MDMD(8) Opening Comments

[Christine Karatnytsky]

MDMD(8) Opening Comments

Congratulations!
     
If you have been following along, you will know that we have successfully
completed the first section of the group reading of Mason & Dixon.  The
Mass Discussion(8), which covers Chapters 23-25, has begun.  Notes,
queries and the plot summary were posted Friday.  (Please excuse the poor
editing job on the part of yours truly, who left one of the notes
mistakenly attached to the end of the queries.)  In two weeks time,
Andrew Dinn will host a wrap-up, to reflect Part One of the novel as a
whole.  


It is with a great sense of wonder that I have re-read these closing
chapters.  Like the Spheroid Earth, they revisit full circle themes,
characters, and incidents which opened the book.  Like the Telluric
Earth, these revisited elements hint at deeper mysteries, more
subterranean activities, than may have been indicated previously.  Like
the Tectonic Earth, constant, gradual, and unnoticed shifts in
perceptions and relationships impinge on the knowledge and understanding
not only of the characters, but of the reader.  Like the Celestial Earth,
this knowledge and understanding is made in the context of the mysteries
of the larger universe.

The stars and planets--the wonders of the natural world--provide the
means to survey, to map, to bring order to the undiscovered country of
the Earth, the terrestrial wilderness.  Mason and Dixon's first
assignment, the observation of the Transit of Venus, was undertaken in
order to provide figures to help calculate more accurately the distance
between the earth and the sun.  (If I've understood this correctly.)  At
the end of the first section, we find the pair on the brink of their trip
to America, where they will plot the course of a boundary line to settle
a long-standing land dispute between the Penns and the Baltimores.  The
unanticipated repercussions of this territorial conflict and subsequent
demarcation "go aching on" to the modern day.

The enchanted creatures--the ghosts, sprites, changelings and other
preternaturals of the magical world provide the signs with which to
survey the undiscovered country of the Other-Earth, the metaphysical
wilderness of the Soul.  Unlike Mason and Dixon's observations of the
natural world, their observations of the magical world are neither
consistent nor reliable.  False diviners, like Lud Oafery in this
section, abound.  (As his name implies, Oafery is a dullard changeling. 
He believes that Dixon is journeying to America in exile, as an
alternative to being hanged for theft.  Remembering our Sphere, the image
of hanging used by Lud recalls Mason's introductory invitation that Dixon
attend the Friday Hangings as his guest.)  Other times, the signs are
real, the prophet reliable.  The urgent exhortation given by Rebekah
Mason in Chapter 16 that Charles "look to the Earth" is deceptively
simple and quickly shared, belying the value of its deeper significance. 
The message's great poignancy, naturally, lies in its easy dismissal by
the bereft Charles, who is both fascinated and frightened by Rebekah's
ghostly and strange visitations.  In his often desperate attempts to make
sense of the "mysterious Power in this World"  and to understand its
"purposes unknown," quester Charles desperately and repeatedly tries to
make contact with Rebekah.  The only reliable and true diviner we have
seen thus far (with the exception of the Learned English Dog), she gives
readily what he thinks she has withheld.

The sense of wonder I feel, perhaps what all of you feel, too, has
something to do with the coexistence of these natural and magical
elements.  They are, as Learned says, "Provisions for Survival in a World
less fantastick."

Ah, Learned:  Regarding Fr. Maire's obtuse remark about the Christian
crucifixion--that "Christ's true pity lies so beyond us, that we may best
jump and whimper like Dogs who cannot quite catch the trick of
it"--Pynchon's reference here, though ironic given Maire's tone, is made
clearly to our merciful friend.  Though a moment of Transcendence *would*
be missed by Maire "did it walk up and bit[e him] in the Arse," well,
yours truly woke up when she got that bit of a nibble.  An even more
direct reference, made unwittingly by Dixon moments earlier, is the real
point.  You will recall this, which follows a query cited by Andrew:

"Surely God, being Omniscient has little trouble with either [360 degrees
or 365 1/4 degrees as a figure with which to calculate a survey in
China]...?  all the log tables right there in his Nob, doesn't he,--?"

Remember, now, page 19 and the last verse of Learned's introductory song
and you will see with whom Pynchon's sympathies firmly rest regarding
beings omniscient:

		I quote enough of the Classical Stuff
		To set your Ears a-throb,
		Work logarith-mick Vers`ed Sines
		Withal, within me Nob,
		--Only nothing *Ministerial*, please
		Or I'm apt to lose m'Job,
		As the Learn`ed English Dog, to-ni-ight!

The circle continues:  The revelation by Maskelyne that the Royal
Society's relocation of the observation site of the Transit because they
declined to do business with Jews (recalled in flashback by Mason),
settles the issue regarding Mason and Dixon's various paranoid
speculations about the attack of the l'Grand.  The reasons for the
l'Grand's attack are a red herring, a distractive tool used by Pynchon to
create a mood of uncertainty and to highlight, by way of subtle contrast,
the genuine point.  As Jody Porter said some time ago, "there is
something more frightening behind this paranoia than that which the duo
can project sanely onto the RS."  This is quite true, but it is with a
slight shift of perception that the finger can be pointed once again. 
Maskelyne and Mason on page 251:

"I don't suppose Mr. Peach has ever spoken to you of the Levant
Company...of that lively traffick in Muslims and Bombazines, passing tho'
Aleppo, to the Sea, and the Warehouses of the Factors, at Scanderoon?"

"Mr. Peach does business with Aleppo,--no one who has learn'd Silk, can
afford not to," Mason replied.  "Yet, alas, unaccountably, it has
remain'd absent from our Discourse."

"Jews," declar'd Maskelyne, regretting it in the Instant.

"Ah.  Let me see if I'm following this.  The Royal Society send Dixon and
me to the Cape, thus incurring a Debt ow'd to Dutchmen, rather than to
Jews, which any Stationing of Astronomers at Scanderoon would imply."

Naturally, there are many more elements in these chapters than is
possible to go into here, and this has taken so long, anyway.  Among
them, I mention briefly Dixon's Thanatoid-like encounter as a presage of
America, the further evidence of Rebekah's hidden past, the images of
tunneling and of worms, snails and other subterranean creatures, and,
above all, the deepening bond of Mason and Dixon themselves.  Though I
begin to read the title as "Mason.  And Dixon," I believe that Pynchon is
on the road to creating for them an almost Lawrentian blood-brotherhood.

Special thanks to davemarc who, for the price of a Snapple, helped me to
make sense of this.  My apologies for being late again.  Hope it was
worth the wait.

Chris