The Subjunctive in M&D (a spoiler, perhaps?)

[Christopher Kelly]

Jeremy Osner wrote:
> 
> Ted Samsel wrote:
> >
> > >       Pynchon has stretched the rule quite a bit, as can be seen on page 208 of
> > > Mason&Dixon. After a passage describing the relationship between Mason and
> > > his Father, he writes:
> > >       "All subjunctive, of course, --- +had+ [itals] young Mason gone to his
> > > father, this  +might have been+ [itals] the conversation likely to result."
> > > He has, however, copied Thucydides' honesty in alerting his reader to the
> > > limits of reportorial accuracy!
> 

What of another possibility here. Mason's relationship with his father
is so profoundly suffused with miscommunication and (the reader can
easily conclude) regret. And so might we read the use of the subjunctive
here as an expression of that unrealized (on Mason's part) regret? IF
Mason had only gone and talked to his father ...  IF Mason's could have
spoken those words ...  Nothing knew there really (Mike & The Mechanics
had a hit song with similar lyrics)--except that instead of using the
"If only Mason had..." subjunctive to suggest that he SHOULD have talked
to his father (like in Mike & The Mechanics), the narrator uses the
subjunctive to show that he SHOULDN'T have talked to his father, because
his father would have just insulted and belittled him further. The
ultimate result suggesting an utterly irreperable (sp?) schism between
father and son.Aand so we get a much deeper portrait of Mason and his
father than we would if we were certain this conversation had taken
place. (I think this reading is confirmed later on, in the 500 pages,
when we read another conversation, NOT in the subjunctive, between Mason
and his father, about Rebekkah.)