MDDM Ch. 29 Some comments

[jbor]

on 23/1/02 4:56 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> Mason's melancholia seems
> to compounds his gullibility.

Yes, and lack of sleep and unfamiliar environs are playing their part as
well. He is becoming increasingly neurotic, to the point where Dixon is
prompted into "casting him curious, offended looks" because of how he is
acting at the meeting with the Commissioners. (292.3)

I think that both "the Mob" (i.e. the Mobility) and "the Commissioners" are
as nameless and faceless as the other group in this chapter, and that there
isn't really a distinct empathy either way.

Even though they do "go Tavern-hopping" together, for the bulk of the
chapter Mason is out on his own, and seems to have reverted to the same sort
of self-destructive habits which Rebekah's death provoked in him: his
"unabating Search after the Grisly", after "Gothickal experiences", all for
the "husbanding of Melancholy". (cf 110.9)

I think the opening paragraph of the chapter is a narratorial meditation
(Wicks's?) on the way that cities and cosmopolitan pretensions develop, how
a false barrier is set up to protect the etiquettes and niceties of 'polite'
society from the brutal "Country Realities" upon which the whole urban
experience depends. The displayed sausages *are* the "cryptick Intestinal
Commentary" which the first part of the paragraph has detailed.

I also think that Ben Franklin's grotesque apparition as "Death" at 'The
Orchid Tavern' at chapter's end confirms the negative characterisation which
began to become apparent back in Ch. 27. If anything, his activities are
portrayed as even more malevolent here. But I think that Pynchon's main
gripe with him seems to be to do with his role in the harnessing of
electricity as an energy source (and thus, in the future development of "the
Grid"). The danse macabre he conducts out into the thunderstorm symbolises
the way that the quest for energy will lead humanity blithely towards
suicide. His comments in the last paragraph seem to indicate that Ben is
fully aware of what the consequences of his experimentation and discoveries
will be, and see him as something of a Manichaean megalomaniac. The "odd
strangl'd cries of Amusement" of the Fops, like the "giggling, and indeed
Screaming" during the battery experiment, while portraying their (i.e.
*our*) ignorance of the potential disaster to come, do not totally exonerate
those who follow him either. Ben does join "the end of the Line", after all,
and Mason, who does not, certainly does get the "Gothickal" titillation he
was seeking.

Personally, I think it's all a bit over the top.

best