summing up Re: MDDM hist. refs re non-Intervention, W & G & Martha

[Samuel Moyer]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>

> It's also worth remembering that the men are all getting stoned on pot and
> buzzed on punch in this scene, letting their hair down (Washington
> literally flips his wig at one point), it's a party. That doesn't mean W
> considers G an equal, imo, only that he doesn't mind having him around to
> party with. In that respect, P's W resembles the masters who permitted or
> even encouraged other kinds of intimacies with slaves, especially when
they
> used them for sex.  Consider the office party, when the boss lets his hair
> down with the staff -- does that mean he considers them equals?

Well this is a good point until you take into account changes in social
customs and management science over the past 200 years...It is impossible to
project manager - employee relations today into the past.   I think
Gershom's forwardness is evidence that he is not treated as a slave.  The
Sex example is not right either...  I don't think a slave woman who is being
used for sex would ever feel comfortable with such a master in social
settings in the same way Gersh is even if they smiled in public.

> I disagree with your larger point and don't think it's so easy to divorce
> Pynchon's Washington from the Washington of history, instead I think that
> forcing us to consider the two is exactly what Pynchon expects wants his
> readers to do, judging from the way he freely mixes historical fact in
with
> his fiction -- although I don't know Pynchon's intentions, nor do we need
> to know them.  What's in M&D?  Historical facts _and_ fiction. (Both/and,
> not either/or -- a Pynchonian constant if there is any.)  I don't see a
> Washington who considers or treats Gershom as an equal, nor do I see a
> portrait of the Father of Our Country that's positive or flattering.  I
> suspect Pynchon worked pretty hard on his Washington,

I do too, but I suspect he worked harder on his Cherrycoke.

I see your point and would say that we would disagree on the amount of
liberty GW allows Gersh... probably because you are integrating history with
the view that Pynchon is himself trying to suggest something... he may be.
I guess I am trying to think of Cherrycoke as the teller of the story... and
trying to believe that the story is being faithfully delivered to us from
that room (possibly with references to sermons and such added later).  In
that case... The real Washington as we know him has to be put aside, in
order to know the Washington that Cherrycoke describes... or at least to
know the difference b/w the one Cherrycoke describes and the GW those in the
room know...

>..., you'll have a
> difficult time demonstrating definitively that Pynchon erases distinctions
> between slavery and freedom, or that he wants to affirm the official myth
> of the Founding Fathers as creators of democracy who managed to break free
> of the inequalities and contradictions of the empire against which they
> revolted.

I don't know that P gives us one view... or his view... maybe in the
non-fiction.  But I would agree with you it is very central to V., GR, and
M&D.  It is P's style of integrating the American Experience into his
fiction that makes it so damn good.

>I don't mind a
> bit of strenuous discussion -- and if the foax in the peanut gallery need
> to chime in to make themselves feel good, what a wonderful opportunity for
> them to enjoy a sense of particicpation even if they don't have the time
or
> whatever to add something more substantial.

I certainly fall into the peanut gallery, though I know you don't mean me.
And for me, at least, it hasn't been so strenuous.  A fault really... in a
perfect world I'd have more time to track through these few, but dense
novels...  Anyway... back to Chap 63 where I need to post on that full
moon...

Cheers,
sam