Maskelyne, Aliens, Myth, Madness and Ecology; MD 134-5

[dennis grace]

Douglas Kellner considers Maskelyne's many voices:

>    Pretty strong stuff, but why make Maskelyne --repeatedly portrayed as
>"mad" by the narrator, dixon, mason and even the talking clocks--mix within
> four pages so many discourses -- alien speculations, scientific
>rationality, mythic lore, ecological, "madness"? Is this another case of
>neither/nor logic-discourse but both/and? Or is Maskelyne just mad? In
>fact, as we shall see he is a great survivor, does not succumb to madness,
>or least functions successfully upon his return, but is always a highly
>ambiguous and hard to read character-- as perhaps he was. 

The question "Is Maskelyne just mad?" seems to me to be succumbing to the
very sort of either/or logic that TRP's work generally obliterates.  I have
a schizophrenic in-law, thoroughly delusional, who fools quite a few social
workers and whatnot because she's also intelligent and articulate.  Of
course, once she gets around to telling them how she discovered the cure for
AIDS while watching birds fly in the window of a hospital building, they
generally catch on.  Madness, as we all know, not only does not preclude
genius but sometimes follows it.  So Maskelyne survives and functions--so
what?  Do survival and functioning demonstrate sanity?  I would submit that
Maskelyne's predictions of ecological destruction are--if anything--a
confirmation of his madness.  A few folk have commented on the moon imagery
in chapter 13:  moon, lunar, lunacy.  Pretty ancient idea, the link between
the moon and madness.  Likewise the link between madness and prophecy;
consider Hector's little sister or Plato's discourse on madness in the
_Phaedrus_.

dgg
_____________________________
Dennis Grace
University of Texas at Austin
English Department
Recovering Medievalist
amazing at mail.utexas.edu

Micel yfel deth se unwritere.
                           Ælfric of York