MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[Richard Fiero]

Terrance wrote:
>. . .
>The novel is incredibly sad in my opinion. It is alienating and
>fragmenting from this reader's POV. And, it is so because this is what P
>has created, a sad, tragic, alienating, fragmenting, text.

Could this be seventeenth century Existentialism?

>But don't get me wrong, the text does have happy times, funny ones,
>comic, but it's mostly sad and tragic, alienating and fragmenting.
>
>But not to worry, it's only a text.
>
>And, imho, that Dixon does or doesn't whip the man is not a very
>significant question and if he did or did not whip the Driver doesn't
>really matter much to my reading of the book and Dixon's character.
>
>. . .
>Dixon is a violent man. He is manic in all his emotions, including
>anger.

Dixon may pack a piece but never shoots anyone. His repudiation 
of both oppression and organized violence is quite successful-- 
not fighting another man with outward weapons.

Alienating?
"The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very 
hard thing to be in American life. ---Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis"  from
<http://members.aol.com/CazadoraKE/private/Philo/Existentialism/zKdawords3.htm>http://members.aol.com/CazadoraKE/private/Philo/Existentialism/zKdawords3.htm
and the completely obvious
"Freud argues that we submit to language by being a member of 
"society." From this web, he argues, comes our image of 
ourselves, our desires, our obligations, etc.. Rhetoric is 
centrally involved in
this presentation of the self, as Freud writes: "concealing and 
revealing, proving and disproving, tempting and being tempted." 
We never meet "reality" face to face; we only view reality 
through the screen of language which brings its own values." from
<http://168.16.169.58/freud.htm>http://168.16.169.58/freud.htm

Pynchon does not seem to provide twentieth century insights 
into the seventeenth century concepts of M&D. Alienating indeed!
This was a time of 'substance theories' used to explain the 
physical world. Concepts of field, force, energy and the 
conservation of energy didn't exist. Subtle Fluids, if you will.