MDDM Ch. 70 Scalping Lord Lepton

[jbor]

Bandwraith wrote:

> I think that the giant hemp tree episode is
> one of the weaker spots in the novel. Surely there is an
> attempt to anachronistically connect the bands of rival
> "jobbers" with an overly romamticised version of modern
> drug gangs feuding over product, but it does not play well.

I disagree. I don't see in this recount an analogy with modern drug gangs,
who are on the whole distributors rather than primary producers, and whose
retail product is generally more chemical than herbal. There's no Native
American connection either, except in that modern-day drug gangs often
develop amongst (other) marginalised ethnic minorities. I think it plays
rather more aptly as a demonstration of the inherent tendency to avarice in
all human cultures, just as the example of the Catawbas' booby traps and the
explanation which follows (676) exemplify a wider tendency towards
internecine conflict.

> Clearly, the symbolism of a five-sided star on the Cheek-
> Piece of the paradigm of that day's lethality should not be
> lost. 

I'm not at all sure about Pentacle = Pentagon, inverted or no, but I agree
that the symbolism is there. Wade LeSpark calls it a "Cryptogram" (428.29)
Tracking back, the sign over the 'The Dutch Rifle' tavern in Lancaster Town
sported the same symbol, where it was described as

    ... a sure sign of evil at work, universally recogniz'd as the Horns of
    the D---l. No one would adorn a Firearm with it, who was not wittingly
    in the service of that Prince. (342)

This is both Mason and Dixon, but I think that that "universally recogniz'd"
is the narrator, too. This connection, between Lord Lepton and the Paxton
posse who committed the heinous massacre at Lancaster gaol, seems more of a
reason why Lepton, for Catfish, was "a White man I have wished to meet for a
long time." (681.1) And so this is perhaps another case of mistaken identity
after all? Note also how Catfish, like Dixon, Lepton and Wade LeSpark,
covets the gun as a "Beautiful Piece".

On the symbolism of the Pentagram:

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/p/pentacle.html

http://www.religioustolerance.org/wic_pent.htm

> Is Mason's obsessively superstitious
> reaction to the sterloop just his own- remember Wicks tried
> to reason with him about this same topic back at Lepton
> castle- or, is Pynchon using another klutzy trope to once
> again undercut any of those possible "invisible connections,"
> while at the same time tempting any of us inclined toward
> high magic to step across the threshold?

I think you might mean Wade LeSpark, who is telling that part of the Lepton
Castle story (428.5 ff). I don't really get the "klutzy trope" idea.

Of Catfish's judgement:
> 
> "... He was a very bad man. Even White People hated him." (681.1)

on 21/8/02 12:07 PM, Richard Fiero at rfiero at pophost.com wrote:

> My reading certainly differs here. This is great humor on the
> part of Catfish who is implying that "Whites are so bad that
> it's unthinkable that a White could hate someone for badness
> unless that person was supremely bad."

I think the statement is meant more as a function of LL's particular
"badness" than as a representation of Catfish's racial intolerance towards
"White People" in general.

best