MDDM Ch. 70 Prolegomena

[Dave Monroe]

>From David Foreman, "Historical Documents Relating to
Mason & Dixon," Pynchon and Mason & Dixon, ed. Brooke
Horvath and Irving Malin (Newark: U of Delaware P,
2000), pp. 143-66 ...

"There is a game among Thomas Pynchon's readers.  In
order to cope with the enormous amount of scientific,
historical, pop-cultural, and artistic references in
Pynchon's novels (some of them of dubious accuracy),
the reader must ask at some point, 'Is this true or is
he making this up?'" (p. 143)

"To compound these difficulties, Pynchon' novels often
present imagined events and people as if they are
true." (p. 143)

Once again, what work of fiction doesn't, but ...

"The most important surviving document relevant to
Pynchon' novel is The Journal of Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon ..." (p. 144)

Mason, Charles and Jeremiah Dixon.
   The Journal of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.
   Ed. A. Hughlett Mason.  Philadelphia: American
   Philosophical Society, 1969.

Included as well, with some omissions, in ...

Clerc, Charles.  Mason & Dixon & Pynchon.
   Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2000.  153-229.

   "A. Hughlett Mason reports that The Journal was
written in a single hand and is signed 'C:Mason,'
evidence that it was Charles Mason who wrote the 
entire diary." (p. 145)

   "Other copies of The Journal exist....  Each is an
edited version of Mason's notes, composed by the
astronomer himself and given to the proprietors of
Maryland and Pennsylvania upon completion of the
survey....  Pynchon makes use of these other versions
of The Journal...." (p. 146)

"Beyond these technical details, there remains a
greater question to be resolved.  How does this
preponderance of information, some of it true and some
of it invented, affect the readers interpretation of
the history of Mason and Dixon or of history in
general?  What is the relationship between 'the facts'
and fiction?" (p. 144)

"... what apparently caught the attention of Pynchon
is not the plethora of scientific information, but the
incidental impressions related by Mason about his
experiences in America.  In his introduction to A
'Gravity's Rainbow' Companion, Steven Weisenburger
tells us that 'Pynchon's eye seems preternaturally
alert for moments of personal testimony, comments
often buried in footnotes or beneath heaps of
technical data and objective detail.'" (p. 147)

Weisenburger, Steven C.  A Gravity's Rainbow
   Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's
   Novel.  Athens: U of Georgia P, 1988.  p. 8

"In the instances of Pynchon's citations of the
'Field'Book,' we can generally rely on the narrator's
authenticity.  Direct quotations are faithful to the
original.  However, Pynchon is not entirely accurate
in his employment of temporal details ..." (p. 150)

"To claim that Pynchon 'sticks to the facts' is an
overstatement.  For each shred of evidence in favor of
the novel's historical authenticity, there is a moment
of anachronism and absurdity." (p. 151)

"This conflation of truth and fantasy has the effect
of calling into question the nature of history and
historiography.   If we continue our reading of
Pynchon with possible source documents in mind, we
find that his manipulation of history and distortion
of historical fact are not wholly inconsistent with
traditional historical interpretations of Mason and
Dixon.
   Pynchon takes his case to greater extremes, but
there is nonetheless evidence of creativity in the
secondary historical documents." (p. 152)

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