re Re: MDDM Re: Washington & slavery

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
>It was from that essay/talk by Peter Henriques. I haven't read GW's
>correspondence and papers so I couldn't say if it is true or not. I'm
>assuming that Henriques had read the primary sources.
>
>http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriques/hist615/gwslav.htm
>

Mackin:
>> None of this has anything much to do with Pynchon's GW that I can see.
>
jbor:
>It certainly supports attribution of the line at 572.26 to George.

Funny stuff!

How can an essay that I found for you and quoted from the Web have anything
to do with who speaks an unattributed line of dialogue in M&D?

And, if you do -- quite uncharacteristically, but welcome to it -- want to
use this extra-textual source to determine who says what in a scene that
Pynchon leaves very murky, it doesn't help your argument in the least. Re
the Ch 58 line that's the keystone of your
Washington-considers-slaves-equals theory, the Henriques essay does not
support the notion that Washington, an elitist  who, in Henriques' words,
"shared the engrained sense of racial superiority so common among white
Virginians and did not emotionally identify with the slaves' plight " says
"Civility,Sir!" (572) objecting to the use of the N-word by the previous
speaker.  On the other hand, the Henriques essay would support attributing
the previous line ("Not only presuming us their Subjects, which is bad
enough,-- but that we're merely another kind of Nigger") to Washington as I
suggested earlier in this thread, it fits his politics and his low opinion
of enslaved African Americans.

Even assuming -- for the sake of argument only  because I don't see any
such thing in M&D -- that P does depict a Washington who considers enslaved
African Americans his equals, P also undercuts the depiction with  direct
references to the historical record (what history has to say about life at
Mt. Vernon, including Washington's occasional cruelty to slaves, his
perverse efforts to retrieve escaped slaves; the Great Dismal Swamp Land
Company where he employed slaves at years of back-breaking labor; views on
slaves and slavery of the elitist Washington and Martha; etc.) that
underscore the farce Pynchon makes of Washington in this burlesque Mt.
Vernon "Folly", drawing attention to the way he has created an alternative
Washington in an America that never was to be.