R: MDMD(7): Dreams and Boundaries

[jbor]

Interesting thoughts. Perhaps the prevalence of Old Testament references is
suggesting that Cape Town is somehow awash in some of that pre-Christian
plurality (otherwise, "Sin") which is often glimpsed in those writings.
While the hypocritical prudery and Puritanical rules and protocols of the
Dutch colonists ("the Company's merciless Priesthoods and many-Volum'd
Codes" 68-9) are roundly satirised, there's also a sense that these are all
just for show anyway. The Malay and Pygmy markets thrive and many-flavour'd
Ketjaps flow, the Vroom girls and Austra are in cahoots, and the
supernatural is openly countenanced by all. Indeed, it's not just Dixon and
Austra who send Mason off to Toko the Senoi to cure his screaming
heebie-jeebies at night:

    At length Austra, expressing the will of both Houses, sends him to
    talk with a certain Toko, a Negrito, or Asian Pygmy, of a Malay
    tribe called the Senoi. (70.30)

Note how this recourse to Senoi Magick is vouchsafed by "the will of both
Houses."

Beneath the veneer and curfews there's a richness of culture and experience
which Dixon manages to discover pretty quickly, not so much a "world gone
mad" as a "separate, silent, unsuspected world" (_Lot49_, 86.14). Even
Cornelius is ensconced within "his perimeter of Mauritian smoke". (63.9) Is
the Cape "one of the Colonies of Hell", as Mason gloomily remarks, or is it
Dixon's "Gala that never stops"? (71.13-18) I guess the question posed here,
the one most often posed by Pynchon's texts is: which do you want it to be?

best

 tommasopincio at iol.it wrote:

> Don't you think the whole ch. 7 may be read under the following light: "D'ye
> not the feel sometimes that ev'rything since the Fight at the Sea has
> been,--not a Dream, yet..." (75)?
> Dream is clearly a boundary dividing life and death here and the two ghosty
> byddies are now in a place (cape Town) which is not properly a place but "an
> Element in which to be immers'd" and "to be lost, without hope of Salvation"
> (59).
> This is also a circular chapter--typical of Mr. Pynchon.
> It starts with the preclusion of any salvation and closes with the image of
> Resurrection as a chance to be redeem'd (saved) from the service of
> Darkness. The chance is finally lost since history is what it is--it likes
> death so much as mr. LeSpark reminds us (76). Maybe that's why M&D are
> always on the verge of passing over in these last first pages.
> On the other hand, from the very beginning of the novel, our storytellers
> (the text, Rev., and Pynchon himself) seem to be engaged in the attempt of
> avoiding the "Secular Consequences" of history.
> Maybe they would like to "live their Dreams (lives)"--everyone in his own
> way--which is actually possible considering the big lack of "historical"
> information about M&D lives (dreams).
> Many dreams are actually possible. Many speculations too, of course.
> Nothing may be definitively excluded. And that could explain a cartoon-like
> presence like L.E.D.
> 
>