MDMD(Pt 1) The Sum is Greater than Part 1

[David Casseres]

Andrew sez, let's look at Part 1 as a whole, and he comments that the 
tendency has been to look at details.  I agree, and it's indeed high time 
to step back because that results in a radically different view, which I 
expect to solidify, by the time we reach the End, into something quite 
unexpected when first we gazed at those Snowballs.

>      Plot - Mason & Dixon seems to be a far more Linear Narrative
>      than Mr Pynchon's previous Magnum Opus, Gravity's Rainbow. So
>      providing a Summary and Analysis of the Plotting should be no
>      Onerous Task.

But when I step back, what do I find but a Narrative Fabric of complexity 
similar to Gravity's Rainbow.  The knotting-into increases, I think, as 
we move forward through the book, and more and more sub-narratives are 
interpolated.  The foundations of the Industrial Revolution, just for 
example, are as Intrickately woven into the tale of the Line as are the 
foundations of 20th-Century technology into that of the Arc.

Yet there is something more linear about the presentation, and I do 
believe it is just that, the Presentation.  In Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon 
was pleased to smack the Reader in the Gob with the nonlinearity of it 
all ("Why should it be easy," quotha), while in M&D there is a more 
genial technique that makes it "easier to read" -- except, aha, that one 
reads easily along for a few pages or a score of 'em, and then must 
suddenly retrace one's Trajectory to find out once again what the H--l 
has been Going On.

I find myself doing this Piecemeal re-Reading as a matter of routine with 
M&D, whereas with Gravity's Rainbow I put my head down, bunched myself up 
and forged strenuously ahead, proceding as continuously as I could 
through the Welter.  And then had the reread the whole thing all over 
again, find of course a Different Book this time.  And the third time, 
years later.  Who knows what will happen on the second reading of M&D?  I 
shall have read much of it twice or thrice already.

So there is a different texture to the experience (well Mine, at least), 
just as the typography signals, with its Old Style (is it Caslon?) and 
generous leading giving it an easy, open, friendly, well damme, *English* 
appearance to contrast to the Germanic density of the pages of Gravity's 
Rainbow.  Yet underneath this is just as much fractality of Story as ever.

And here I will mention something to look for as we read on: there will 
be much more discussion of Line, as well as The Line.  The power and the 
indequacy of lines and linearity of ev'ry Sort will emerge as a key 
Symbolic Concern of Pynchon's, and I collect that he would like us to 
compare the Line of this tale with the Parabola of his previous and 
future one.

>      ... This is a much more markedly
>      Historickal Novel than its Predecessors and adopts a suitably
>      Historickal Tone. Is it also a Modern (or dare I invoke the Term
>      a Postmodern) Novel?

I'm not at all sure it's more Historickal than Gravity's Rainbow, despite 
the Tone.  And it's decidedly Modern; and if Gravity's Rainbow is 
postmodern (I bow to those who Actually Know what the term means) then by 
G-d so is this.





Cheers,
David