MDDM Ch. 67 Various

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, August 27, 1956 12:29 PM
Subject: MDDM Ch. 67 Various
>
> I'm still not convinced that anyone other than Pynchon has named those
> "Indians!" Pynchon hasn't "named" Charles Mason, or Jeremiah Dixon, or
Hugh
> Crawfford, or any other of the characters from history who inhabit his
> fiction. It seems odd that he would create fictional (and seemingly jokey
or
> incongruous) names instead of using actual names for the men and women
from
> the Six Nations delegation who really did meet with Mason and Dixon on 14
> June 1767, with Hugh Crawfford (or Crawford) acting as interpreter.
>
> http://www.ls.net/~newriver/md/masondixon.htm
>
> If the actual names of the "Indians!" weren't or aren't recorded, which
> seems likely, then I wonder why Pynchon decided to give them fictitious
> names at all, and why he made up these names in particular.
>

1. Is it really more far out than naming a "German" Herero Enzian or giving
GW's house-slave the Jewish name Gershom?

2. Contrary to the historical record at least he lets them have names and by
doing so, personality.

3. Wasn't it a white & racist habit to rename colonised people instead of
leaving them their birth names?

Otto

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