M&D 317

[Brian D. McCary]

Spoiler below


















This will be about anachronisms:
	When presented with the Watch by emerson, Dixon asks "And upon the hour
it sings 'Yankee Doodle'?"  My recollection is that Yankee Doodle was a
parody song made up by the British during the Rebellion, to make fun of
the revolutionaries.  That being so, it shouldn't have been around in
1763 (no revolutionaries to make fun of) so how would Dixon have heard
about it?
	Thinking about this, I break the anachronisms into three classes:
1)  Modern allusions (not inhaling, string theory, L.E.D, ect) which are there
for fun which help underscore the contemporary relevance of the story
2)  Frame tale artifacts, ie mistakes or changes the Rev. makes for the 
same reasons (here, he is inventing the dialog he never heard, and throwing
in a smart ass comment by Dixon might make the kids laugh)
3)  Just plain goofs.
	The Yankee Doodle referance could be 2 or 3.
	Now, the interesting meta questions relates to Vineland.  I heard
speculation once that Pynchon put all the dates after all the movies in 
Vineland because some critic complained that one of the movies in 
GR came out after the war.  Suppose he has endless hours to waste, and is
reading this list  (Hi, Tom).  What would his reaction be to a bunch of 
readers pointing out oddities?  When he comes out with book number six (I
can dream) will we see dates in curly brackets after all the odd facts and
cute phrases?  Or will he give up in disgust and figure that if we're gonna
be so picky about dates, we ain't worth writing for?

Just a thought
Brian McCary