MDDM: Town and Country

[Scott Badger]

Rob:
> But I still suspect that Jere is acting the clown at 331.16, and that the
> sudden and ironic shift in tenor, register and tone eases the
> stand-off with
> Mrs Harland somewhat. It's a similar sort of act when he takes the lead in
> the bar in Lancaster Town in Ch. 34, where he describes the
> recent massacre
> of the Susquehannock as "a neoclassickal Instance of the Catastrophick
> Resolution of Inter-Populational Cross-Purposes". (343.10) The humour is
> again self-effacing - he's making fun of himself and Mason as "men of
> Science" - though there is a real cutting edge to the comedy in both
> instances. Along with his talent for surveying Dixon has quite a way with
> words (and discourse), too. And I still have the impression that
> Mason isn't
> too comfortable with his partner's recourses to verbal hi-jinx.
>

Yes. If "grudgingly", perhaps only posed.

On another note, scenes like this one make me wonder what a stage adaptation
of _M&D_ could be like. Pretty good, I'd bet.

Scott Badger