MDDM Washington & Gershom

Otto ottosell at yahoo.de
Tue Jul 9 04:30:25 CDT 2002


----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 5:30 PM
Subject: MDDM Washington & Gershom
>
> There you go with that Orwellian "slavery is liberty" again!  W's
> "attitude" can be just as easily explained the way I explained it:  W the
> stoned space cadet demonstrates a disconnect between what he is (slave
> owner and master) and what he does (permits intimacies between himself and
> a slave that some other slave owners don't), yet the master-slave
> relationship remains intact, his privilege sacrosanct. In the earlier
> encounter, Pynchon has shown Washington raving about the Jesuit
conspiracy,
> stoned on pot and buzzed on punch, and so comfortable in his privilege
that
> he can afford to let Gershom fool around and mock power relationships, as
> long, it seems, as he sticks to the king-fool jokes and doesn't tackle
> more sharply defined master-slave subject matter (but it seems Gershom
> turns the tables after all, see below). Pynchon's W is a strange
character,
> probably been out on the farm too long smoking that loco weed, time for
him
> to get busy again, come out of semi-retirement, get involved in the
> revolution -- Pynchon sticks reasonably close to the general outline of
the
> historical Washington in such scenario, too (although we don't know for
> sure if W smoked pot).
>

You seem to criticise if someone is stoned? Your "been out on the farm too
long smoking that loco weed, time for him to get busy again, come out of
semi-retirement, get involved in the revolution" sounds like a critical
description of any hippie in the middle of the sixties, but is in itself a
wonderful sentence. May I quote it in my next novel?

Your last sentence sounds contradictory to my ears: how can you say that P.
sticks to historical record of GW if we (which is true) cannot know for
certain that he smoked?

I think this is the solution to the problem: we cannot know. But to my
knowledge P. is the first writer who does not only tell or refer to the fact
that GW had grown hemp (speculating from this that he *could* have smoked it
too like R.A. Wilson does) but is presenting him smoking. If he's been
smoking we really should assume that he's been a more friendly slave-holder
who even smokes with his house-slave who attends, 'though uninvited, the
smoking session with two visitors without racial prejudices.

Otto


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




More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list