MDMD2 Chap 6---Pollywogs Live Yet!

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

 the "Polliwogs"
>> have apparently not been subject to any humiliating rituals at all.
>
>I think the rituals definitely *were* carried out--as the Rev'd says "our
>Attentions to the Royal Baby, and the rest of it, [Note "the rest of it"
>left to our imagination] were Tolls exacted for Passage thro' the Gate of
>the single shadowless Moment. . . ."
>
     As about 800 former Hong Kong Civil Service aboard HMS Primrose
and the P&O liner Orianna can now firmly attest, the Pollywog rites at
the crossing of the equator are still firmly a part of British sea-board life. 
However, now they are merely another watered-down entertainment among 
a thousand other absurd ship-board entertainments (overeating, 
shuttleboard, table-tennis, overeating, line-dancing, massage, overeating),
where once they were a way of keeping sane in the enourmous number
of days abord ship. (Hence also the enourmous attention sailors were happy
to pay to details of shipboard neatness.)
 

>> In a
>> lesser author we would call it careless.  In Shakespeare we would say
>> there must be something missing or lost

>I imagine he thought it would be repetitive to describe the actual Ritual
>since he had already described the preparations for it.

Pynchon tells us:

Its a Village, after all, 's a Frigate---and what's a Village, without Village
Idiots?" 

Chapter 6 offers us half a dozen or so amusing charecter sketches
of a vairety of happy Idiots, and they are mostly well done. Indeed, part 
of me wishes that Pynchon (who must have enjoyed Master and Commander
& The Far Side Of The World) just let go and wrote a little mini-sea novel
within his larger whole, allowing these figures to develop and interact. 
However, Mason & Dixonis, as anyone who has read it at night in bed 
with the book resting against one's semi-upright frame, a very big book 
already. There are, lets face it, many interesting sketches that readers may
wish had been turned into ongoing figures. Surely we can imagine the fun
of having the L.E.D. around for most of the books pages? Or perhaps a
certain French chefis another reader's favourite? How about Amy, milkmaid
of Brooklyn? 

   Alas, all great books must make great choices, and, as the R.S. letter to 
Mason and Dixon describe, it can only be "a choice among many possible 
ones, their number steadily diminishing each time a choice be made,
till at last 'reduc'd,' to the events that do happen to us..." or the novels we 
read or write. Mason & Dixon is such a grand enterprise that there are at
least a dozen other novels waiting to happen within it. We have the pleasure
of imagining these in our minds. Perhaps future writers, or even living
ones such as Kathy Acker, may someday give us a taste of what these 
might be like.
 


  

Eric Alan Weinstein
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk