Chapter 7

160/170 - Like Machiavelli he was in exile

In a famous letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, Machiavelli described how he spent his days in exile:

When evening comes, I return home [from work and from the local tavern] and go to my study. On the threshold I strip naked, taking off my muddy, sweaty workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world.

His had always been a vigorous, Italian sort of pessimism: like Machiavelli, he allowed the forces of virtù and fortuna to be about 50/50; but the equations now introduced a random factor which pushed the odds to some unutterable and indeterminate ratio which he found himself afraid to calculate. ^[1]

"Minghe" stands for "minchia" (a very common expression, like the American "shit" — and quite vulgar). "Minghe" is how "minchia" is spelled (pronounced) by southern Italians. "Minchia" means "dick", so "minghe morte" means "your dick is dead" (i.e, "impotent"), and "capo di minghe" means "dickhead", "dick-headed" &c. "Minghe" by itself would be like saying "shit" or any sort of profane exclamation."

From Pynchon's short story Entropy ^[2]:

"Minghe morte," said Duke. "I figured we were playing it a little slow," Krinkles said.

Also, Mingeborough is where the kids live in Pynchon's short story The Secret Integration.

167/178 - Birth of Venus

The Botticelli referenced earlier, famously depicting the goddess Venus arising in full womanhood from the sea.

From Pynchon's short story Entropy ^[3]:

"There was a two-handed, bilingual morra game on over by the icebox. Saul had filled several paper bags with water and was sitting on the fire escape, dropping them on passersby in the street. A fat government girl in a Bennington sweatshirt, recently engaged to an ensign attached to the Forrestal, came charging into the kitchen, head lowered, and butted Slab in the stomach. Figuring this was as good an excuse for a fight as any, Slab's buddies piled in. The morra players were nose-to-nose, screaming trois, sette at the top of their lungs."

From Wikipedia:

While there are many variations, most forms of morra can be played with two, three or more players. In the most popular version of Morra both players throw out a single hand each showing one or two fingers, and call out loud their guess at what the sum of all fingers shown will be. If one player guesses the sum, that play earns one point. The first player to reach three points wins the game.

References

1. ↑ Pynchon, Thomas, Slow Learner, Jonathan Cape, 1985, pp. 87-88
2. ↑ Ibid., p. 96
3. ↑ ibid, p. 96

Chapter 1 In which Benny Profane, a schlemihl and human yo-yo, gets to an apocheir 9/1	Chapter 2 The Whole Sick Crew 44/39	Chapter 3 In which Stencil, a quick-change artist, does eight impersonations 61/59	Chapter 4 In which Esther gets a nose job 95/97
Chapter 5 In which Stencil nearly goes West with an alligator 111/115	Chapter 6 In which Profane returns to street level 134/141	Chapter 7 She hangs on the western wall 152/161	Chapter 8 In which Rachel gets her yo-yo back, Roony sings a song, and Stencil calls on Bloody Chiclitz 213/229
Chapter 9 Mondaugen's story 229/247	Chapter 10 In which various sets of young people get together 280/305	Chapter 11 Confessions of Fausto Maijstral 304/333	Chapter 12 In which things are not so amusing 347/385
Chapter 13 In which the yo-yo string is revealed as a state of mind 367/407	Chapter 14 V. in love 393/437	Chapter 15 Sahha 415/461	Chapter 16 Valletta 424/471
Epilogue, 1919 456/507