MDDM Washington

[jbor]

on 1/7/02 3:31 AM, Otto wrote:

> An opinion:
> 
> NORMAN FISCHER: CIVIC REPUBLICAN POLITICAL/LEGAL ETHICS AND ECHOES OF THE
> CLASSICAL HISTORICAL NOVEL IN THOMAS PYNCHON'S MASON & DIXON

> http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/fischer24.htm

I think Fischer's essay is on the mark in describing _M&D_ as a "postmodern
historical novel", and the references to Georg Lukàcs are apt to an extent,
although they do locate Fischer's ideological bias. Of course, the
prescriptive Lukàcsian model for the "historical novel" does predate (though
not necessarily prefigure) contemporary American postmodernist fiction. The
comparisons with Scott's and Cooper's novels are useful to Fischer's
analysis as counterpoints, though these are intertextual choices which he,
rather than Pynchon's text, is making.

However, there are some egregious errors and oversights in the essay. For
starters, only Dixon meets up with Thomas Jefferson on his visit to
Virginia. And, as the dual protagonistic North-South separations within the
plot (and the historical and quasi-historical records), and which bookend
the middle section of the novel, exemplify, Mason and Dixon are more often
in disagreement than agreement on political and other issues (i.e. their
relationship is itself a "disunity", and the dialectical effect of their
discourse and the shifting power dynamic between them are left
unacknowledged in the essay). They can hardly be called "republican
knights": they are in fact little more than "Hirelings" of the English
Crown, as Mason acknowledges (693), which is their tragedy (cf.
Shakespearean "tragicomedy"). And, there's no "implicit yoking" of the
Paxton Boys and Washington in the text. Fischer is right in saying that it's
"ridiculous" to try to make such a connection, but it's he rather than
Pynchon who has done the "yoking". He also totally neglects the friendly
social visit between Washington and Mason in Raleigh's Billiard Room in Ch.
58, where Pynchon's George (quite probably) takes a stand against racism. In
terms of the issues which Fischer purports to address in the essay this
should have been a crucial scene to analyse. Finally, Fischer continually
refers to *Pynchon* commenting or reflecting on certain issues when he means
the narrator. 

Other of the characters in the novel are satirised - made to appear
"ridiculous" - and much moreso than George Washington. Both Captain Shelby
and Captain Zhang are described as "insane", and shown to be obsessive and
neurotic. The characterisations of these two representatives of Pynchon's
supposed "multiculturalism" - one historical (which Fischer seems not to
know), and one fictional - undercut the positive emphasis Fischer attempts
to attribute to a "multicultural deconstruction of the integrity and unity
of American identify itself" in Pynchon's text. Similarly, Ben. Franklin's
appearances early on in "America" are far more "ominous" than those of
either GW or TJ.  

The adjectives Fischer uses to describe Geo. Washington - "depraved" and
"besotted" - and Tho. Jefferson - "rattle-brained" - are also deliberately
chosen by the essay-writer to convey a negative perspective, one which isn't
really borne out in Pynchon's narrative. It would be just as valid, and more
accurate, to label the novel's GW as enlightened, and progressive, and
attentive and loving towards Martha, though not totally distracted by his
love. And Pynchon's TJ is, more than anything else, young and brash.

> 
> and another one:
> DAVID W. LAWRENCE
> COUNTERFEITING AMERICA IN MASON & DIXON

> http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/lawrence24.htm

Lawrence's essay, describing the "humanely satiric portrayal" of GW, despite
the awkward phrasing here, is much better, truer to the novel. Pynchon's GW
is indeed "humane" - a benevolent and progressive slaveowner and gracious
host, and strident in his opposition to racism, as we have seen - and the
satiric portrait of him is remarkably gentle, and ultimately endearing
rather than abrasive.

It's not as though Pynchon's depiction of GW is patriotic hagiography, of
course - no-one is claming that - it's just that it's not the out and out
philippic which some seem to have expected, and which characterises a
particular brand of (a)historical revisionism and political pamphleteering.
Pynchon's portrayal is in fact iconoclastic in the way that it debunks and
confounds the negative mythologising of GW which has come in latter times to
be something of a fashion amongst a certain clique. Cling to the false
expectation as one might despite abundant textual evidence to the contrary,
Pynchon's depiction of GW as both human and humane is an honest and
unfaltering reappraisal of the primary source data.

best