MDDM Washington

[Otto]

>
> 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.
>

A true description, from one of Washington's contemporaries, of my own point
of view before I read the Mount Vernon scene in M&D first. This has been
altered through the pynchonian description of Washington as a different,
more benevolent slave-master who even smokes reefer with his house-slave.

This is, I admit, my reason to tend to Robert's opinion here; because I ask
myself: why this scene? This really isn't "patriotic hagiography," as Robert
has said rightly, this deconstructs the official historical Washington
through presenting him primarily as a slave-master in a book very much
concerned with American history and slavery.

But deconstruction is a two-step strategy and through the irony in the
scene, the image of the Freak Brothers smoking reefer and eating sweets*,
bringing down all social hierarchies, in my opinion Washington is given some
kind of exculpation here. Franklin is presented as some freakish guy too and
the way Jefferson gets the motto from Dixon isn't exactly the proper way
such a great nation should choose its state motto.

Maybe Pynchon tries to offer an explanation to this undecideable
contradiction in the historical Washington-figure, this normally
unexplainable difference of political and social revolution in the thinking
of enlightened minds.

Otto

*You all remember that, absolutely contrary to Martha as presented in M&D,
the Diner's owner, although making good money out of it, offers the opinion:
"You guys shouldn't smoke that much marijuana" (free translation from the
German).

>
> http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/slavery/index.html
>  [...] 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."
>
(delivered by Doug under: Re: antw. re Re: MDDM Gershom's Intervention)






_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com