MDDM Washington

[jbor]

It's a pretty straightforward task to attribute dialogue to characters in
fiction, and I doubt that Pynchon deliberately intended those remarks in Ch.
58 to be "indeterminate". Even so, any notion of indeterminacy should allow
for possibilities rather than flatly deny them, shouldn't it?

>From the context it does appear to me that GW speaks the line at 572.26 and
Gershom the line at 572.28. Thus far there've been no persuasive suggestions
to the contrary. 

And, of course, it hasn't been offered as the only piece of evidence. But
what it does do is confirm and corroborate the earlier depiction of GW and
Gershom in Ch. 28. What I find interesting is that Norman Fischer totally
sidesteps the scene in Ch. 58 in his essay. He has to, because it undermines
his argument that Pynchon's GW is "ominous", "ridiculous", "depraved",
"besotted", and so forth.

Back in the earlier chapter George describes himself as Gershom's "nominal
Master" (279.31) - "nominal" meaning "in name only" - and the scene at Mt
Vernon does demonstrate the genuine friendship and rapport which exists
between the two men. George respects and treats Gershom as his intellectual
(and human) equal - it's the notion that Negroes weren't *already* and
unquestionably "the intellectual equals of whites", and the condescending
suggestion that they needed "opportunities to advance" before they could
become the "intellectual equals" of whites, which is racist.

Questions about what George's "escaped slaves" might have thought are beside
the point, as it's not something Pynchon addresses in the novel, and neither
is that 1796 letter relevant to the text in any way. Ditto for all the Jim
Crow, Sammy Davis Jr, Bill Cosby, grade school textbook, paternity suits
against Tho. Jefferson, Nixon crushing the Counterforce palaver. The
pertinent issue, for me, anyway, is how Pynchon has created these
characters, how his depiction of the relationship between George and Gersh
subverts the revisionist stereotype of GW as an "evil" and hypocritical man,
as someone to be ridiculed and scorned.

The way Fischer constructs his thesis about the "multicultural
deconstruction of the integrity and unity of American identity itself" runs
counter to both the philosophy of multiculturalism and Pynchon's text.
Multiculturalism is an inclusive phenomenon and practice, and doesn't view
societies in terms of a dominant cultural group against which the
"multicultural" Other is defined. It's not "the Americans" and "the
multiculturals" - an us and them formula - it's inclusive of *all* cultures.
The current U.S. model is assimilationist rather than culturally inclusive
or multicultural, and it's this assimilationist mindset which Fischer has
mistakenly described as "multiculturalism" and tried to apply to Pynchon's
text. But Pynchon's text is properly multicultural in that it *is* inclusive
of all perspectives, including George's, the Penns' and so forth, within its
matrix of "America". From the first Pynchon identifies George's "Geordie"
roots (276.10-15), and the reader is reminded about GW's ancestral home in
Durham in a later chapter (592.14). And in Ch. 28 George is fully aware of
the internecine conflicts between different groups of settlers, and how the
colonial struggles mirror those back in Britain.

If anything it's George's attitude towards Native Americans which is a
little suspect, and the four men sitting down and smoking dope together does
seem to parody the old "passing round the peace pipe" cliché, with the
notable exclusion of a Native American perspective. But I think George is
being facetious with his suggestion that "the next step will be to contract
our Indian Wars out to Mercenaries--preferably school'd in Prussian
techniques" (277.14), a part of his critique of Bouquet and the Penns.

best

> 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


on 7/7/02 5:28 PM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> That bit of dialogue that you -- but not
> Pynchon-- attribute to Washington doesn't count, because the text is
> indeterminate.