Animals in M&D

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Animals #3  (Re) Constructing The Duck

In chapter 37 of M&D, we meet the Duck. Dixon and Mason are
having breakfast as "M. Allegre proceeds, before a room-ful
of what to his mind, must seem unfeeling barbarians, to
recite his Iliad of Inconvenience." Armand mentions Dixon
and Mason's brother in science Jacques de Vaucanson. They
know of his mechanical duck. Vaucanson is next described as
"The Man Voltaire call'd a Promethus." PANDORA!  Pynchon
opens the jar and the first two Names to pop out are
Voltaire and Prometheus. Pynchon often gives instructions to
his dear reader-that's YOU. Unless I've been watching too
many Loony Toon Cartoons, these instructions tell us how to
read this chapter. In fact, given world enough and time, I
should argue that these two names are far more important to
Pynchon than Henry Adams. In any event, Prometheus and
Voltaire provide instruction for this chapter.  Promethus,
to keep it simple, is Greek religion's supreme Trickster,
and a god of fire. The apparent meaning of his name,
Forethinker, emphasized his intellectual side. In common
belief he developed into a master craftsman, and in this
connection he was associated with fire and the Creation Of
Man. Aeschylus is credit with writing "Prometheus Unbound,"
we have it and we may with fair assurance accept the theory,
now generally held, that the  "Prometheus Bound" was the
first part of a trilogy, followed by "Prometheus Unbound"
and "Prometheus the Fire-Bearer." Without world enough and
time, I will simply mention that his play has often been
compared to "Job."  This becomes important, as we consider
Benny Profane-Jew/Catholic, Job/Prometheus, and Schlemiel.
In his Luddite essay, Pynchon writes a few interesting
things about Luddites, but what he really wants to discuss
is Literature and Genres: "Is there something about reading
and thinking that would cause or predispose a person to turn
Luddite?" What he writes about literature and genres
"closely defined"-Gothic, Western, Romance, Whodunits,
"Luddite,"--- and the "BadAss and how the "Bad Ass" is
constructed as a character in Literature and
Social/Psychological Myth, makes this essay the most
important prose he has written to date. From Mary Shelly's
"Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus," which Pynchon calls
the "first and among the best of the Luddite Novels," we can
trace a succession of various Prometheus and Prometheus
Bound and Unbound (including Percys Shelly's) to our Duck.
First, I want to turn to Voltaire. Voltaire (a Pynchon Hero)
is the enlightenment's courageous crusader against tyranny,
bigotry, and cruelty. His writing embodies characteristic
qualities of the French mind--a critical capacity, Wit, and
Satire. As a Satirist, he did succeed notably in making
people think about important questions--indeed, his
questions were usually clearer than his answers. Sound
familiar? We can trace a *Rough Sketch* of Science Fiction
to the Satirist Voltaire that is consistent with Pynchon's
own sketch (and Defense of Science Fiction) in the Luddite
essay. Note, the point is not to classify, but to use this
*Sketch* and these terms for convenience as Pynchon does in
his Luddite essay, recognizing that as Pynchon notes: "These
genres, by insisting on what is contrary to the fact, fail
to be Serious (Pynchon's caps) enough, and so they get
redlined under the label "escapist fare."  (borrowed and
mixed for my own purposes from Britannica) Science Fiction
is a form of fiction that developed in the 20th century and
deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined
science upon society or individuals. The term is more
generally used to refer to any literary fantasy that
includes a scientific factor as an essential orienting
component. Such literature may consist of a careful and
informed extrapolation of scientific facts and principles,
or it may range into far-fetched areas flatly contradictory
of such facts and principles. In either case, plausibility
based on science is a requisite, so that such precursors of
the genre as Mary Shelley's Gothic novel Frankenstein, or
the Modern Prometheus (1818) and Robert Louis Stevenson's
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) are science
fiction, whereas Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), based as it
is purely on the supernatural, is not. Science fiction was
made possible only by the rise of modern science itself,
notably the revolutions in astronomy and physics.
Science-fiction elements are discoverable in the
19th-century stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and Fitz-James O'Brien. Science fiction
proper began, however, toward the end of the 19th century
with the scientific romances of Jules Verne,
whose science was rather on the level of invention as well
as the science-oriented novels of social
criticism by H.G. Wells. Aside from the age-old genre of
fantasy literature, which does not qualify, there were
notable precursors: imaginary voyages to the moon or to
other planets in the 18th century and space travel in
Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), alien cultures in Jonathan
Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726).

TBC as "world enough and time" permits.

"I know, Profane thought. I am a descendent of schlemiels,
Job founded my line."

"Hey," called Mafia from the writing desk. "How do you spell
Prometheus, anybody."

Benny Profane "-in Union Square at sundown, blindfolded by a
raging hangover and covered by a comforter of chilly pigeons
who looked liked vultures-"

TF