MDMD Outlaws

[Terrance]

> Paul Nightingale wrote:
> 
> 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. 

I just read Foucault's Death of an Author and I must say I
still can't make any sense 
of it. I can't read French, but on this subject the man
writes like a guy who simply can't sit still for  long
enough to make a point. 

"On the other hand, on the other foot, on the other hand and
foot...and we need to ask this question and that question
and what is this we are almost but not quite... and how do
we now say this and that when the other hand is the other
foot.... and oh bother. 

Sorry. 

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.

Not sure. To me, Both "facts" (Tower and Ludgate)  seem as
important as the impression. 
This happens in Pynchon novels. Even if later we discover
from a "reliable" narrator or even Wicks himself, that it
was niether the Tower not Ludgate, the "facts" remain
historical and thus tops forever a spin. 




 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). 

Yes, but another point here is that he was not there when
they met, but was (and here I reverse for emphasis) in an
unusual way, not in the usual Way. Moreover, it is what
They  REMEMBERED of the meeting, and only in part because he
gets tired,   that he records, or so he says in his
projected book.  


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. 


Great stuff! Thanks!