M&D or It's about Religion

[John Bailey]

>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>If M&D is a novel about Slavery, it must be novel about Dixon.

It must be novel? Or a novel? Interesting thought either way.



>http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/p_0438.htm

Superb link; thank you for it.

>Pynchon's novels are all "Tales About America" (MD.7)

Are his English characters American characters? Pynchon is located in the 
US, which in one way makes Dixon as American as can be. Or does it? I agree 
that Pynchon's novels are in a large way 'About America', both consciously 
and otherwise. A lot of the correspondence on this list is about America too 
(I'm not writing that in a disparaging way)

>
>They all have an American Hero.
>
>They are all quest narratives:  in search of  V, not so much what has
>been or what could be but what could have been, a fork in the road, a
>Prairie, a subjunctive America.
>
>Dixon is the hero.
>

Do we need another hero?

You might just be acting naughty by bringing up that word, a troubled one 
for these troubled times, but if Dixon is being placed into some kind of 
Hero Myth then it's a pretty average one. Earlier works by this author are 
more productive in this respect, and are pretty obviously playing on the 
motif, but M&D is the first Pynchon novel in which the quest narrative 
begins to slip, get a bit saggy...the relationship between M&D is, in my 
opinion, more important, and shows a move away from the permutations of the 
quest with no end you'll find elsewhere, and I think it's about time. 
Perhaps the next novel will return to that drama (searching for some maths 
formula) but I sort of hope not. We get it already.



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