L.E.D. - M&D pp 1 - 60 (ish)

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Yikes, Andrew that was an amazingly persuasive riff you just blew by me.  You are
 obviously much further along the book than I, but your speculation rings truly and 
supports the feeling I've been getting since the top that the Avuncular Storyteller seems 
Quite Familiar.  And I wonder if there is any relevance here to Heikki's earlier obsrvation
 that as he sees it, Pyn is getting more *personal* as he and his works grow older.  Nice go.
john m
***********************
Andrew writes:
<snip>

>
>I have had one related and *very paranoid* thought along the same
>lines. The Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke's story is related in 1786 and
>refers back 20 years to 1766. Something about the Rev reminded me of
>Pynchon and I began to wonder if maybe the Rev is actually Tom in
>1986, recounting his own `rest-cure' in exile and subsequent
>adventures dating from 1966. The story of his disgrace (for printing
>political pamphlets against various acts of enclosure etc - could that
>be, say, Vietnam or other places where the US stuck its oar in and
>tried to rig a government/regime in the US' favour) and subsequent
>bundling abroad reminded me of the recently mentioned letter to
>Richard Farina(?) in which he mentions the move to LA diminishing his
>fear of police hassle and this is what led me to make the
>association. And his winding up on a foreign shore, telling stories
>for his supper sounds very like Pynchon's career. Two other details
>strike me as more telling.
>
>Firstly, the pamphlets having been printed anonymously, the Rev is
>astounded to learn that his name is not his own to withhold.  And yet,
>if not withheld then the pamphlets will certainly be used to define
>and consequently disgrace him. So, if the name cannot be kept out of
>the public arena the solution is to distance name and body through
>travel to the point that the two are no longer equated. Sound like
>Tom's case?
>
>Secondly, the Rev travels south to slave country (South Africa)
>observing the effect of slavery on both whites and blacks and then
>attends at the demarcation of the latitude dividing North and
>South. Tom too headed South in the 60s and his work is all about
>divisions between blacks and whites, conquerors and conquered, both
>within and outside America. In Mason & Dixon, the story (so far)
>appears to centre on North/South divides. In England Mason & Dixon are
>not just at opposite poles of the country but at opposite poles of
>English culture and 'twas ever thus with English geography and
>manners. In the US the division is not just represented by the
>subsequent war over slavery but also by the differences between the
>Virginia and Massachusetts colonies, Puritans vs Royalists,
>Protestants vs Anglo-Catholics, agriculture vs industry etc. And
>between Europe/Africa, remember the importance attached to crossing
>the Equator, in particular Wicks' aside concerning that moment when
>one is over the dividing line between North and South, when one does
>not cast a shadow - either in support or opposition - when one is free
>of any association. Perhaps, like the associations made between the
>anonymous author of a juvenile pamphlet and his exiled senior self?).
>
>Pynchon reports the contrasts, tensions and opportunities presented by
>the opposition (apparent or actual) of those who seem representative
>of these divided territories and the way in which such opposition is
>eroded and corroded by the action of time, place and culture (e.g. the
>plague of ghosts and suicides in Cape Town). Exact as these
>observations appear in their historical setting, do they not also seem
>equally applicable to their 60s-80s inheritors?  So, perhaps the whole
>book is a parable pointing to modern racism and cultural mixing. And
>perhaps Pynchon himself is in the book as our tour guide and
>commentator, disguised as the Rev Wicks Cherrycoke. Which would make
>this as much a modern history and autobiography as a novel.
>
>
>Andrew Dinn
>-----------
>And though Earthliness forget you,
>To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
>To the rushing water speak:  I am.
>