FW: the motif of marriage

[Doug Millison]

Vineland's the one Pynchon dedicates "For my mother and father"; M&D's the
one he dedicates to his own nuclear family, "For Melanie, and for Jackson."
These two novels  seem, to me, to play the most directly with the notion of
families; family serves to structure them both -- Charles Mason leaving and
returning to his family and forming his bond with Jeremiah Dixon, DL
Chastain leaving her family not to return, Frenesi leaving and returning to
hers --  in a way that doesn't seem to work in such a fundamental way in
the other novels. And each shows, as rj notes, both the shortcomings of
families as the dominator culture has traditionally defined them and
numerous alternatives. M&D's ending continues to strike me as an extremely
dark vision (darker even than Vineland's), for the bitter and bittersweet
truths that it contains, the linking of the dying Charles Mason's twisted
vision and the yearning  of his sons.

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>