MDMD(8) Opening Comments - Lud
David Casseres
casseres at apple.com
Thu Sep 18 12:03:06 CDT 1997
Steve Maas sez
>While Lud does make mistaken assumptions about Dixon's trip to America,
>and thinks the earth is as flat as a ketjap, anchovy, and Stilton pizza,
>I'm not so sure he's a dullard or a false diviner. He seems to have had
>some interesting insights; e.g., Dixon remembers that Lud predicted that
>Dixon would find his Destiny upon the Surface while Lud's would lie "[a]
>bit further down" (as if he's a messenger from the same realm as Rebekah).
>And Business "down there" is "brisk as ever it gets upon thy Surface."
>Also, Lud is source of a wealth of information about the Tunnels.
He's both -- it's that werewolf business. A-and by the way I reread the
section last night and I'm not convinced he turns out to be a fop,
either; I think he's joking around by talking like a fop.
At one point in there he talks about the diggers of the tunnels, and the
word is capitalized, Diggers. I think that just as Pynchon is playing on
the inversion of Lud the Luddite into Lud Oafery the werewolf, he's also
making oblique reference here to the Diggers, that commune of social
activists whose name and stance were rediscovered in San Francisco during
the 60's.
Cheers,
David
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