MDDM Ch. 25 "the Company Perimeter"

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 From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>

 [It's not only those territories controlled by Clive's East India Company,
 but also the new American colonies themselves which Mason describes as
 "Charter'd Companies". He notes that in all of these places "Control of the
 Company Perimeter is ever implicit" (252.28), and seems to be of the opinion
 that that's a good thing (though Dixon remains rather unimpressed).]

I get the feeling that Dixon is less blaise and more
attempting to downplay his lack of sophistication in such
matters. Mason, on the other hand, seems intent on 
condescending to Dixon in much the same way that
Maskelyne demonstrated Mason's own lack of 
sophistication with regard to world affairs, but in Mason's 
case, with all the success of someone who must be ever vigilant
for "the Bumpkin within" i.e., he becomes a parody of
himself, and generally undercuts his own authority. The
two make quite a pair. It is also interesting to once
again note Pynchon's indirectness w/r/t complicated
issues like anti-semitism. That is, the narrator takes pains
to let the reader know that it is Mason who is detailing
Maskelyne's apparent anti-semitic take on competitive
global trade issues, as Mason is both condescending to
Dixon and putting Maskelyne down, making it that much
more difficult to discern who has the moral high-ground.


 [It strikes me that the various European Trade Companies are here diagnosed
 by Pynchon as the politico-economic precursors of "the cartel" - or "They" -
 in _GR_, and that that theme of complicity, the recognition that "They" are
 in fact *us*, is again foregrounded. Dixon and Mason are effectively (even
 if unwittingly) Nabobs, or "Naboblets" or "Chicken Nabobs" at the very
 least, as much as they keep trying to fool themselves that they are purely
 men of science. Further, whatever security which "the Company Perimeter"
 affords is a double-edged sword, for it is also a species of imprisonment.]

Now this use of the finely drawn interactions of two 
individuals done with inimitable pynchonian attention to
detail in order to highlite the global scale historical concerns you
mention, I find to be one of the more challenging aspects
w/r/t the creation of the narrative. How much freight can
they carry before they become merely allegorical? And the
same question might be asked about the creation of that part
of the context which is not a matter of historical record, i.e.,
how much latitude is available and how are the historical and
biographical constraints- the narrative perimeter if you will-
used and abused to tell a story, make points and stay out of
I think there was significant concern about Pynchon's ability
to portray "realistic" characters leading up to publication of
M&D in the little criticism I was aware of, particularly by those
who didn't by into the notion that "the self" was not necessarily
something which could be taken for granted.


[ Interestingly also, despite Pynchon's focus on coffee in _M&D_, in the last
 instalment of the current run of his excellent doco 'A History of Britain'
 Simon Schama noted that it was in fact sugar cane which was "the cash crop
 of the Empire", and that the institution of slavery in the Caribbean, and
 particularly Barbados, was very much an invention of *British* commerce and
 enterprise. He described how the sugar industry in the West Indies, and the
 West African slave trade which it inaugurated, provided the capital upon
 which the British Empire was subsequently built.]

Saw some of that myself and was equally surprised.