correctio
Doug Millison
millison at online-journalist.com
Fri Jul 12 12:32:14 CDT 2002
correcting another dumb editing mistake, sorry:
I think it's pretty clear that Pynchon is aware of this perspective as he
presents Washington and Gershom in M&D, creating a character, Gershom,
who ,despite being enslaved by the Father of Our Country, manages to turn
the tables (not because of some special grant of "liberty" by Washington,
but because of Gershom's own resourcefulness and talent) on his "nominal
Master" -- a phrase that I expect Pynchon chooses, not because he wants to
point out that Washington is not his master, because we know very well that
Washington's slaves were his property, but instead because Pynchon wants to
honor the experience of the enslaved Africans in America who managed to
make the best of a very bad situation -- the irrepressible Preterite.
Gershom stands at the beginning of a long line of African Americans who, as
Walker notes, "succeeded in defining themselves _on_ their own terms, in
spite of all the powerful, colonial and national government-enforced
efforts to make it impossible for them to do so". Pynchon's Washington
might in some ways be seen as situated on the "nice" end of the enslaver
spectrum, permitting (for reasons Pynchon does not explain) Gershom some
privileges that most enslaved Africans didn't enjoy -- but Pynchon's
Washington remains a white enslaver, Pynchon hasn't altered that fact in
his historical fiction, in his fictionalized version of the historical
Washington who was indeed one of "those of the people they considered
their chattel, whom they included not on human census rolls but rather on
property inventories along with their tables and chairs, with their cows
and pigs." Pynchon hasn't altered that fact in his historical fiction, a
fictionalized version of the historical Washington who was indeed one of
those masters who considered enslaved Africans "their chattel, whom they
included not on human census rolls but rather on property inventories along
with their tables and chairs, with their cows and pigs."
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