M&D Saturday night in Delaware

[jbor]

As I look back on the (extremely cursory) notes that I took as I read *M&D*
I now note the following:

p. 697 Mason falls in love with Dixon

And, indeed, the reference to "Public-School Students in England" as an
analogy for Mason's emerging "passion for his co-adjutor" is very
suggestive:

      In his heart, Mason has grown accustom'd to the impossibility,
    between Dixon and himself, of Affection beyond a certain Enclosure.
    They have spent years together inside one drawn perimeter and
    another. They also know how it is out in the Forest, over the Coastal
    ranges, out of metropolitan Control. Only, now, far too late ...
                                                              697

But I don't think that this, or Wicks's subsequent editorialisation of the
emotion following his listeners' rebukes on p 698 ("Say then, that Mason at
last came to admire Dixon for his Bravery,--) can really be equated with the
submerged homoerotic element in Melville's novels (Ishmael's marriage-bed
sequence with Queequeg at the Spouter-Inn, for example -- Pynchon is far
more self-conscious about it than Melville), or that the term "gay" is an
apposite one. In *M&D* 'tis surely a "passion" Unconsummat'd and Unrequit'd,
perhaps even Unconscious, wouldn't you say?

best


----------
>From: Thomas Eckhardt <uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de>
>To: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Subject: Re: M&D Saturday night in Delaware
>Date: Fri, Aug 4, 2000, 6:06 AM
>

>>> As a poor substitute, I brought up the subject of
>>> the novel with the "public historian."
>>>
>>> "I don't have time for (snort) historical novel. I had 3000
>>> pages of research. Besides I was told that Mason and Dixon
>>> were portrayed as gay. Who needs that."
>>
>>Youch. Besides the underlying homophobia/vilification of this statement from
>>an apparently educated person, where in the text is that *ever* suggested?
>
> Cherrycoke states that Mason at some point, "out of metropolitan Control",
> is beginning to feel more than just comradeship for his partner. This is
> page 697. The audience comments on p. 698: "Oh, please Wicks spare us, far
> too romantick really."