http://www.mountvernon.org/press/2001slaveryfact.asp

[Doug Millison]

Thanks for sending that along, the articles at the George Washington Papers
site also present a lot of this information.

It's possible that Washington did about as much as he felt he could do for
his slaves, and he seems to have been caught between a rock and a hard
place in some ways.    Pynchon does have a talent for depicting the way
pain and despair and humor and absurdity all ball up in one twisted package
in the human condition, doesn't he.

I still agree that Pynchon makes him look both "ridiculous" and "ominous"
and in this characterization jabs deep into some of the most sensitive
nodes in the American soul.  And I do think Pynchon's characterization does
a fine job of exposing what in Washington only reflects the hypocrisy of
privileged white Americans more generally, with regard to racism and
America's slave-holding past. He's raking us all over the coals and making
us laugh at the same time.


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