MDDM Ch. 30 Dolly

[Terrance]

Mark Wright AIA wrote:
> 
> 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.

Dreamily! Yes, but is it Pynchon narrating the dreamy scenes or is it RC
slipping in and out of slumber? It's an old P narrative technique, he
has the narrator slipping into a sleep, dream, subconscious or altered
state (these may involve drugs or drug withdrawal or DTs--the Jazz
musician in TSI, nodding in and out of sleep while watching a
film--Franz in GR, rigging a wire or some electronic gadget to the
body-Mondouagan and Fergus in V., or the influence of something in the
wind, the atmosphere, usually a message or an attenuated  ghost with a 
grievance, in any event, at M&D.110, RC is being primed with drink and
his tale is not quite fit for the children and he appears to slipping
into and out of sleep/dream. Also, hate to belabor the M-D stuff, but RC
is much like Ishmael, the characters are in part, projections of the
narrator, Ahab is a projection of Ishmael, the whale a projection of
Ahab, and the narrative involves a smoothing of seams, of
contradictions, for example, Ishmael like RC being both the central
character and the marginalized playwright sometimes actor,  part of the
drama and yet detached from it, situated between past experiences and
his present recreations and impersonations, he is in the condition of
the artist, with an audience  and with a broken remembrancer much of
this novel is put on the stage (opera erupting, very Men. Satire) and
Melville and Shakespeare seem to be in the wings. 

PS Mark, those that can't teach and those that can't teach, teach gym
and there are architects. ;-) was joking of course.