re; myopic americans

[Rip Winkle]

why Red, how very interesting.
Did you think about this? 
or are you just a jerk? 
the novel does in fact begin in america. 
christmastide 1786
but the tale doesn't. 
it begins with a hanging. 
not in mississippi. 
but from Tyburn. 
we discover that old wicks is being kept out of 
england beacuse of some crime he has committed
and that his family pays him to stay out of england.
we are told that his crime, a political crime, was
anonymity 
we learn that wicks missed Mason's funeral and has
been telling tales to avoid being tossed out of the
american house. 
the boys want to hear a tale about america. 
a tale with indians and french. 
but the tales we have thus far, some pages or so, 
have not been about america. if they are, please do
tell us how and why. the allegheny ridge and some of
the pople, presumably involved in the making of the
Line are mentioned at the bottom of page 7, but the
narrative, when wicks takes out his scarr'd old
note-book, quickly turns to Tyburn tree. lat i checked

pynchon doesn't make too may errors when it comes to
things arboreal, so it seems we are off to england and
into sailing boats that sail south and east and not
west--to america. we read the letters of C and J,
letters that were not written in america and are not
about america. the first bar we go into is not in
america and the dialogue between J and C is not about
america or americans but about england and eglishmen
and english institutions of power. we meet a a learned
dog, he's english too. we meet a cast of characters
who are mostly english or people working for the
english (some more freely than others) and we meet
frenchmen, butthese are not the american french the
boys had in mind when they asked for a tale about
america with indians and french. the dialogues are
about england and her institutions of power, so are
the songs and literary allusions, and so too are the
"subtextual" historical allusions. mason is english
and so is dixon and so it seems a natural thing for
them to be talking like men of england, even as mason
finds dixon's speach a bit odd and dixon alters his
quaker pronouns to make it less so, they speak like
english men, about their english lives, their jobs as
subjects &  servents of england. they sail on english
ships and the instruments they take with them are
english. dixon's quakerism is decidedly positively
english even if he is a bit of a rebel (not an unusal
trait for a brit) and mason's religion is as english
as shkespeare. dixon maintains, at several critical
moments in the text, that he is a follower of the
techings of fox. fox was english too. 
both men have english heroes (boyhood heroes and
professional ones. both were tutored or mentored by
englishmen and it was there connections to english
societies, including royal ones, that got them into
their jobs. dixon, says more than once, that newton
(another englsiman) is his deity. the men attended
english schools, enjoy englsih pubs and while dixon
has a very healthy appetite for the exotic (erotic
even) and foreign, mason wife, his loves and labors
lost are english. the men are off to do a transit of
venus for the crown and they very much up on the
politics of longitude and the like. the men are caught
in the protracted
economic/political/navigational/colonial battles of
their nation. the piece of someone elses history they
survive is english history (it being world history
too, but english for the most part). when they attempt
to figure out who or what may be controlling their
fate, it is to their english faith and thier english
institutions that they turn. the talk is of whigs and
coffee houses and insurance british companies, not to
mention the india companies, which does bring not only
the french, but the dutch, but not america. well, not
yet anyway. they go not to virginia, but to cape town
where they meet bonk and the vrooms and slaves, but no
indains or french or americans. so, it seems you
should get the red out of your eyes. myopic indeed. 


yes, rip van winkle, that's an american tale. and
pynchon, as thoreen has noted in his essay on
vineland, alludes to irving's tale. this will take
some time and as i'm flying away, on american
airlines, must remember to wear clean socks and put
some powder in my nauticas, 
i'll only say that zoyd, like wicks, is a commontary
on the american artist. zoyd being a slothful musician
and not quite a writer, but compare him with hector as
film maker and the other fil people in the book--his
ex-wife and company and his daughter's boy friend, and
i was thinking that mr. pynchon probably read mr
melville's poem about rip van winkle and the lilac,
and of course he did read bartleby, and all of
melville as he read all of conrad and poe, but the
sloth essay has been bothering me now for a few
hours....so....

but i'm afraid i'm already living on sothern time now
so i can't type anymore today. 

living on sponge cake, 

Rip

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