MDMD(7) Opening comments

[Andrew Dinn]

Foax,

Sorry for the delay in posting. Enclosed is some opening comments for
the current session.


Andrew Dinn
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How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of pleasure clos'd by your senses five
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MDMD(7) Opening Comments

This chapter begins a sequence up to the end of part 1 which follow
a Shandy-like cycloidal trajectory. The main storyline progresses through
a tangleof forward and backward digressions, now ahead of itself, now behind
itself and one has to attend hard to the relevant clues to identify the
space and time frame of each scene.

The reason for all this time travel is to locate the main action by
filling in pertinent history, in particular family history. This continues
the work of chapter 18 which introduced Charles and Rebekah during their
married days in Greenwich and related Charles' first meeting with his boys
on return from America. The main time frame of chapters 20 and 21 starts
with another such visit, sometime in late summer 1763, shortly after Bradley's
death and leads up to Charles' return to London ready to set off for America.
Chapter 22 starts a similar sequence for Dixon, relating concurrent events
in Hurworth and filling in some of Dixon's past. The subsequent chapters
of part 1 will see Dixon off to London and the pair ready to sail to America.

Little or no explicit acknowledgement is made in the text of most of
these shifts of time and place. For example, in Chapter 22, having met
Maire in Emerson's front room in Hurworth we break the story for a discussion
between DePugh, Brae et al, and return to events years earlier when Dixon
was Emerson's student on a field trip, moving on to relate their last meeting,
only for both of them suddenly to arrive neatly back in the parlour with
Maire. Only a few small snippets of linking text are used to connect this
sequence. Furthermore, several other scenes are hypothetical, what might
have happened if only Charles' father had been able to speak to his son
etc. How these are supposed to fit into a narative is never explained.
Are these meant to be the Rev^d Wick's speculations? or Charles fantasies?
or Charles Snr's? Who knows? and who cares, since these hypothetical scenes
serve just as well as any narration of `real' events to tell the story
and explain the web of events, real or imaginary, it relates. Note also
the irony of Pynchon explicitly designating passages as hypothetical `what-ifs'
in a piece of historical *fiction*.

The main events in these chapters serve to relate Charles and Jere to
various of their relatives. Chapter 20 opens with Charles in relation to
his sons and moves via an interlude with sisters Hester and Anne to Charles
relation with his father, both present and past. Chapter 21 deals with
Charles and Rebekah, detailing their courtship and reprising their stay
in Greenwich then ends with Charles relation to Maskelyne in London. In
all four scenes Charles cuts a sorry figure. He is unable to communicate
with these people through a mix of history, personal instability and misunderstanding.
He clearly feels unable to explain his own predicament as he sees it -
`yet I will not whine' (200.32) - yet this does not stop others, from Delicia
to his sisters, his father, his astronomical colleagues and the Maskelynes,
making up their minds as to what he is and what he should do, pushing him
in their preferred direction. Charles also seems to be slightly behind
the game with these movers and shakers. His father already knows his still
vague plans re America and the comments re Sam Peach and Bradley (hypothetical
comments but there nevertheless, so far as the character in the novel is
concerned) suggest he knows of some plotting connected with Charles and
his marrriage to Rebekah. Maskelyne has clearly angled ahead of Charles
and is rapidly reducing Charles' future to a conveniently out-of-the-way
certainty in America. Even Rebekah seems to have some inside information
when she begins `to suspect that she is there to guarantee her husbands
behaviour' (211.19). Not that we are told what any of this inside information
is, we just get these hints of plots associated with Sam Peach and the
EIC.

Chapter 22 presents us with Dixon past and presents and another mover
and shaker, Christopher Maire, albeit not of the stiletto-wielding variety.
First Maire and Emerson are introduced, then we see Dixon as Emerson's
student, disappointing his teacher by electing for a life of ditches and
lucre. Finally we see all three in conference, with the tables turned and
Dixon being wooed for his achievement in South Africa. Dixon remains in
statu pupillarii, contributing little to the ensuing argument. He starts
off by having his presumptions re Jesuits knocked down then listens while
Emerson and Maire discuss politics and Maire makes a pitch for Dixon to
join the Jesuits. His next contribution is to initiate but not add to a
debate on Sir Henry Vane. Like Charles, much appears to have gone on and
still be going on above his head.

One of the most interesting motifs employed in these chapters is that
of Ley Lines, lines of force. The same theme is amplified on later with
discussion of Captain Zhang and the evil Sha he associates with the line
in America. The connection with astronomers laying a grid of latitude and
longitude is clear. Whereas the Ley Lines are supposed to represent lines
along which natural forces flow, the mathematically derived lines of the
astronomers pay no such respect to harmony with the terrain they cross.
Now there's a message. But there are more subtle links. Charles recalls
a Ley Line going from Cheltenham to Badminton which passes over Bisley
Church. He neglects to identify the route he and Rebekah take to Stonehenge
as a Ley Line but it certainly looks like one on the map (making Bisley
Church an intersection point of two such lines - big kaka!). That such
a line should be connected with the the Druid astronomers who built Stonehenge
suggests maybe there is some purpose behind these old lines. Ditto for
the old Roman Road in County Durham which as Emerson notes was used for
`conveying Force' in this case military rather than hydraulic or architectural
(219.17). Emerson continues `Right Lines beyond a certain Magnitude become
of less use or instruction to those who dwell among them, than intelligible,
by their immense regularity, to more distant Onlookers, as giving a clear
sign of Human Presence upon the Planet. Are we back to UFO's again? Or
is it perhaps the Gods in the firmament who are supposed to be impressed?

Another significan motif is that of father and son, or is that Father
and Son? This manifests not just in the account of Charles relation to
his sons and to Charkes Snr but also in the flashback to Charles youth,
making bread. The young Charles, having been told that the dough is alive,
makes a horrified association between bread and flesh fuelled by the doctrine
that the bread of the sacrament is Christ's flesh. Dough, risen and then
sacrificed in the oven so that man may eat ersatz rather than real flesh.
Charles Snr, by contrast, sees the process in a very different light `The
Grinding, the Rising, the Baking, at each stage it grows lighter, it rises
not only in the Pans but from the Earth itself, being ground to Flour,
as Stones are ground to Dust, from that condition taking in water, then
being fill'd with Air by Yeasts, finding its way at last to Heat, rising
each time, d'ye see, until it be a perfect thing.' Earth, Water, Air and
Fire combined and blended. Also, perhaps, a growth process from solid massy
and cold to spiritual, airy and hot. In both views there is a hint that
bread is symbolic of life. But Charles sees the bread as no more than the
vehicle for the ghostly spirits which enter it whereas his father sees
it as entire unto itself, spirit organically developing out of matter through
the refining actions of the oven's fire. Charles is left with the ghost
in the machine of rationalism while his father sees mind and body as intimately
connected. `What is it you think I do, then, when I'm up staring at the
Sky in the middle of the night?' asks Charles of his father (205.20), but
Charles Snr has no need to look up at the sky when there is work to do
here on the ground. Then follows the most poignant comment on their relationship.
Fear, fear of not being able to contain or control their love, leads them
to distance themselves from their children, push them against their will
for their own good, unable to take the time to wait and watch, understand
and explain instead they dominate and manipulate and fail to connect. And
when they try to communicate they don't know enough about their sons to
be able to explain in their terms and fail miserably. As when Charles Snr
holds up that perfect thing, the loaf, to be admired and `Young Mason thinks
he is about to eat it' (206.17).

There are so many examples of brilliant writing in this section it would
take far too long to discuss all of them in this one note. I will mention
a few favourite scenes and phrases, though.

- The whole dialogue with Delicia is a superb piece of farce but I particularly
like her `There-you-see Smirk' (200.23) and the judgement implied by the
word excus'd in `The time you took for your long Sea-Journey might be excus'd,
as a remedy for excessive Grief' (200.23).

- `What happens to men sometimes is that one day they'll understand
how much they love their children, as absolutely as a child gives away
its own love, and the terrible terms which come with that' (205.34)

- The introduction to chapter 21 compacts the social, economic and spiritual
changes occuring in the valley into 1 short paragraph. The final image
of nature, the flow of water, metamorphosed into `strictest right-angularity,--
as far from Earthly forms as possible' (207.14) is absolutely exact, capped
only by the observation that `every stage of the 'Morphosis, would have
its equivalent in Pounds Shillings, and Pence.' (207.16). It's not just
the product that has acquired a price, so has the environment and the people
who inhabit it (and to paraphrase Isaiah 2-4, it was way too cheap even
in 1760 dollars).

- `He must often remind himself not to search the Boy's Faces too intently
for Rebekah's [. . .] Withal their Faces are their own, unsortably,-- and
claim the Moment.' Love the rhythm introduced by that `unsortably,--'.
(211.28)

- `London is chang'd. [. . .] Everywhere he looks are Squalid ementoes
of his History in the Town,-- one Station after another upon a Progress
Melancholick.' (212.15)

- `nor ever achiveing that opaque effect of a Sitletto-Waver stuff'd
into a Churchly Frock, which distinguishes el Aute'ntico.' (215.8)