MDDM: ch. 67 "Garden Pests"

[jbor]

on 6/8/02 2:04 PM, Doug Millison at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:

> This story of the giant Veggies also recalls the kinds
> of American tall tales that M&D sometimes seems to be
> playing with, as in the Werebeaver tale.  What
> specific reasons are there for not assuming that Wicks
> is narrating this part of the novel?

The text itself would take much longer than one evening to relate, there are
many episodes and insights described which Wicks would not have been privy
to, attitudes which are revealed through the dialectical cast of the
narrative are at odds with Wicks's fixed prejudices, and there are certain
episodes and interruptions, such as Eliza Fields' tale, which Wicks
explicitly isn't the agent of.

As well as this, Wicks's pompous tone, convoluted syntax and general
language register, as evidenced in the quotations from his journals and in
those brief sections of the narrative which are definitively attributed to
him (eg. 649.26-650.22) are quite distinctive, and quite unlike the
narrative proper. More specifically, I think that the repetition of the word
"fuck" in Thomas Cresap's speech at 638.13-23 is unlikely to have been part
of Wicks's tale within the drawing room context. Similarly, the observation
that "talking about things, while not exactly causing them to happen, does
cause something,-- which is almost the same, though not quite. Unless it is
possible to smoke a Potatoe. ..." (655) is a comically cryptic segue well
beyond Wicks. I'd say it refers to the way that Dixon and the "Indians!"
move from talking about dope to actually smoking it.

> The tall tale
> seems within the scope of his repetoire and
> story-telling skills. (Pynchon and no other writes and
> manages all of the story-telling between the covers of
> this fat tome, 

What about the excerpts from Mason's Field Book and various actual
quotations from other sources?

> but sorting out the narratological
> details is interesting enough, I suppose.) And the
> "fee fi fo fum" Jack and the Beanstalk detail seems
> intended to entertain the children

Weren't Pitt and Pliny sent to bed about 400 pages ago? And wasn't Wicks
drunk and babbling about 500 pages ago?

> as well as the
> adults present for the telling.  I guess you could
> assume that, off-stage, in a scene that Pynchon
> doesn't include in the novel,they've all gotten
> stoned and somebody is now hallucinating this episode

No, it's the characters back in 1767 who seem to be smoking the dope,
whoever is telling the story. (That was quite clear in my post but I'll give
you the benefit of the doubt and trust that you're not just free-flaming
again here.) I think the text certainly leaves open the possibility that the
giant vegetable detour is a dope fantasy rather than an actual visit to a
"real" place.

> (something that Pynchon doesn't seem to say, either),
> but why the need to explain it that way, it seems a
> tad cumbersome, rather more elegant to give Wicks the
> honors and honor the author's conceit.

And what would that conceit be, I wonder?

best