"Doubt is of the essence of Christ" (511)

The "mindless pleasures" (to borrow a draft title of GR) of M&D seem always to circle around flows and uncertainties, as in the Ghastly Fop sub-plot (or sub-text), the vertigo of the Ley-borne life, the Jesuit/China paranoid explanatory system, etc.  I often think of the novel as an extended send-up or comic inversion of the projects of Science and perhaps also Reason.  But a gentle, sympathetic comedy, as opposed to GR's biting tragic anger.

It's a novel to be lost in, but perhaps less dangerously than the earlier novels.  Has old Tom mellowed in his 60s?  Does it matter that this book is dedicated to his wife (Melanie, his once & future agent also) and his son?  The po-mo radical as family man?

I'll have some things to say about the ocean in this novel before too long, also.