MDDM "Another Slave-Colony"

[jbor]

Scott Badger at lupine at ncia.net wrote:

>> I guess the 64 000 dollar question is whether or not there *were*
>> shenanigans at play in the sudden commissioning of M & D to map the Line.
>> That is, as far as the "historical record" is concerned.
> 
> Don't Mason and Dixon wonder, more than once, whether they might be
> accidental participants - simply in the way, at the time - of History's
> "shenanigans"? 

Yes, I agree, and I got the distinct impression a few times on first reading
of the debt owed by Pynchon's M & D to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (mainly
Stoppard's I guess, but Shakespeare's as well). The conversational turns on
p. 73 and again in Chapter 25, particularly p. 250, seem to have an affinity
with conversations between those two bumbling courtiers trapped in someone
else's destiny, as also between Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon.

Which would characterise "the Line" as an elusive inevitability of the same
order as Hamlet's fate, or Godot.

> As conspiracies go, what would picking M&D, in particular, to
> be the surveyors lead to?

I'm wondering if, historically-speaking, there were inklings already in
America of the colonial revolt to come, and Royalist factions there had
passed the information back to people in Westminster or the Palace, and thus
orchestrated the commission between themselves. Divide and Rule (Brittania),
you might say? I seem to recall some of the locals accusing M & D of being
"King's Men" - spies or infiltrators - and I wonder if this is what Tenebrae
is getting at on p. 246 too. I believe that the common explanation is that
there was no-one in America who was capable or qualified to plot the line,
which doesn't seem a particularly persuasive pretext.

> Whereas, the Line itself, surveyed at its birth,
> still divides America today...

The full extent of the future significance of "the Line" is undreamt of by
any of the characters or narrative agencies within the novel. This ball I
think Pynchon leaves decidedly in the reader's court.

However, I also agree that the slavery issue looms large in Pynchon's text,
much larger than the political struggle for self-determination (i.e. the War
of Independence), and that this might be a reason why he chose to bypass
American colonial history to such a degree. I think this is in keeping with
the civil rights agenda of his fiction and non-fiction throughout his
career.

I think that the despairing words spoken by both Mason and Dixon here, at
the end of the first section - "Another Slave-Colony...so have I heard as
well. Christ." -  really bring it home to American readers who might have
laughed at and scorned the Vrooms and the Dutch slave-colony at the Cape.

best