MDMD(3)--Just a thought

[Phillip P. Muth]

> >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." 
> 
Ms. Larson:
Thanks for trying to introduce some discussion of MD.  Your
choice of passages seems perfect for a broader view of images,
themes, lietmotifs in the book.  Before I try a bit of specific
analysis, however, I'd like to try to talk a bit about
something you brought up in your previous post.

Food for thought.  The mouth-watering menu of chapter 8
connects with the passage you quote, if only in the way that
the Man  (Dixon and Mason to a lesser degree)in eating these 
foods does not spend time analysing the taste.  There is a debt
to pleasure here (see book on food with this title), a kind of
mindless pleasure as it were, which brings not so much the
animal out in us/him/me as to bring the realm of the senses
within reach, within our grasp.(Or what's a heaven for).
Food in this chapter is put into a binary Native/Dutch, and
there bar between them is a boundary, one of the many
Boundaries that is among other things a biblical prohibition, a
threshold and an ontological limit.  Hmmm, sounds pretty damn
highfallutin, which isn't where I wanted to go. Sorry

How about the reversal of biblical time in the passage.  We
begin with the apocalyse, the boundary of being, the end of it
all at the end of the world, but when good old Wicks shows up
we are, with fruit all around, in Eden and with Eve, yet also
performing a cannabalistic rite and a eucharist. Agnes Dei,
comes next, Wick's interpretation of Mason's haters for the
Lamb, and before you know it there we are, hell bound and out
of the chapter.

And what of metamorphsis.  Dixon becomes a predatory animal, an
image I wouldn't attribute to him in any other part of the
book.  Mason will (jokingly) make death threats.  Here at the
end of the world, boundaries are imposed by a corrupt
system,and they turn us into dangerous animals.  And yet, the
passage you quote also mirrors the Boundary that M&D will come
up against in America.  It is no accident that the
Hunting-Ground is evoked here, and the underlying image of the
brute savage is inescapable--brute yet noble? No, for noble is
what is tied around a race like a placard. Savage as in La
Pensee Sauvage (sp?)whose system of kinship is structural but
not sick.
For what surrounds the animal that Dixon becomes but an Empire
of Signs (Barthes book on Japan) a strange play of signs and
glances, each of which has a meaning a significance and most of
which are determined by the sounds of gold exchanging places.
The play in which the audience knows the ritual and watches for
the pleasure of order, repetition, "In our theatrical art, the
actor pretends to act, but his actions are never anything but
gestures:  on stage, nothing but theatre, yet a theatre
ashamed of itself.  Whereas Bunraku separates action from
gesture: it shows the gesture, lets the action be seen,
exhibits simultaneously the art and the labor, reserving for
each its own writing" (Barthes p.54).

The end of the world here is theatre, the people are all in a
theatre, awaiting apocalyse, transgressing boundaries, but never
too far, nver enough, never the right way...awaiting Venus and
her transit instead of  V or V-2?
No, for them, the They there, it is the waiting for the end that
will never come, the waiting for Godot, which permits them
not everything, except the lost world of infinitely complex
sign systems, a secret series of messages that will continue
until entropy comes not across the sky, like the Love above,
but from below, a mechantile deal brokered by Mammon.

In my desire to be grand I've said almost nothing about the
specific passage.  Perhaps another time.  Thanks again for
bringing up the book.

Parke Muth