MDDM: Town and Country

[Scott Badger]

> 'Mr. Tumbling
> > fir'd his Rifle at us'. (331.16)
>
> I think Dixon is just being honest - faux innocence which
> comically deflates
> Mason's discourse and authority. Mason has tried to bamboozle Mrs Harland
> with technical data in order to avoid her question. She isn't fooled, so
> Dixon answers her question directly.

Isn't it Dixon, though, that goes on about zero points, latitudes and
longitudes and the West Line, i.e. avoiding the question, before finally
admitting the contingent nature of their choice? '"We gambl'd," suppose
Mason and Dixon.' That persistent modicum of chance, no matter how
'declarative' the World becomes.

> I think one of the prominent themes of _M&D_ is the tension between urban
> and rural cultures. It plays out in Mason's and Dixon's bickering with one
> another right from the outset, and is evident here when Dixon shares a
> private joke with farmer Harland at Cha's expense at 331.33. The passage
> detailing the "cryptick Intestinal Commentary" of the sausages hanging
> against the sky which opens Ch. 29 foregrounds the theme very strongly.
> (289) And, boundary-making and litigation (and, to a degree, politics) are
> shown to be the province of city folk, and the way that the city
> aspires to
> exert control over the land, as well as over those who make their living
> from the land. Pynchon shows that the process of cultural imperialism
> operates in subtle ways as well as in its more obvious colonial
> and imperial
> manifestations of war, trade, and subjugation of aboriginal populations.

I agree, but having grown up in, and returned to, a town of 600 or so (2
hours from the nearest semi-metropolitan area), some might say I'm biased
(or blessed...).

Scott Badger