MDMD(5) Chap 16----Questions, Angular

[Sojourner]

At 12:22 PM 8/11/97 +0000, Mark Smith wrote:
 
>> 171.35 to 172.4  "She occupies now an entirely new angular relation to
>> Mercy. . .as if, the instant of her passing over having acted as a Lens,
>> the rays of her Soul have undergone moral Refraction." Well it says the
>> Living show Mercy by refusing to act on behalf of Death 
>
>I sense the guilt of a husband beating himself up of his failure in life
>to "do right" by Rebekah.  Notice, it says "refusing to act on behalf of
>"Death", not "the dead".  I think that's important in helping to frame
>Mason's dilemma.  He wants to act on behalf of life, and is not sure he
>is on the right path.  Again, I hear "Hamlet" loud and clear, especially
>when you look at the phrase "Death, or its ev'ryday Coercions, - Wages
>too low to live upon, Laws written by Owners, Infantry, Bailiffs,
>Prison, Death's thousand Metaphors in the World."  It's Hamlet:
>insolence of office, the law's delay, the oppresor's wrong, etc.  These
>are death's thousand metaphors in the world: the shitty awful minutiae
>which take up 90% of our waking hours. Either he has in the past ignored
>Rebekah by concentrating too much on his work, or he is now wondering
>who he is working for, and why.  "She occupies now an entirely new
>angular relation to Mercy, to those refusals, among the Living, to act
>on behalf of Death, or its ev'ryday Coercions -...."etc.  Help me here,
>but I think Pynchon is talking about the cleansing action of Rebekah's
>death on Mason's sense of purpose.    
 
I haven't "finished" M&D yet (what a term, to "finish" a book -- I don't
think there's a book out there that I love which I am finished with), 
however you've expressed a lot of what I saw in this "turning away"
of Mason's.

Before M&D, I would be hard-pressed to say I knew much about Mssrs.
Dixon and Mason other than the name of the line they "drew" and its
connotations (having living in MD so many years I never felt part of
the "south") etc.  Also, a waiter in Po' Folks years ago told me that the
mason jar was named for Mason.

Heh btw is there any truth to that?  Mason jars being named for THE Mason?

Anyhow, the point is that almost immedietely I learned that these two
were ASTRONOMERS.  Astonishing.  Jefferson and Washington many
of us knew were surveyors, but that Mason and Dixon were true astronomers
long before anyone considered them famous surveyors was not known
to me prior to the book.

Which brings me to the point which ties this all together.  I am quite
confident
that TRP must have known that most people know almost nothing of M&D,
and since this is a book about them, rather than the line they drew, it is
essential
to get all ladies and gentlemen on board the ship before you can sail off the
edge of the world.  

Mason's being propelled ultimately into his astronomy/surveying could easily
have been delayed, diluted, and sent astray with a firmer commitment to his
home and family.  And since the historical "fact" that he went is already
known,
the expressive motion of his mind and soul as it comes into alignment with his
star-dictated fate is the nut of this scene/event, done with superb
emotion, at
least to earn a comparison with Shakespeare, we are reminded once again why
we read Pynchon, as there are definitely more concrete and factual accounts of
the lives of Mssrs. Dixon and Mason.  

Anyhow, the scene moved me precisely because by the time Mason gets TO
America, the site of his goddamn famous "line", that but by the grace of his
line we'd never know him, we DO know him, not his stats but his Pyn-bio,
and he is a walking, talking, living cheese-chaser in our mynds.


	"This one is scrawny and looks like me
	 Because it's dirty,
	 And I'm so dirty too.."

	   --Mary Timony