MDDM Ch. 30 Dolly

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy

Venturing into ha-penny lit crit territory for which I haven't the
training, I venture --

One of the characteristics of P's novels that I enjoy is the slippery
identity of the narrator. In GR especially, the POV/narrative-voice
slips continually, occasionally even within a single sentence. M&D
reads this way, to me, as well. The effect is almost cinematic: a
narrator begins to relate a tale and then the director and
cinematographer take over as the voice-over fades. The Wicks voice
slides away, and Pynchon (in his glorious 18th cent. costume) takes
over. The narrative runs, dreamily, and once in a while we snap awake
as it were when someone in the room interrupts Wicks. There are many
chapters in which Wicks' voice is absent entirely.

The sexual material, and much else, needn't be read as the Wicks voice
at all. It may be P's account of Wicks' imagination, or then again it
mayn't. Clearly the reader gets far more material to work with than Pit
and Pliny ever hear.

Mark

> Paul Mackin wrote:
> > 
> > Well, Wicks is telling the story WITH CHILDREN PRESENT. 

And T replies:

> Anyway, if Wicks is trying to tell
> tales
> that exclude sex, he not doing it. We could say that he is
> deliberately
> keeping Dixon's sex life off stage but that's another matter I think.
> At
> the Cape, we have young ladies who are sexually aggressive, the sit
> on
> Mason's lap,  we have Mason walking around with a hard-on, we have a
> naked slave girl pimped by the  white woman of the house, the mother
> also comes on to Charles.

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