MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[Terrance]

Richard Fiero wrote:
> 
> 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?

Why not 21st 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.

Right, but he tells us he is a violent man and I believe him. Do you? 

> 
> 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.

Both. So we get both Anatomy of Melancholy and Rousseau/Hobbes, but we
get Foucault and 
Freud.