middle class” of any society ever anywhere, which means lots & lots of people sitting at desks with computers hooked to the internet, often idle. Blogs, like mine, are exciting! The nightly news seems fake, but here's political views, well written, by some guy, with access to an infinite amount of information. Maybe that's why this blog, O it was lost!, is so lame. Perhaps doomed. Perhaps its author was meant for another time, I should have been hired at a 19^th Century publication like Melville's Literary World, where bookish arrogance thrives. Should I hone a more popular voice, or dig deeper & seek a marginalized audience? Am I a martyr for pseudo-intellectuality!? My God, what a thought! Needless to say, I felt dwarfed by the humongousness of the Midterm Elections, repulsed by the slime, into which the blogosphere dived & swam jovially. How could I post what I thought of John Kerry's botched joke? Maybe I need a real job.

I deleted an anonymous comment from my post on Borat, but I'll reprint it here: Yo fucker, it's just a funy movie. Sacha Barron Cohen can suck it.

Anonymous, I'm not really sure what you aimed to communicate with that statement. Was my review pretentious? Or is he reveling in the existential futility of it all. I'm curious what the second sentence could possibly mean – has “suck it” become a positive, like “bad” & so many other previously simply-defined words? I noticed in Moe's Books today that there is a book called Bad President. Indeed, direct. I believe strongly that “funy” movies can be important, revolutionary, & speak frankly about the human condition. Parody can be endlessly revelatory, & will be vital for as long as there is drama. The best artists, Shakespeares & Wes Andersons, so interlace the tragic & comic that... well, I don't need to finish that thought. Still, Anonymous, I'm not a fucker. You are the fucker. You can suck it, or not suck it.

My mother, now in Ghana eradicating polio, wrote an e-mail which said, among other things: James, [...] Why don't you review some of books you've been reading? If you're not going to be writing music or searching for employment, you should at least be responding to some of things you're reading. [...]

As she knows, my reading list has been daunting during these, my “lost years.” Besides several newspapers, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Cosmo, & a list of blogs, I also read many novels & non-fiction on a range of subjects. Why can't I report on more of the ideas I have in response to my individualized categories of intake? [I gave up on that sentence after several retakes -ed.] Sometimes, Mom, without the threat of a University to make you react in words, it's hard to find the motive to blah-blah about everything you're experiencing. I could write about my walk today, either metaphysically or empirically – for instance, it was 2.45 miles according to the little thing my dad gave me which clips to my pants. I loved the two books I read last week, Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country & Nabokov's Ada, but I feel that I've reverted to grade school reports in criticizing some author's works. “I would recommend it to my friends.” Seriously, tho, both those books are amazing, watersheds, they both changed me & made me cry. Sometimes a man is too busy to write because he is lying in the bathtub drinking beer.

We do, doodley do,

doodley do,

doodley do,

What we must,

muddily must,

muddily must,

muddily must,

Until we bust,

bodily bust,

bodily bust,

bodily bust.

-Bokonon (as quoted in A Man Without A Country).