MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 2:32 AM
Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver


>
> "its purpose purely to express hate with,
> and
> Hate's Corollary,-- to beg for the same denial of
> Mercy, should, one day, the roles be revers'd.
> Gambling that they may not be. Or, that they may."
>
>
> Whose purpose?  The whip's, "The Driver's Whip" being
> the noun referred to by the pronoun "its".
>

Who is using it? -- the slave-driver. To what purpose:

696.8 "(...) the contempt of the monger (...) for his Merchandise"

who's contempt?


> Re the whip, Pynchon writes, "its purpose purely to
> express hate with"  (how can a whip hate?  good
> question, but that's the sentence Pynchon writes
> here),  "its purpose ...... to beg for the same denial
> of Mercy" (another of "its" purposes, according to
> this sentence).
>

No, only according to your incorrect reading of the scene. The "purpose" of
the whip is defined by the one using it. In the slave-driver's case it is
hate, in Dixon's case reversing the roles it's education:

698.35 "I guess *you've* never felt this." "this" -- what's this he's gonna
feel? The whip of course and I don't need a 19th-century mimetic novel-style
to "see" that he gets it now. How often? Maybe only once or twice but I
still think that Rob's argumentation of *eight times* is quite convincing.

>
> > Whips don't "beg", nor do they
> > experience "pleasure", nor do
> > they gamble.
>
> The way Pynchon has structured this sentence, this
> Whip does, this whip expresses something, it's a kind
> of metaphor, in this sentence Pynchon also calls "The
> Driver's Whip" "an expression"  (world-as- text!), and
> repeats the "its" ("its tattered braiding" ... "its
> purpose") structure.
>

If this is a magic whip with a will of her own why should it deliver itself
to a Quaker's house?

>
> >  accurately
> > interpreted
>

Thanks, Rob.

> There's a loaded value judgement.  Some
> interpretations are more equal than others, even when
> they misinterpret the sentence structure of the
> passage being interpreted.  Interesting strategy.
>

Speaking of strategies  . . .

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 12:35 AM
Subject: Re: Opinions are like underwear
>
> Otto:
> >Mason and Dixon went on a camping trip. As they were settling in for the
> >night, Mason said:
>
>
> Doug:
> You're paraphrasing here, right?
>
> ;)
>

No, I only changed the names in a joke.

paraphrase:
A restatement of a text or passage in another form or other words, often to
clarify meaning
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=paraphrase

To clarify meaning, Doug, cla-ri-fy, not to twist it. What's got into you?
Please sit down.

Otto

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