MDMD(3)--Just a thought

[Byrnes Weir]

At 06:34 PM 7/7/97 -0400, Meg Larson wrote:
>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
>
>
        Three cheers for Meg, for she's a jolly good woman!
                Even when we were doing the GRGR, I felt stiffled by the BS.
           The Reason for reading thomas pynchon is that he is an eloquent
             poetic writer and he sets everyone up with a screen of nothing
             hoping they will miss his Mystikal Self.
                                               Three cheers for Meg!!!

                                 All the best,
                                      Byrnes