MDDM: Latitudes of one kind or another

[Paul Nightingale]

'Latitude' might also refer to a kind of freedom, the time and space within
which one is free to manoeuvre (or be manoeuvred). Mason and Dixon are
characters who must confront the changes that have taken place in their
circumstances. Are they agents of their own destiny or are they being
manipulated by others? By the Royal Society? By Cherrycoke, their
'biographer'? By Pynchon the author-as-god? The novel that emerged in the
C18th prioritised the agency of (usually bourgeois) characters; this
depended on psychological realism of a kind that is still (unfortunately) a
factor in discussing (and judging) fiction.

It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that this key word 'Latitude' (used
in a section heading) should have a degree of ambiguity attached to it, is
one that cannot be pinned down with any certainty. The novel problematises
Time and Space, not because their existence is questionable, but because the
way in which we know (or experience) Time and Space must be constructed in
the reporting.

>From the moment Cherrycoke is introduced as putative storyteller in Ch1,
storytelling-as-construction is foregrounded at the expense of a more
complacent storytelling-as-recollection. A distinction between old world and
new world is both Eurocentric and historicist, one between north and south
colonialist. To 'know' is to be located, or exposed, as one who knows only
through telling. Hence "Latitudes and Departures": the latter term locates
character in time and place, but also addresses the impossibility of 'going
back'. To misquote Tom Waits: a ship took them away, but a ship can't bring
them back again.