MDMD(5)---Chap 15 Opening Comments-- pt 2

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Chapter 15


 Rebekah

My old teacher Prof. Bloom reminds me that 
"Messengers are useless if they have no message 
to deliver, and no one to send them." Its no use 
being a prophetic Visitant from the Other side,
if you have no prophecy to deliver.  

    Pynchon must know this, for Mason "understands 
early that she must come, that something is important 
enough to risk frightening him too much, driving him 
further from the world than he has already gone." 

    But Rebekah seems for the moment to have no grand 
message to bestow.  Perhaps she is no prophet, nor was
 meant to be. She has come, if anything, to listen to 
Charles ramble on. In fact, her visit is almost banal, if 
reasonably warm-hearted.

Perhaps some of us wish that Pynchon had let
his hugely fertile mind run wild, and give
us something more of the Other Side. It may be that
there is a rare moment of  imaginative failure
here, just when our Author should be willing
to reach for On High. Instead, we get a very 
abrupt, too abrupt perhaps change of scene, and suddenly 
Dixon is back on the island, having a beer with Mason. 
Indeed, the truly rich scenes are 
1)  the interplay between Mason seeking comfort
and Dixon partially offering it  and 
2)  Mason's image of the Great Good Place of Peace.

In the next Chapter, chapter 16, Rebekah returns to Mason. 
Again, she is reluctant to part with  too much information.
But now she does tell us something, something which 
if weak or if strong, must establish itself near the 
metaphysical centre of the novel. 

" "Look to the Earth" she instructs him. "Belong to her as I do,
I know she lives, and that here upon this Volcanoe in the Sea,
close to the forces within, even you, Mopery, may learn of her,
Tellurick Secrets you could never guess." "

     No matter how he might want to undercut this moment, 
the question will remain, is this credible as prophecy?
Is it strong enough to support the metaphysical weight of this 
Tome? Quiet possibly the sentiment is---for in its way it may 
even be true. But the question of its rendering is another matter.

     The moment of this revelation is delayed, and when it does 
happen, it is almost off-hand. Indeed, almost second-hand.
But is this a weakness, or am I reading this looking
for the wrong things? The ordinariness of humanity seems 
to survive beyond Death. Rebekah's human scale, even in 
death is evident, her warmth substantial, and her god---and 
Pynchon's, by inference---- terrestrial, living, and Female.
And perhaps a different God requires a different kind of 
authorial achievement. 

    


Eric Alan Weinstein
University of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk