MDMD(Part1) meeting M&D

[William Karlin]

 Wow, Andrew!  Thanks for this.  

  I offer some ideas below....

On Sun, 28 Sep 1997, Andrew Dinn wrote:  <among a great deal else>

> This story (and, in particular, part 1 of this story)
> cannot begin by telling what Mason and Dixon did. Instead we go back
> and find out who they are.


  I think this captures the essential essence of the novel.  Although we
ride along for a great number of adventures large and small, I think it is
important to notice that if we merely wanted to learn the story of what
Mason and Dixon *did* we could have simply turned to the wonderful
Journals of Mason and Dixon that have been mentioned here before.  We
would see tables and tables of numbers and numerous observations....  For
that is what they *did* -- but Pynchon didn't settle for that.  He wanted
to show us who they might have been.  Even later in the novel, while they
are engrossed in the line project (and other assorted business) I was
struck by the things that *were not happening* -- the activity in that
non-space in their minds and between the two of them.

This is where I'm coming from here:

I have been reading Paul Auster's collection of essays _The Art of
Hunger_, one of which -- about Beckett's novel _Mercier and Camier_ --
titled "From Cakes to Stones: A Note on Beckett's French," contained a
great deal of relevance to M&D (I think).

 Here are some exerpts:

  "they are not so much separate characters as two elements of a tandem
reality, and neither one could exist without the other."  

  "For the book is not about what Mercier and Camier do; it is about what
they are.
  "Nothing happens.  Or, more precisely, what happens is what does not
happen.  Armed with the vaudville props of umbrella, sack, and raincoat,
the two heroes meander through the town and the surrounding countryside,
encountering various objects and personages: they pause frequently and at
length in an assortment of bars and public places; they consort with a
warm-hearted prositute named Helen; they kill a policeman; they gradually
lose their few posessions and drift apart.  These are the outward events,
all precisely told, with wit, elegance, and pathos, and interspersed with
some beautiful descriptive passages....  But the real substance of the
book lies in the conversations between Mercier and Camier...." 

 Speaking of things that aren't happening:

  This made me think of the thread that ran a while back wherein a few
souls were commenting (complaining?) that the plot, the conspiracy, that
made GR what it was was absent from M&D.  Or rather, that Pynchon had
obviously lost it because his "attmept" to build a conspiracy behind the
events of M&D fell flat.
  I do think that M&D is an effort to examine the themes dear to ol' Pynch
but through the lens of interpersonal relations -- rather than the highly
impersonal (but extremely effective) methods of GR.  We readers sort of
expect high conspiracy from Pynchon -- and I think he plays with those
expectations (as he does with many others).  Eric called this "deflating"
back in MDMD(2).  I'm curious about the instances in which Pynch sets the
stage for a peek at the "real" story behind the story -- the fiendish plot
that compels M&D foward -- but leaves us hanging, to wonder "well, is
there really anything more behind this?"  The Seahorse is a good example -
do the French attack because of some *secret intent* or was it something
more or less random that M&D could respond to with paranoia?  

  Maybe the conspiracy never surfaces because M&D are on the fringes of
whatever plots happen to be going on (like R&G) so the secret intents
don't come to the fore as they did in GR?  And by dealing with characters
on the fringe Pynchon is able to explore the interior of these two men,
and thereby tackle his concerns from a new angle?  
  Perhaps I am just missing the conspiracy?  Or do others here feel
similarly? Where else in part one do we see the hint of conspiracy only to
have that hint deflated into something more mundane...?
   
 cheers,

 will