William Slothrop & the slave driver
Bandwraith at aol.com
Bandwraith at aol.com
Tue Aug 27 05:52:11 CDT 2002
Interesting, appropriate, analogous, but not at all the
same, for at least the rationalization made by Dixon
for not being in the market.
Another very good reason, however, for me to remain
a vegan.
In a message dated 8/26/02 12:22:18 PM, tyronemullet at hotmail.com writes:
<< William admires the pigs, enjoys their company, treats them well. When all
is said and done, he sells them for slaughter. Which would count more if
weighed against a feather, ma'at style?
Steve Maas
Bandwraith:
>[…]The Driver has no interest in maintaining a
>long term relationship with the "perishables" and
>seeks only to drive them to market and turn a profit.[…]
Copied from HyperArts (from GR 555):
"[William Slothrop] and his son John got a pig operation going--used to
drive hogs right back down the great escarpment, back over the long pike to
Boston, drive them just like sheep or cows. By the time they got to market
those hogs were so skinny it was hardly worth it, but William wasn't really
in it so much for the money as just for the trip itself. He enjoyed the road
[...] --and most of all just being with those pigs. They were good company.
Despite the folklore and the injunctions in his own Bible, William came to
love their nobility and personal freedom, their gift for finding comfort in
the mud on a hot day--pigs out on the road, in company together, were
everything Boston wasn't, and you can imagine what the end of the journey,
the weighing, slaughter and dreary pigless return back up into the hills
must've been like for William."
"William must've been waiting for the one pig that wouldn't die, that would
validate all the ones who'd had to, all his Gadarene swine who'd rushed into
extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men,
which the men kept betraying...possessed by innocence they couldn't
lose...by faith in William as another variety of pig, at home with the
Earth, sharing the same gift of life...."
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list