I borrowed a copy of Marguerite Young, Our Darling, the festschrift Dalkey published to coincide with the reprinting of MM, MD. In it Miriam Fuchs, in an essay entitled "Marguerite Young's MM, MD: Liquescence as Form," writes of a reviewer (Bernard Bergonzi, Nov. 1965) in the NYRB who apparently made the following conversion:

Miss Macintosh... weighs somewhat less than half a gallon of water and a little less than somewhat less than a half a gallon of oil--identical volumes of different liquids of varying weights.

Fuchs goes on to claim that

The conversion of text to page numbers, page numbers to pounds, pounds to gallons, and gallons to corresponding volumes of water and oil is an appropriate start for examining the structure and stylistics of MM, a novel in which things appear in equivalent or corresponding forms.

Because, to complete the chain of thought:

Oil mixed in water will diffuse, divide into smaller parts, and the particles will suspend in the liquid before they rise to the surface.

Any thoughts on this? Are we left to drown on our own? Will we need to wipe an oily residue from our skin upon completion?