MDDM "Another Slave-Colony"

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/23/01 9:56:29 PM, jbor at bigpond.com writes:

".... up until publication of the novel Mason & Dixon - the biographical
individuals - had all but disappeared from the annals. They languished
together in an odd sort of obscurity where their names, while very familiar,
were blended together into a singular amorphous entity - that umbilical
ampersand again - and any sense or remembrance of their individual and
separate identities had been lost. In fact, for most I'd say any mention of
the phrase "Mason & Dixon" automatically conjured up the Line, and all its
baggage, rather than two idiosyncratic Englishmen. My point is that the men
had come to be defined by the expedition, rather than vice versa. In the
novel Pynchon actively redresses this insidious metonymy."

You don't go far enough. No one cared about the individuals. It was only the
karma perpetrated by the construction of the line that was topical. And
you go too far. Pynchon's M and D are almost total fabrications of his
creativity. As little is known about the historical M and D now as before
the novel, except a few tidbits. They have been created almost out of
whole cloth.

>> I think it's quite clear that the line about the selection of tales "for
>> their moral usefulness" (7.6) can't be taken at face value.<<
> 
> Well, if not a tale for moral usefulness, than for what usefulness? Even
> delivering a "mortal body blow" to preconceived myths might be construed
> as a morally worthwhile endeavor- unless it's the case that the tale has no
> usefulness? 

"The purpose and value of literature ... it's a broad topic, surely? Broader,
at least, than the binary opposition of moral usefulness vs. no usefulness
which you are attempting to reduce it to here. My point was merely that it
is stated that the Rev.d only "implies" that his tales have been chosen for
their "moral usefulness", and that that notion of 'implication', along with
the catalogue and description of the prior tales he has told as well as much
of the detail of the actual narrative he relates, undermine this purported
pretension."

The Rev'd is under the most severe constraints to serve up a proper tale,
the usefulness of which being gauged by the amount and timimg of
Juvenile Rampage. Taste can be a brutal arbiter in a contingent world.
One miscue and 'Boppo!'

"I agree that the textual and meta-textual significance - or historical and
metaphorical connotations, if you prefer - of "the Line", drawing,
map-making, boundaries, enclosure, notions of "Latitude" and "Departure", as
well as of "Latitudes and Departures" in the strict Surveying definition,
and so forth, is a lively little brew."

And I think it is what Pynchon relishes most. M and D are almost blank slates
upon which he can practice his art- the further examination of the 
metaphorical
process, on all scales, or levels, if you prefer. Mason's preliminary idea of 
America: "The Place is but a Patch of England..." seems telling.