MDMD2: Question marks

[John Bailey]

This is interesting stuff, and I was going to bring up some related stuff 
for Chapter 3 (are we ready to go, Mr Monroe? I'm beginning to realise that 
M&D kind of needs a little more time per chapter than we had originally 
allocated, or at least would benefit from it, especially as it is the sort 
of novel that is best appreciated by a reeeeeally leisurely read, try it 
aloud if you can, letting all that marvellous language swirl around in the 
mouth, digesting it at the pace it begs to be digested, mmm, more food 
metaphors, just can't get enough can I? Personally, I think that 11 would be 
an ideal if not exactly round number of days to devote to each section, and 
that way if somebody disappears their section could be described as the 
'missing 11 days', hence allowing a little bit more of this novel to seep 
into our experiences...)

Anyway, regarding Dixon's question marks:

I'd always assumed it was a function of (Pynchon's excellent ear for) 
accents - I was once told that the easiest way to sound like a Northerner 
(Northern English that is) is to raise the pitch of the ends of your 
sentences? So that statements come out sounding like questions? The issue 
here is...sound like questions to whom? To what reader? The novel, I think, 
isn't assuming a Northern English reader? Hmmm. I want to get back to this 
but any comments would be appreciated.

And just quickly, I noticed that someone sitting near me (with a 
Cornish/Welsh hybrid accent) just asked me two questions and the ends of her 
sentences went down, so they came out sounding like statements. Quite a few 
lines in P's novels, I've noticed, are questions that don't have question 
marks (*heaps* of these in V., actually). Sorry I haven't any examples to 
hand, but, well, whachagonnadoabouddit? More to follow.


>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: MDMD2: Question marks
>Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 12:02:02 -0400
>
>
>
>Dave Monroe wrote:
>
>  but anyone notice how virtually
> > everything Dixon's said so far has been phrased in the
> > form of a question?  Mason & Dixon & Trebek ...
>
>
>"A party of Fops, Macaronies, or Lunarians, -- it is difficult quite to
>distinguish which," works its way into the tale here. MD.21
>
>It's difficult to distinguish which?
>
>Note, as Paul noted, things are dropped in on the reader, on the tale
>itself it seems, or we pick it up in mid dialogue, and the Fop names are
>introduced by dialogue.
>
>
>Derek? You are talking to a D-O-G? MD.23 at the top
>
>And
>
>"...don't we Algernon?" MD22 at the bottom
>
>What about the punctuation here, the question marks?
>Not really questions. We are getting a lot of these.
>
>I can't help but read the Fop "questions" as inflectional?
>But maybe I'm thinking stereotypes here again.


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