MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[jbor]

on 25/8/02 11:35 AM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> We agree that Wicks is telling this story, of Dixon's encounter with the
> slave-driver?

No, we don't. There is discussion in the parlour between (at least) Wicks
and Ives about Dixon's "family story" (695-6), but this is presented prior
to the narration of the scene in the novel's text, which means that what is
about to be told is already known by (at least) Wicks and Ives. Otherwise,
this framing discussion could not have taken place. It's paradoxical,
certainly, but deliberately so, Pynchon being a postmodernist writer rather
than a 19th Century realist. So, no, I don't agree that it is apt or useful
to think of Wicks "telling the story" here in any simplistic, Robin Williams
monologue-type way, that parenthetic interpolation at 698.1 and apparent
response to it in the narration notwithstanding.

I also think that an interpretive argument about the text which falls back
on something like (paraphrasing) "it's only Wicks, so it doesn't count" is a
cop-out. On the other hand, I do think that the historiographical debate
between Wicks and Ives which is narrated in the text on pp. 695-6 (not
narrated by Wicks, of course - do you agree?), and other such moments, are
an important framing context for this scene in particular, and for the novel
as a whole.

best