re Re: NP: Twain, Part One

[Terrance]

Mark Wright AIA wrote:
> 
> Howdy
> 
> *Goodness!* we squeal. This sounds like it might be one of the better
> scripts ever produced for the sitcom form; absurd, surreal, and above
> all CHEAP. Hell, even that hep sophisto Ellison would have paused
> mid-scold to crack a smirk at this one. Admit it -- this is what we
> love about TV.

This is what we love about America (American TV, Literature, Art, Music,
History, Heroes, Etc.....& Co.) America is so very exploitative. And
TRP, as  exceptional as we may think he is, is no exception. 

This Washington's Chapter begins with a passage from RC's SDB. The Rev
is concerned about all the cons and fusions that is America. Clearly
America is a fusion of cons (Confidence men Mr. Melville) and import and
invention. Its identity, down to its first President, a strange mixing
of foreign traditions  and native forms. 

Isn't it a bit odd that Mason and Dixon, after traveling about, still
expect to find English men in America? When Dixon and Mason, having 
grown up with no great span of ocean between them, meet, they can hardly
understand what the other is saying, let alone the other's customs,
religious practices and beliefs. Of course this is a normal thing.
Despite the fact that Dixon and Mason are both English Christians, close
in age, learned, share common interests, they are from quite different
planets altogether. 
When they meet both have certain fears and anxieties that are quite
normal --it's customary now and it was then to take care not to offend,
to hope  for and work toward the best possible first step when forging a
new relationship or when meeting a stranger. They are both men of
science and reason or reasonably so, but this fact/fiction  does not
safeguard them against prejudicial opinions based on stereotypes and the
like concerning the other's traditions, language, customs and even
vocations. 

But once in America, there eyes much surely see, for America is more
than a curious museum, more than mere cultural fusion, America is a
Force invisible, a force  comprehensive and inclusive (even as it
excludes and exterminates), a force to expand and manifest. A force
ghostly, rising from the earth, often with a grievance and a message
from beyond--Dixon floating in the fog is accosted by those attenuated
ghosts so ubiquitous in Ps fiction. 

There is something quite sinister about it, yes indeed (see for example,
"Collision At Cajamarca" Guns, Germs, And Steel by Jared Diamond or a
hundred other better books that have not been awarded the PP), something
as sinister as Cain with a stone, but America here, in adapting also,
the tenets of amiability to the experiences of the "New" (it's New to
me) World, tinkered and toyed and played with the old (Greek and Roman,
French and English, Chinese and Indian and the New (Iroquois and
African) and after bickering itself nearly into fragments, resolved its
many disputes with wars and tall tales and comic debate. I hate TV, but
I do love to watch the British Parliament. It's comedy at its best
because there are lives in the balance. The tall tale. Pynchon loves the
tall tale. It's as American as Apple Pie and the Yankees in the Bronx. I
submit, that those that have confused or neglected reality for fiction,
as Bandwraith (speaking like a "Moslem") admonished us not to,  even as
he compared Jim (a fictional character) with Twain (a nom de plume), but
I suspect he was speaking metaphorically or practicing the not uncommon
exploitative craft of fictional extrapolation, are reading Mr. Twain as
if he were Mr. Hardy (not the very Modern Mr. Hardy who  wrote Jude the
Obscure and the Poetry afterward, but the Victorian Mr. Hardy who wrote
Tess). Oh the pressure of America, so grand, so expansive, so divisive.
And how to contain it? With Satire of course. But how to draw the line,
not so fixed and formulated, to hem in a divisive satire with a frame of
humor and give a distinctive ring to the tolling of those American
bells, that American voice, national, patriotic (and these are not the
same thing in America) comic. 
On the surface, in the postmoderist penchant for the Continental or the
reactionary response to it, pynchon's fiction is often misplaced and
mis-read. P's aesthetic is said to be at odds with the act of reading
and writing fiction. His fiction is said to be Sadistic, littered with
nonsense and signs pointing at themselves, cul de sacs of red herrings
and  meaningless arcanum. All Satire, traditional satire. And American
to boot. This Washington Chapter is full of errors and contradictions
and lies. Lies, there is nothing Americans love more than TV, bit a lie
is a close second. No tradition of humor is richer in America than our
affection for liars like Huck and Twain, for no other form of native
humor so richly blends our conflicting desires for social subversion and
communal integration. Lying is not an American invention, but it is so
indispensable to a nation where the pressure to expand and manifest
plows over the bones of ghosts rising in its wake, while denizens,
practitioners par excellent of deceptions, cons and  fusions (not to
mention disguise or jesuit) comedy and tall tale telling, forge the
social and literary art of the nation. 

Man in the crowd: "Judas!" 

Dylan:  "I don't believe you. You're a liar!"