re Re: MDDM Washington

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
>Franklin's Electricks are the root of the curse
>of modern civilisation as Pynchon envisions it, that unquenchable power Grid
>which will ultimately come to despoil our planet.


Technology is generally neutral in Pynchon's fiction, albeit with a
propensity to lead people away from treating each other as humans.  What's
really harmful are human attitudes and institutions -- like slavery in M&D,
or the factory system that winds up using people like Pokler and co-opting
him in the abuse of the Dora slaves --  that seduce human beings away from
treating each other authentically, with love, kindness, and respect.
Pynchon's Washington is far more dangerous than Franklin because he manages
to delude himself into ignoring the fact that he has made of another human
being an object -- that's the "Folly" that Pynchon demonstrates.  Follow
Pynchon back to the historical record and find  that Franklin saw the
possibility  "that Africans, if free and given opportunities to advance,
could have become the intellectual equals of whites" while Washington and
Jefferson did not. http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/slavery/index.html



>I think it's pretty well-documented that the historical GW was in fact very
>solicitous of his slaves' well-being, and that out of the public eye he
>wasn't an advocate of the institution at all


And, as we've seen, his contemporaries saw through the hypocrisy of his
behavior in so doing, and called him on it.  Washington had the opportunity
to use his stature and leadership to push American down the path it didn't
take, or might have if he had been able to rise above the institution in
which he allowed himself to become enmeshed -- he has precisely the kind of
choice that is denied his slaves, but he doesn't use it, he doesn't put
himself at risk the way Dixon does when he frees those slaves.


"In 1796 George Washington received a letter from
Edward Rushton, a prominent English antislavery advocate.  [...] My
business is with George Washington of Mount Vernon in Virginia, a man who
not withstanding his hatred of oppression and his ardent love of liberty
holds at this moment hundreds of his fellow being in a state of abject
bondage--Yes: you who conquered under the banners of freedom--you who are
now the first magistrate of a free people are (strange to relate) a slave
holder. . . . [...]  Ages to come will read with Astonishment that the man
who was foremost to wrench the rights of America from the tyrannical grasp
of Britain was among the last to relinquish his own oppressive hold of poor
unoffending negroes. In the name of justice what can induce you thus to
tarnish your own well earned celebrity and to impair the fair features of
American liberty with so foul and indelibile a blot."
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/slavery/index.html


> I just can't imagine Pynchon readers
>being offended by the depiction

I'm not offended by the depiction.  I think Pynchon demonstrates a real
genius in being able to usher us through this painful bit of American
history in a way that, upon close reading, reveals the utter lack of
humanity that lies at the heart of the institution, slavery, that plays
such an important role in the  birth of the US.


> I think it probably
>comes as more of shock to some to see GW as a slave-owning, hemp-marketing,
>real estate entrepreneur being presented in a positive light in a Pynchon
>novel!


I think you've got it upside down.  I think the attention paid to
Washington's hemp-growing has been part of a PR effort to soften the hard
edges posed by his slave-holding, to rehabilitate the Father of Our Nation
in the face of the cultural critique of the 60s rebellion, part of the
co-opting of that rebellion that Pynchon explores so closely in Vineland:
"If he raised pot, he must have smoked pot, and if he smoked pot he must be
OK...right on, brother! Those Colonial dudes weren't so bad after all, man,
and, hey, I bet those slaves were getting toasted, too! Awesome! No wonder
they made such cool music."


>And, pragmatically-speaking, aren't the slaves better off in
>the care of a benevolent "master" like George than if they were on the run
>and hiding out in the swamps &c?


Why did the slaves run away? Obviously, they feel it's in their best
interest to escape from Washington and go elsewhere, if not they would have
stayed put.  And it's far easier to imagine Washington advertising for the
return of the escaped slaves because he wanted them back -- his papers
demonstrate that he knew well the value of his property and expected them
to return a profit -- that to put forth the absurd suggestion that he
placed an advertisement that he intended people to ignore.


Pynchon shows Washington and Gershom joking about what is perhaps the most
painful thread of American history, an institution that divided families,
caused untold human misery --   "black" humor at its darkest, no pun
intended, like those rocket limericks in GR -- all you can do is grit your
teeth and laugh. In poking fun at the "Folly" of this master-slave insanity
Pynchon exposes the absurdity that it is, just as he shows  the pain that
it causes elsewhere in the novel (that whip). Later in Dixon's encounter,
the slave-driver   launches into a histrionic plea for mercy because of "My
little ones! O Tiffany! Jason!" (699) -- a bit of melodrama that can't help
but point to the ugly fact of the way that slavery disregarded the human
ties of slave families, dividing parents from children and siblings from
siblings.  Why did Pynchon mention the Great Dismal Swamp Land Company at
all, much less have Gershom reveal that Washington wants him to buy shares
in it?  He knows that readers will go to the source and learn that
Washington contributed some of his slaves to the back-breaking work that
was involved in that real estate boondoggle instead of giving slaves a
chance to invest in the company and share in the gain that he anticipated.
Pynchon thus quite savagely undercuts the genial character of Washington we
encounter in the text.


>But there's a major difference too in
>that Austra's life *does* seem to be pretty glamorous and exciting


First it was happy slaves, now it's happy prostitutes! Yes, I'm sure that's
what the Pynchon who wrote the Slow Learner intro and acknowledged the
shortcomings of his early characterizations of women wants us to take away
from this scene. The irony cuts deep here, too.


> I have a feeling
>that what we're being alerted to in this scene, and in the novel and
>Pynchon's works more generally, is that there are basic similarities between
>all humans - relationships, behaviours, natures etc, whatever the particular
>circumstances - and that it's the degree of benevolence or cruelty of the
>"master", whether that master be King, Colonel, slave-owner, or employer,
>which makes all the difference.


I don't think so.  The common denominator of all those relationships is
inequality, a one-down hierarchy, where one person has the final say in
imposing the conditions for the other person.  That's nothing like freedom
-- it's enslavement by the structure and terms of a relationship that is
unfair and inhumane from the start.  (Gershom can sing and dance and tell
jokes, but at any moment he's liable to be shipped off to dig that Great
Dismal Swamp Canal.) Pynchon's showing us that humans can somehow muddle
through and perhaps even lighten the load somewhat, but remain crippled,
less than human, by the institutions that they construct and then blindly
uphold.