MDMD(3)--Just a thought

[Meg Larson]

OK, kids, I'm interrupting my pynchon-l reading to throw this out here,
concerning _Mason and Dixon_.  It has nothing to do with historical
fact--or fiction?  who cares?--or black and hispanic violent drug
dealers/users who speak in a *certain* NC way--or don't--and who may have
or mayn't've been a card-carrying hippie in the 60s but still
smokes/doesn't smoke dope and lead productive/non-productive lives, nor has
it anything to do with Yiddish, Jews, Librarians--small-town or other,
Hitler, Chrissie, Jules, _Lineland_, Vaska's gender and Jody's apparent
blindness to it, and whew--I think I've covered it all. 

As part of my duties for this section of Mass Discussion of Mason and Dixon
(MDMD(3)), I re-read chapters 8, 9, and 10 several times.  I now submit the
passage that resonates so roundly in my brain.

>From chapter 8, page 74:
	"He feels like a predatory Animal,--as if this Town were ancient to him,
his Hunting-Ground, his Fell so mis-remember'd in nearly all Details, save
where lie the Bound'ries he does not plan to cross.  Tho' how can there be
any room for excess in this gossip-ridden Town, crowded up against the
Mountains that wall it from the virid vast leagues of Bushmen's Land
beyond? as behind these carv'd doors and Gothickal Gates, in the far
Penumbrae of sperm tapers, in Loft and _Voorhuis_, in entryways scour'd by
Dusk and blown Sand, these Dutch carry on as if Judgment be near as the
towering Seas and nothing matter anymore, especially not good behavior,
because there's no more time--the bets are in, ev'ry individual Fate
decided, all cries taken by the great Winds, and 'tis done.  Temporally, as
geographically, the End of the World.  The unrelenting Vapor of debauchery
here would not merely tempt a Saint,--Heavens, 'twould tempt an Astronomer.
 Yet 'tis difficult, if not impossible, for these Astronomers to get down
to a Chat upon the Topick of Desire, given Dixon's inability to deny or
divert the Gusts that sweep him, and Mason's frequent failure, in his
Melancholy, even to recognize Desire, let alone to act upon it, tho' it run
up calling Ahoy Charlie.  "How could you begin to understand?" Mason sighs.
 "You've no concept ot Temptation.  You came ashore here _looking_ for
occasions to transgress.  Some of us have more Backbone, I suppose . . ."
	"A bodily Part too often undistinguish'd," Dixon replies, "from a Ram-Rod
up the Arse." 

I now return you to your regularly scheduled inanities.

"The impulse to create beauty is rather rare in literary men . . .
Far ahead of it comes the yearning to make money.  And after the yearning
to make money comes the yearning to make a noise"
                                                      ---H.L. Mencken

Meg Larson
Saginaw Valley State University
mgl at tardis.svsu.edu