MDMD2: Scheherezades

[Dave Monroe]

   "Viz.-- Once, the only reason Men kept Dogs was for
food.  Noting that among Men no crime was quite so
abhorr'd as eating the flesh of another human, Dog
quickly learn'd to act as human as possible,-- and to
pass this Ability from Parents to Pups.  So we know
how to evoke from you, Man, one day at a time, at
least enough Mercy for one day more of Life. 
Nonetheless, however accomplish'd, our Lives are never
settled,-- we go on as tail-wagging Scheherezades,
ever a step away from the dread Palm Leaf, nightly
delaying the Blades of our Masters by telling back to
them tales of their humanity." (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 22)

Cf., of course ...

   "It has become an afternoon habit for the Twins and
their Sister, and what Friends old and young may find
their way here, to gather for another Tale from their
far-travel'd Uncle, the Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, who
arriv'd here back in October for the funeral of a
Friend of years ago,-- too late for the Burial, as it
prov'd,-- and has linger'd as a Guest in the Home of
his sister Elizabeth, the Wife, for many years, of Mr.
J. Wade LeSpark, a respected Merchant active in Town
Affairs, whilst in his home yet Sultan enough to
convey to the Revd, tho' without ever so stipulating,
that, for as long as he can keep the children amus'd,
he may remain,-- too much evidence of Juvenile Rampage
at the wrong moment, however, and Boppo! 'twill be Out
the Door with him, where waits the Winter's Block and
Blade." (M&D, Ch. 1, p. 6)

What position, then, does this put our Thomas Ruggles
Pynchon, Jr. in?  "Too much evidence of Juvenile
Rampage at the wrong moment, however, and ...."  Note,
by the way, that Dixon is both a friend and a Friend,
Mason's friend and a member, however fallen, of the
Society of Friends, a Quaker.  And does that learning
to "pass this Ability from Parents to Pups" have
Lamarckian overtones?  See, e.g. ...

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/lamarck.html

Well, maybe anachronistically, although one might note
that "anachronism" is as pointely chracteristic as
anything of those Pynchonian texts ... and see as well
Caleb Crain, "The Artistic Animal," Lingua Franca,
Vol. 11, No. 7 (October 2001), on the apparently
emerging field of "biopoetics" ...

   "'Most people are too chicken to do what she's
doing,' says Leda Cosmides, a psychology professor at
the University of California at Santa Barbara. 'Ellen
[Dissanayake] is one of the bravest people I know,
because she was willing to go after an interesting
question early on, before the more timid would touch
it.'
   "Dissanayake posed that question boldly in her
first book: 'Since all human societies, past and
present, so far as we know, make and respond to art,
it must contribute something essential to human life.
But what?' ...."

http://www.linguafranca.com/print/0110/cover.html

I kind of like Steven Pinker's (The Language Instinct)
take on this question therein.  "Pinker likens the
arts to pornography, strawberry cheesecake, and drug
abuse. Drug abuse, for example, is present in almost
every culture, consumes gross amounts of an
individual's energy and resources, and is intensely
pleasurable.  But it is not a behavior that anyone
would call adaptive."  Professor Pinker, Fang; Fang,
Professor Pinker ...

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