Slavery/Rosencrantz & Guildenstern (Re: M&D Review in Sunday Times)

[still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made]

On Wed, 7 May 1997 andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:

> Well, while we are on the subject [slavery] maybe I should mention one of
> the most striking such passages encountered in my reading so far. And in
> case anyone does not want to hear what happens in the first 60 pages I
> hereby give notice . . .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, still here? It's the scene shortly after M & D arrive in Cape Town
> where Pynchon reports on the prevalence of ghosts, whose putative(?)
> presence he contends any good rationalist would explain as indicating
> nothing more than the presence of an unresolved grudge. 
[...]
> with the force of division between black and white it seems that the
> attendant spirits (real or imagined, they attend - boy do they attend)
> said spirits have the Dutch dancing at the end of their tether, as
> `twere. In just one or two paragraphs Pynchon presents precise and
> subtle insights into the corrupt and corrosive nature of slavery. 

Indeed!  How wonderful that M&D actually visited South Africa, allowing
Pynchon to draw an explicit link b/t that place (still today a symbol of
historical racist oppression) and America.  But this is hardly the last
time that TRP deals with slavery in the book.

(Spoilers ahead for material up to p. 545)

Incidentally, he also makes a more or less explicit allusion to Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern on p. 545.  The reviewer we are discussing seemed proud to
draw that comparison, then took Pynchon to task b/c the book didn't more
resemble the story of R & G ("There's no Hamlet!").  It seems unnecessary to
point out that TRP need not conform his entire story to the narrative(s) of
Shakespeare and Stoppard, about two characters wandering through a
mysterious larger drama.  Anyway, in the passage on p. 545, Captain Zhang
seems to position himself as Hamlet to M & D's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
(not that this identification is somehow authoritative or representative of
TRP's absolutely "correct" view): 

  "Fret not,-- my business is with the Jesuit..  _We_ happen to be the
principal Personae here, not you two!  Nor has your Line any primacy in
this, being rather a Stage-Setting, dark and fearful as the Battlements of
Elsinore, for the struggle Zarpazo and I must enact upon the very mortal
Edge of this great Torrent of _Sha_,-- which at any moment either of us
might slip, fall into, and be borne away by, Westward, into the
Vanishing-Point and gone."
  "And Mason and I,-- "
  "Bystanders.  Background.  Stage-Managers of that perilous FLux,-- little
more."
  "Eeh."  Dixon thinks about it.  "Well it's no worse than Copernicus, is
it...?  The Center of it all, moving someplace else like thath'...?  Better
not mention this to Mason."

TRP has invoked Shakespeare and Stoppard, as well as the Copernican
astronomical revolution which "decentered" humanity in relation
to the cosmos--brilliant connection! And actually, the story of
Zhang vs. Zarpazo relates to the story of Mason & Dixon in a way precisely
converse to the relation b/t _Hamlet_ and _R&GAD_.  That is, the story of
the Chinaman and the Jesuit is a sub-narrative of _M&D_, in fact is
introduced as a story-within-the-story (part of the serial adventures of
_The Ghastly Fop_) which then miraculously intersects with the larger
narrative, as Zhang and Eliza Fields intersect the Line.

Far too ingenious, apparently, for the reviewer (whose name, and paper, I
have long forgotten) to grasp.

Max

M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | If the archangel, the dangerous one
         http://www.afn.org/~traveler | behind the stars, were to take one
                "Surrealist-At-Large" | step closer...the faster pounding of
                     traveler at afn.org | our hearts would kill us. --Rilke