MDDM The Line

[Otto]

The interest of the author Robert B. Van Atta has clearly been local
American history as the upper headline indicates:
PENNSYLVANIA, OHIO or VIRGINIA?
"Those of us researching roots in southwest Pennsylvania and adjacent
sections of Ohio and West Virginia often find conflicting information on
which state or colony some settlement was in. The following article explains
the cause for the confusion. (...) Taxes were difficult, if not impossible,
to collect in the disputed area. (...) The same land, in many cases, was
conveyed to two different owners by the two states after land grants in this
portion of Pennsylvania became possible in 1769."

The indeterminacy plus the chance to bring to attention some more unknown
facts of American history might be what has been interesting to Pynchon too.

I can understand that Van Atta misses Queen Anne (1702-14, M&D, Chap. 18,
189, 11 and 14), but who is the second queen? Seems as if my knowledge of
British history is only rudimentary too. Maybe I should give A.L. Morton's
"A People's History of England" another read. Sorrily I don't find the
Mason-Dixon line in the index.

Otto

jbor:
on 21/12/01 3:28 PM, Otto wrote:
>>
>> 246.2 "This case ... languish'd in court for eighty years." The border
>> dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland?
>>
>
> Of course:
> "The boundary dispute dated as far back as 1681, generated by exploratory
> titles or grants, inadequate maps, geographic errors, and carelessness of
> English kings in making land grants."
> http://www.gamber.net/gamber/mason-dx.htm

Thanks Otto. Here's a couple more links I stored up from a while back:

http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can/usa/mas_dix.htm

http://rongo.ce.jhu.edu/mdcive/mason.htm

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa041999.htm?iam=dpile&terms=%2B%2
2Charles+Mason+and+Jeremiah+Dixon%22

My knowledge of colonial and post-colonial American history is rudimentary
at best, somewhat sadly circumscribed by the miniseries' 'Roots' and 'North
and South', so while the infrequent narratological leaps from Kunte Kinte to
Star Trek as we're Dirty Dancing through Veronica's Closet will be familiar
enough as we proceed through the upcoming exploration, I'm also liable, if
so franchised, to be asking some pretty facile historical questions.

It's interesting that the article you posted only talks about "English
kings" in a very dismissive way (from 1681 to 1761 there were actually *two*
long-reigning *Queens* of England) but is very specific about the American
personages involved. In _M&D_ Pynchon, while not noticing monarchs or
politicians (or journalist would-be-tyrants) much at all, seems to have
swung his narrative the 'other way' a bit even so with the opening section.
The historical sketch, selective as it is, locates the geopolitical *forces
majeure* of the time in Europe (specifically, Clive, and the English
aristocracy and its minions), and, to a lesser degree, the Orient, rather
than in America. And so far I feel more sympathetic to the English (minor)
characters, such as Emerson and Maire and Rebekah, even Maskelyne, than to
the uncles and absent parents in Philadelphia - i.e. the text imho appears
more sympathetic to what might be called the Monarchist, or English point of
view vis à vis the War of Independence - but perhaps that's just the product
of more intricate and greater narratival continuity in the sections so far
set in England.

The 'contest', if indeed there need necessarily be one, between the two sets
of major characters - Chas and Jere, and the four kids - is much much
closer, however, different in texture.

There're also many differences in the way the two chronologies are being
recounted, Wicks for the most part far more florid, or showy (Rococoesque?),
than the unnamed narrator who intersperses the comments and tableaus from
the Philadelphia drawing room into Wicks's journal readings and reverendly
oratorios. I think in this particular narrative agency - that demonstrably
outside Wicks - we come closest to what might be called the "implied author"
of the text. Even so, I'm inclined to pay the reference to "Chauncey" and
"the Bums" as a conscious nod towards the conspiracy theories surrounding
JFK's assassination, and even, indeed, to the _Lot 49_-as-"encrypted
meditation"-thereon thesis.

best