MDDM Ch. 70 Scalping Lord Lepton

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/21/02 8:05:12 AM, jbor at bigpond.com writes:

<< Yeah, I'm beginning to suspect, like Mason, that "perrhaps these
Occurrences,-- as others, are *invisibly connected* .... " (429)

>>My thinking was that Catfish had been seeking out the owner of the rifle
with the Lancaster Pentagram as "the one" responsible for the massacres of
the Susquehannock - a deliberate act of retribution, in other words - and
that Lepton's possession of a replica of one such rifle was the coincidental
cause of his demise. Which would still fit in with the poetic justice/Major
Marvy angle.<<

I think so. The multiplication of effect (of lethality) symbolized 
by the rifle, also seem to connect Lepton and Marvey through
time and text.

>>But I see the factory system, weapons production and trade, Enlightenment
and rationalism thing happening too. And the fetishisation, the beauty and
the cold hard finality of steel. Like Stig and his axe-blade.<<

Yes, and Gudrid's tale through Stig. From the outset, 
sort of an anti-romantic force at work here in Vineland, 
spinning out in parallel to that idyllic potential, which daily 
grows more remote.

>>I'm also wondering whether we can make connections between an
"Iron-Plantation" and more agricultural enterprises - other types of
"plantations" - along the same lines as the connection Dixon makes between
the caretaker-farmers and their giant beet and the Geordie coalminers?<<

Lepton's Castle reminds me somewhat of Foppl's, but this 
is Pennsylvania, and, as Wicks's suggests in his Spiritual 
Day-Book entry [481] is a land of even more contrasts-
"...where the most advanc'd and refin'd forms of Art are
daily exercis'd upon the machinery of Murder by Craftsmen
whose Piety is unquestion'd..." [inset 21].

The parlor discussion which immediately follows, led by
DePugh and then Ethelemer, concerning the German
Mysticks' Sermon, might shed some light on the
relationship between what's above, and of known 
dimension-the Beet, and, the "like-siz'd Vein of Coal 
beneath," but whose limits one can never be sure. 
[482-3]

Brae's comments which conclude the chapter suggest
that a need for order or symmetry might underlie
fetishism.