MDMD(3)---Our Lurkers, Wicks & Pynchon

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Q: Chapter 8 begins and ends with a reference/image of "lurking"; 
aside from any references to this list, is there any significance to
this notion?   *****

     It has been said that our man Pynchon was/still is a great actor, 
that he could imitate anyone, and that, like any really good novelist,
he would watch people very closely. In Lineland,  Jules has Chrisse
describe/transcribe this as Pynchon  "spying on people a lot 
of the time."

     Of course I do not know TRP personally. 
Yet I suspect there is more than a speck of truth in 
this recollection. (Perhaps considerably more than in some 
others in the difficult, bitter, charged--and even moving--
exchanges with Jules ex-wife which are found in Lineland.)  



     On Page 86 of chapter 8, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke tells us
"Of course, 'twas none of my affair--yet...I sought distraction
in the study of other Lives,--usually without their Principals
 knowing of it."

   I would like to offer two variations on a theme here. 
First.  We may be looking at a Rev. Wicks who behaves
a bit like our author has always generally done, doing 
his Obs. of Human Nature, so as to render the truth of 
that Strangeness back at us in his fictional 
characterisations and situations. 

     Secondly, this secret lurking may also give us a 
specific image of what it feels like to be Thomas 
Pynchon researching Mason & Dixon. More 
precisely, to spend a fair swath of years investigating and 
researching, imagining and reconstructing  the lives---
public, private, and inward---of two dead strangers,
C. Mason and J. Dixon.  

For Mr Pynchon has been a lurker into these lives over
a long, sometimes interrupted period. Imagine him silently
pouring over the records,  the scraps, the journals, the maps, 
the fingerprints and residues of lives long gone. Thusly he
works his word-by-word Lasarus-trick, resurrecting these
 Englishmen-of-the-world  as major characters of and in 
the American literary tradition. 

   On an unrelated point, I love the wonderful conceit that 
there had never been any gastronomic perversion 
in the "Cherrycoke" family line.

PS--
  Is there a character in modern fiction named 
Dr. Vallentinus Fatfree?  Should there be?


Eric

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