Outlaws and evil-doers

[Paul Nightingale]

Wicks Cherrycoke is an untrustworthy narrator, compelled to tell stories to remain as a guest. As an author, therefore, he is compromised (and then suggests, at various points, that he does not know the entire truth His relationship to the family, moreover, is problematic. The "far-travel'd uncle" becomes the "family outcast". Ethan Edwards in John Ford's The Searchers. His crime of anonymity (as defined, of course, by "wicked men") is that of the dissident; perhaps we should also recall Foucault's comments in "Death of an Author" on the status of different kinds of knowledge. The work of literature now requires a personal signature (what Foucault calls "the sovereignty of the author"); the scientific text is anonymous; in each case this is the opposite of what had been the case before the scientific revolution of the C17th. What, then, is the status of Cherrycoke's offense, that is to say, narrative - "Accounts of ... crimes ... observ'd"? What is the relationship between the account, the writing, and that which has been observed? What is the relationship between the account he now gives (when compelled to "keep the children amus'd") of the account he had offered then, previously? He offers himself the role of an outlaw. Pynchon, introducing Stone Junction, distinguishes between outlaws and evil-doers: a similar (counter-cultural) spirit is evidenced in Donald Sutherland's words in the 70s film, Steelyard Blues: "I'm no criminal, I'm an outlaw". Is Cherrycoke as narcissistic as Sutherland's character (whose name, appropriately enough, I've now forgotten)? Certainly, he is playfully disrespectful of the truth: the Tower becomes Ludgate, then becomes, dismissively, "whichever, 'twas Gaol". The fact is less important than the impression. At the beginning of Ch3 he happily confesses that he did not witness (or observe?) the meeting of Mason and Dixon, the birth of their relationship (just as the twins' origins are obscure). Pynchon himself tempts the reader with the possibility that his text, which might have been produced in the C18th, is not a late-C20th pastiche. And then, in Ch2, juxtaposes the formality (= authenticity) of letters exchanged by Dixon and Mason, with their own subsequent commentary/revisions. I cannot leave this rambling account (which might or might not be trustworthy) of some of the discourses of outlawry (see Eric Hobsbawm's Bandits on the outlaw as a construct of the popular imagination) without dwelling on Bush's ("wanted - dead or alive") assumption of the role of Wyatt Earp. He casts his enemy, who has not been indicted, yet alone found guilty, in the role of a gunslinger of the Old West: interesting, to say the least, given that news coverage/constructions of bin Ladan (and Islamic terrorism generally) have depended so much on racist stereotyping.
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