The Great Divide

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Well stated analysis and I think quite true. Here, here, Andrew. Superb stuff.


***below is a reprint in part of Andrew's post***

>This is what the Gwenhidwy passage in Gravity's Rainbow is hinting at
>and is why I linked it to the cosmological metaphor taken from Rev^d
>Wicks' Spiritual Day Book (and there's a definite irony in that
>`spiritual day', one day encompassing all 360 degrees of our cultural
>diaspora). The east-west gradient straddling that zero line in London
>reflects a deep-seated habit of cultural division and human
>divisiveness as does e.g. the north south gradient which separates
>Dixon from Mason, the gradients which separate Pennsylvania from
>Virginia or both of these from the land west of Susquehanna. All these
>gradients reveal much about our sense of self.
>
>Pynchon himself equates these north south and east west axes when he
>compares the viciousness of the South Africans to their slaves with
>slaughter of the native Americans in Lancaster County. After citing
>the various excuses claimed by the Dutch, Dixon, in one of the most
>moving passages in the whole novel, asks what excuse the Americans
>had. No surprise that the Lancaster assassins bear rifles with the
>same inverted star motif as the Dutch in South Africa. Nor, indeed,
>when Pynchon later baldly states that the purpose of carving all those
>grid lines on the land was so that it could then be divided up,
>possessed and fought over. However natural the original demarcations
>might appear to be once you look up at the stars the orientation we
>have chosen to impose on these `natural' coordinate systems says more
>about humanity (rather, inhumanity) than it says about the physical
>world.
>
>That Mason & Dixon manage to resolve the oppositions manifest as much
>in their distinct geographical origins as in their respective
>characters seems to me to be the fundamental theme of M&D. They not
>only grow to like each other but actually come to depend on each
>other. Apply their resolution of difference to the divisions implied
>in the cosmological model and you can universalize the message to a
>global cultural critique, a moral and spiritual lesson for us all.
>
>
>Andrew Dinn
>-----------
>We drank the blood of our enemies.
>The blood of our friends, we cherished.
>
>
Eric Alan Weinstein
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk