MDDM: ch. 67 "Garden Pests"

[Terrance]

Otto wrote:
> 
> On p. 647.34-35 Mason "complains to the Rev'd" that the Indians are making
> him nervous -- a clue that it's not Wicks telling here but the narrator who
> opens the book? But the used tense here is present, not past or past perfect
> as at the beginning of the book or of Chapter Three where Wicks really takes
> over ("I was not there when they met").


Of course the RC could still be telling the tale at this point in the
chapter. He could be the narrator for the entire chapter, perhaps
referring to himself in third person, sort of like Stencil. Although
this particular example and others are not like the third person
narratives of Stencil or Henry Adams. Stencil often says things like,
"Stencil doesn't want to go to Malta."  Adams says things like, "Adams
realized that education doesn't go on forever." But neither, I think, 
uses the second person dialogue marker included in your example ("to the
Revd" or see 648.8 "says the Revd). Do they? 

At the end of Chapter 8 in V. we learn that Stencil is told about
Mondaugan's adventures in SWA. The entire tale, including a few
questions takes only 30 minutes to convey, but as the next Chapter
(Mondaugen's Story) is very long because it has been Stencilized. 
It has been lengthened and added to. By Stencil? That's the implication,
but  the tale doesn't really read like a tale told by Stencil at all,
but by another narrator closer to the author. 

It's possible that the RC tells the entire tale, but this sort of
reading reminds me of the critic that read GR in its entirety as
Pirate's dream. 

There is no question but that we have several narrators in this novel.
Some of the episodes are Stencilized by the RC, that is the RC has heard
the tale or has some notes on or about the tale or a Journal whatever,
but when he begins telling it, the tale is expounded, compounded,
rounded, abounded, and Stencilized. Early on in the narrative the  RC
gets caught in the act of tall-tale telling and even exaggerating his
own exploits. 

At 649 we get, "and so on (records the Revd) followed by the Revd's
comment that 
"**IF** I did lose consciousness now and then..." and a dream that he
had in which he seems to have been not completely asleep, it being the
first dream he can remember wherein he smelled things (that Mark Twain,
Mr. T Stuff you know). 

Anyway, P has deliberately mixed up the narrative and introduced all
manner of ambiguity. Call it postmodern if you like, although even Brian
McHale admits that V. is not a postmodern novel and it has most of same
narrative stuff. So, as many a critic has pointed out do the novels of
Melville. In fact, the RC's disappearance and the staging of episodes
(this is also a feature of the novel V.) is nothing new under the
American sun. 

In any event, I think it is clear that once the dagga is introduced at
655, our fantastik narrator has taken over. There is a pattern to P's
narratives that ends with the fantastic. 

The guy that nails all this is not Brian McHale, but 

              A Hand to Turn the Time: The Menippean Satires of Thomas
Pynchon 
              Theodore D. Kharpertian / Hardcover / Published 1990