MDDM Chapter 44 Notes & Musings

[John Bailey]

Chapter 44: Notes and Musings

Well, we’re 440 pages into 773 page book, and the party is only just now 
setting out on the Line. This upset me a little on first reading. It’s not 
the ‘linear’ narrative I’d been made to expect from reviews. Sure, there’s a 
kind of teleology to it, but the Line itself takes up very little of the 
narrative. The next few chapters cover the period during which the line was 
walked, but a lot of it is taken up by diversions and digressions. Not that 
I have a problem with that. But it does make it obvious that the Line 
itself, which is the thing most people would associate with M&D, is not here 
of importance in itself, but only as a symptom of other forces, 
relationships, jostlings of power and traces of history. From this Chapter 
on, however, the Line is at least there, in the background, forming as a 
real, physical fact, and it begins here, at the Post Mark’d West.

440: ‘Ley-lines’: s/z noted in the first read-through that this term wasn’t 
coined until the 1920s. 
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9801&msg=22892&sort=date

The Rev’s description calls to mind (my mind at least) the later railroad 
expansion to the West, and the powerful changes in society, as well as 
individual psychology, which it effected; as well as, perhaps, the internet, 
the Jesuit Telegraph, and other ‘imaginary’ elisions of space. The 
implication seems to be that the Line, in fact any line of this sort, is 
powerful precisely because it allows the mind to reduce physical space to a 
function of consciousness. Something is always lost in this translation, 
which is why the Line is often painted as a negative force.

This section is written by Wicks, and once again the Rev. is not exactly 
espousing orthodoxy. ‘Something is there, that permits it…I try not to 
wonder. I must wonder.’ Spooky talk. I think that the suggestion here is 
that the drawing of the line permits it.

441.8: “He ain’t just hummin’ ‘Love in a Cottage,’ either”: ‘Love in a 
Cottage’ by Nathaniel Parker Willis. 1806–1867 is available at 
http://www.bartleby.com/102/52.html
Don’t know if it’s the same one, and once again it would be an anachronism, 
but that’s to be expected by now. These anachronisms are discussed in much 
greater detail in the closing chapters of the book.

441.11: ‘The Wild Ranger’: Or the Crack-Shot of the West, a dime novel 
written c. 1880. Is this a possible source? Image can be found at 
http://www.kansasdigital.org/fullrecord.asp?resourceID=73
Of course this could be a reference to the Lone Ranger, or just an original 
name Mrs Harland gives her hubby.

442: The ‘Ghost’ in the crystal: This could be taken as a potent image of 
the act of interpretation, especially of Pynchon’s work. Seeking a pure, 
‘perfectly formed’ core of truth hidden inside a more flawed formation is 
one of those tropes Pynchon plays with over and over.

‘Jonas Everybeet’ What’s with that name? Is it a joke on the ‘Everyman’? 
Only this time he represents vegetables?
Main Entry: beet
Pronunciation: 'bEt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English bete, from Old English bEte, from Latin beta
Date: before 12th century
: a biennial garden plant (Beta vulgaris) of the goosefoot family that has 
several cultivars (as Swiss chard and sugar beet) and possesses thick 
long-stalked edible leaves and swollen root used as a vegetable, as a source 
of sugar, or for forage; also : its root

443: ‘O’Rooty’ is another vegetative-styl’d name, though it also brings to 
mind the chorus of ‘Tutti Frutti’

443.1: “…that bothersome Crimp, O’Rooty”
Main Entry: 3crimp
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from 1crimp
Date: 1758
: a person who entraps or forces men into shipping as sailors or into 
enlisting in an army or navy

…which makes sense. Also refers to his profession, ‘body-jobber,’ or one who 
trades in men’s labour capital (their bodies).

444.1: ‘Friths and fells’: A frith is an archaic term for an estuary, a fell 
for a moor or fallow field (yeah, I fell for a moor once, ha ha)

444.11: “Mason, having visited Bedlam as well as Tyburn, in a profound Mime 
of calm and Patience, Dixon playing his part with equal vigor, using as his 
models any number of Lunaticks to be found in Bishop, any market day.” I 
like this sentence, as it shows how the Surveyors, Dixon especially, are 
kind of aware of the roles they slip into, especially in regards to 
complimenting the other. Mason is compelled to put on a mask of ‘calm and 
Patience’ in response to the overreaction (to the land developer) he 
perceives in Dixon, while Dixon in turns hams up the crazy man act in 
response to Mason. It makes for an entertaining scene, and one which echoes 
well the way each character is a little more self-aware than first 
appearances might suggest. This is probably quite crucial to the genuine 
friendship and sense of loss which builds later in the novel, where Mason 
mentions wistfully the way he and Dixon used to joke around.

444.19: ‘Enfilade’: Main Entry: 1en·fi·lade
Pronunciation: 'en-f&-"lAd, -"läd
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from enfiler to thread, enfilade, from Old French, to 
thread, from en- + fil thread
Date: circa 1730
1 : an interconnected group of rooms arranged usually in a row with each 
room opening into the next
2 : gunfire directed from a flanking position along the length of an enemy 
battle line

445.4: ‘Detachment. The beginning of the West.’ A grand claim, but a good 
one. If we think of detachment as the privileging of the Cool over the Care, 
we can see resonances with a lot of GR stuff here. The Line requires 
detachment, that is, a detached imaging of the world, etc, the imposition of 
distance. Slavery requires it too. In the last MD group-read I think someone 
brought up this comment in relation to the ‘Great Chain of Being’ which has 
been mentioned here. This holds water: the beginning of the West as 
coincident with humanity’s self-detachment from the Chain. Food for thought.

446.26: ‘Neat’s tongue pies’:
Main Entry: 1neat
Pronunciation: 'nEt
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural neat or neats
Etymology: Middle English neet, from Old English nEat; akin to Old High 
German nOz head of cattle, Old English nEotan to make use of, Lithuanian 
nauda use
Date: before 12th century
: the common domestic bovine (Bos Taurus)

447: Also note the Rev. is mentioned in the third person here which once 
agin complicates his role as narrator. Personally, I don’t think we’re meant 
to be taking him as ‘the’ narrator here, or in much of the book. Pynchon’s 
books certainly don’t go for an Omniscient Narrator, and I’d go so far as to 
suggest they replace it with a Lazy and Easily Distracted Narrator.

447.19: ‘Quitrent’
Main Entry: quit·rent
Pronunciation: 'kwit-"rent
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
: a fixed rent payable to a feudal superior in commutation of services; 
specifically : a fixed rent due from a socage tenant


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