mdmd(4) - Commentary

[Brian D. McCary]

mdmd(4) - Commentary

Chapter 11:
     St. Helena provides a decompression point between the South Africa
episodes (which are clearly the climax point for the first Transit
Section) and the return to England, and Chapter 11 serves as our
introduction to it.  (I find it interesting that Pynchon's structures
are more Shakespearean than modern:  the climax comes in the middle,
and there is *lots* of later development.)  Death hangs heavy in the
atmosphere, and we are repeatedly buffeted by references to paradise,
passing on, crucifixion and the gallows.  Throughout M&D, the number 11
recurs as a mystical number: the loss of the eleven days when the
calendar was updated is one example, and later, Mason tells Dixon of
living through the eleven non-existent days as a nightmarish
experience.  Not only is this chapter eleven, but "a pair of Gallows,
simplified to Penstokes in the glare of this Ocean sky" (108-21) is an
example of an eleven drawn on the landscape. This helps establish the
connection between the number and death, or at least transition.
Later, in chapter 56, Mason tells of living through the eleven missing
days, as a sort of ghastly underworld.

     Numerology:  There are numerous references back to chapter 3:
Mason going to the hangings, Dixon's Joke, Portsmouth Polls (who
wear no yellow in chapter 3) dogs galore, a second discussion of
Mason's drab clothing.  In chapter 12, Maskelyne mentions that 29 is a
prime which comes just before a number divisible by a large number of
different factors:  note that 3 is prime, just before 4, which is
divisible by half the numbers greater than 1 and less than it.  (Note
also that eleven is a similar type of prime: compare it to 13, where 14
has only two factors) Take 3 from 11, and you have 8: add 8 to 11, and
you get 19, which is the chapter in which the loss of the 11 days
emerges as a major topic of pub conversation.  Eight, of course, is
the period of years between the transits of Venus.  No, I don't think
this means anything, I'm just doing this for fun.  Other numbers:
There are 21 prime numbers less than 78, which might be a good starting
place for picking out Tarot card correspondences, if you wish.  Using
number patterns like this might be a convenient compositional pacing
technique, but unless Pynchon confesses to it, I'll be hard pressed to
prove he actually uses it.

     Pynchon's fascination with islands dates back to his descriptions
of Malta in V.  Yet the Malta of V.  is primarily Earth:  rocky, solid,
and subterranean.  St. Helena is mostly air, with the wind later
driving both Maskelyne and Mason near to insanity.  In both cases, the
referenced elements are connected with death:  Malta is Tomb-like,
while the winds of St. Helena bring with them the spirit and voice of
Rebecca in later chapters.  Islands, like boats, physically bound the
society on them, which prevents the illusion of possible escape.  The
wind of St. Helena, which carries messages from the other side, deeply
disturbing, much like the wind in Siberia during Titcherine's exile.

     My favorite passage in this whole chapter is "A Visitor may lounge
in the Evening upon the Platform behind the Lines, and, as a Visitor to
London might gaze at St. Paul's, regard these more sinister forms in
the failing North Light,- perhaps being led to meditate upon
Punishment,- or upon Commerce...for Commerce without Slavery is
unthinkable, whilst Slavery must ever include, as an essential Term,
the Gallows,- Slavery without the Gallows being as hollow and a Waste a
Proceeding, as a Crusade without the Cross." (108-22..29)  In this
Veritable Broadside shot at western civ, he manages to liken St. Paul's
to a place of execution, and at the same time, suggest all commercial
enterprises, including modern ones, involve slavery.

     Abandoning the point about Slavery and Commerce as being typically
Pynchonian (exaggerated, but with a vital kernel of truth) we turn
to the provocative statement about Slavery requiring a Gallows.  To
what end?- I'm assuming as a stick with which to threaten the slaves,
to keep order, to draw the distinction between the master and the
servant.  However, there is the further element of pleasure for the
enslaver.  As a crusader without a cross has nothing to rally around,
so must the enslaver have the gallows to rally around, but this
suggests that the enslaver enjoys the killing.  Perhaps even the
enslaved does, a theme in both GR (Hansel/Grettel, Wiesman, ect) and V
(Fopple's siege party).
 
    In any case, since I have to believe that P agrees with this
statement, I am left wondering what he sees as the central gallows
figure today.  I do not think it can be a literal object, although the
death-penalty exists:  It must be a pervasive threat, and an
opportunity for regular ritual slaughter, perhaps in a metaphorical
sense, in which both parties participate semi-willingly.  (Remember
that Lord Ferrers dressed up to go to the gallows, insisted on silk
rope, ect).  I don't have a clearer answer at this point, and I hope
that this becomes a topic for discussion by the list.

     This passage also strikes me, stylistically, as very old
fashioned: an absolute aphorism, a plain philosophical statement
made by the author ripe to be picked out for a speech.

     I loved this whole chapter, and kept re-reading it, getting
weirder stuff out of it each time.  You will all be grateful to
hear that I didn't get as stupid in the next two chapters.

Chapter 12
     The madness chapter.  Christopher Smart goes mad, Maskelyne fears
it, Mason is going mad from Dixon's teasing, even the Dutch Clocks
drive Dixon crazy, while late curfews drive the clocks to distraction.
Although insanity floats around GR (for instance, in the regular wing
of the White Visitation) it seems to have emerged in M&D as a
full-blown alternative to death as a form of leaving the living.  More
than any other place in the novel, St. Helena is the local of the
insane, with it's unceasing winds and inescapable ocean.  Dixon's last
word, however, is "Yet, think of these episodes as regular Tonicks,
without which tha might succumb to the weather, which can get unusual,
or the ways of the dutch....?" - temporary sanity as a vaccine against
the permanent version.
 
    Maskelyne advances to the center stage at last, and soliloquizes:
"Twenty-nine's Fell Shadow!  O, inhospitably final year of any
Pretense to Youth, its dreams now, how wither'd away....tho' styl'd a
Prime, yet bid'st Adieu to the Prime of Life!...There,- there, in the
Stygian Mists of Futurity, loometh the dread Thirty,- Transition
unspeakable!  Prime so soon fallen, thy Virtue so easily broken, into a
Number divisible,- penetrable!- by six others!"  An interesting
sentiment penned by an Author recently turned sixty.  Pynchon would
have turned 29 in 1966, after V. was published and he was already being
heralded.  Seems like Richard Farina might have died about that time,
perhaps around that age, but I don't have the dates or details on me.

     As chapter 11 was an echo of chapter 3, Chapter 12 echo's chapter
4:  We learn that Dixon is to turn around to go back to Cape Town,
as M&D turned around from Bencoolean after the ship's battle.  The
Ellicot Clock recalls the battle, M&D&M all sit around, slaves to the
RS, awaiting their arbitrary and occasionally stupid (in the case of
Maskelyne, with the faulty sector) demands.  Dixon waxes philosophical
about English methods being superior to those of the French, in the
long haul.  Overall, I find the chapter 4 echoes weak but existent.

     Finally, the idea of reversing an instrument in order to remove
bias error is developed at length here, both in the discussion of
the faulty sector and in Dixon returning to the Cape with the Shelton
Clock.  Although I haven't put much energy into it yet, it may well be
worth comparing the next Cape session (with Dixon alone) to the
previous one, and trying to determine a version of the cape which lies
between the two.  I'm not sure how one can reverse one's reading of a
book, in order to reveal and eliminate some reader's, author's, or
book's bias, but I have a strong feeling that Pynchon is hinting at
this idea, somehow.  He may be suggesting here that we be cautious
about taking individual statements on their own: we must balance and
compare each sentence to each other, and find the sentiment which rides
between them.  Which is, I suppose, much of what this list argues
about.

Chapter 13:
     This chapter didn't make tons of sense to me, but we do find a
preponderance of moons in it:  Waddington's Lunars, Maskelyne's
Local, part of a trine in Maskelyne's Horoscope, Brother Edmund
(Mun/Moon), ect.  Thus, it's time to take up Stoppard and the Moon
theme:  Moon, a reoccurring name in the works of Tom Stoppard, is
usually an indecisive, somewhat tentative character: "passive moon is
agonized by inner conflicts" (Susan Rusinko, "Tom Stoppard") as,
indeed, is Mason.  Another similarity to Stoppard is the reference to
St. Helena as a little traveling Stage-Troupe, on p 133, as in
Rosencrantz and Guildernstern.

     Outside of that, this chapter seemed (to me) to be mostly a
gathering of threads in preparation for later in the story:  A
little of Maskelyne's history, a little more of Mason's, some odd bits
thrown in about the island.  In addition, Pynchon may be setting the
stage for later events.  The predictive value of the horoscopes is
slight.  I tried real hard, still didn't get much out of it.  Perhaps
someone else did.