M&D Saturday night in Delaware

[Paul Mackin]

On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, Judith A. Panetta wrote:
> As I'm writing this,I'm beginning
> to feel that terms like "gay" and "straight" are just bad
> taste. 

Or might we say that "gay" is a life style which not all persons
experiencing homoerotic feelings will necessarily wish to adopt even
though nowadays it's safe to do so. 

To some degree isn't the either/or-ness of it all a modern and
therefore media invention.  Well, of course it is.

Of course in modern life we know that all which is not prohibited is
mandatory.

> So what's the point? I remember reading the scene with
> Ishmael and Queequeg - such tenderness. Homoerotic? I guess.
> I'm not sure if I know what that means anymore. If the scene
> must have a label, then so be it.  Ishmael became
> immediately sympathetic to me , simply for his trust and
> openess to the physical expressions of another. Does that
> makes him "gay?" Gay-like? Maybe just gay-lite. Maybe we're
> just ready for that trip.
> 
> And well then - there's those men of the hour: Mason and
> Dixon. And although I'VE NOT FINISHED the book, it does not
> surprise me that Mason would feel deeply for Dixon. For what
> they've witnessed, what they've been through. Jeez...I want
> to fuck them and I wasn't even there. 

Was it Henry Kissinger who said the greatest aphrodidiac is power.


But I digress. In the
> context of the fiction, Mason & Dixon have so far developed
> a deeply caring if contentous relationship out of shared
> experiences. What response would be the appropriate and
> non-gay? It seems sad that there can be no "affection beyond
> a certain enclosure."
> 
> My... my...such a lot of wind from a flip remark from a
> public historian. As I missed the first go-around for M&D -
> forgive me if I'm waving a dead chicken.

I don't remember lister reactions when we reached that section of the
book. My comment would have been that Pynchon is playing upon the modern
reader's likely preoccupation with homosexuality. That's what I meant with
my comment on the different reader expectations  in Pynchons and
Melville's day.

			P.