MDMD(11): Narrative Lengths

[John Bailey]

Rebekah - From where does this unusual (?) spelling arrive? Not in the 
fiction, I mean, but I've never come across the name spelt this way. It 
doesn't sound that British to me, but, whatever. Rebecca means to tie or to 
bind, which is an interesting coincidence...

>From: "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at hotmail.com>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>A
>plain block of mellow Cotswold stone marks her grave, where, on a brass
>plaque, the visitor can still read Mason's own words:
>
>SACRED
>To the Remains of Rebekah
>Wife of Cha Mason Jun ARS
>With the Greatest Serenity of Mind
>She departed this Life the 13th of Feb 1759
>(at Greenwich Kent)
>In the 31st year of her Age
>Could the unsally'd of Heart from Dissolution save
>In Vain Might Death assum'd this silent Grave
>But Fate how hard!
>Her able Morn in Dark Shade expire
>And Noontide Sun went down with Jobs Desire

Mr Mason is an odd poet. That's quite a difficult piece he's written there, 
although I like the Job's desire bit.

>In the meantime, how IS Mason avoiding
>"betraying" Rebekah?  "Betraying" her in what sense, exactly?
>Approximately?  Hypothetically, even?  Somebody, let me know ...
>

Well, you can betray someone in the common sense, that is, to be disloyal or 
false to them, to be a double agent, a trope which pops up repeatedly in P's 
books. I'm not sure if this is 'the' sense Mason is employing here, or at 
least, not the only. There's also the sense of betrayal as in giving away 
the secret, as in a noise which betrays your presence, or a scar which 
betrays your past. Mason avoids 'betraying' her by avoiding the truth, by 
diverting Dixon's thoughts of her down the garden path, and hence to avoid 
drawing nearer the 'truth' of Rebekah's existence, which is something Mason, 
being the jealous sort, is still trying to reach himself. Silly man. She's 
none too happy about it either. I think that she would rather be betrayed, 
if not forgotten.

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