MDDM Ch. 27 Apothecary shoppe

[jbor]

I guess the interesting thing to find out is whether or not Ben Franklin did
actually meet up with Mason and Dixon at some point - I imagine that if he
had it would be recorded in his journals or correspondence somewhere.

The meeting, "quite by chance", in Mr Mispick's store, strikes me as a
literary contrivance of the same order as the runaway Octuple Gloucester
back at Stroud.

(I suspect the answer to the question of whether or not they did meet is -
"We don't know." On second thoughts, that's probably not right at all. I
imagine Ben's life is very thoroughly documented, and it's probably common
knowledge that they did meet on quite a few occasions. But I think Pynchon's
instinct in the novel is that the probability that they met at some very
early stage in the venture is high, and he purposely inserts the hints that
Ben had in fact manipulated this initial "chance" meeting in order to give a
feeling of the back-room dealings and intrigue within the American political
scene of the time. As Mason says: "I am sorry the Politics here have become
so, as one would say, Italian, in their intricacies." 269.23)

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