MDDM Washington

[jbor]

on 25/6/02 11:34 AM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> jbor:
>> Is there any textual evidence of this in _M&D_, or are you just pissing your
>> name in the snow?
> 
> What a curious way to answer an email  -- is that really what you see
> yourself doing, Rob?

It was an allusion to Pynchon's illustration of Capt. Shelby's obsessive
bureaucratomania in _M&D_ (583-4). You do, after all, have an occasional
tendency to project your own personal points of view and political opinions
without any actual connection to Pynchon or his work.

> I do find P's characterization of Geo. Washington far from flattering.
> 
> The encounter between Mason and Dixon and Washington is framed, on page
> 275, with a passage from Cherrycoke's diary that begins, "In their
> Decadency these Virginians practice an elaborate Folly of Coutrly Love",
> concludes, "No good can come of such dangerous Boobyism. What sort of
> Politics may proceed herefrom, only He that sows the Seeds of Folly in His
> World may say."

I don't identify with Wicks's prejudices and stereotypes here at all, and
I'd be very surprised if Pynchon does. In fact, I'm even quite surprised
that you do.
 
> Enter Col. Washington, already a figure of fun, the way Pynchon sets things
> up. Cherrycoke next pays the Father of Our Country a decidedly left-handed
> compliment  ("In this Provinceof the Unreflective, if the Colonel serves no
> as a Focus of Sobriety, neither is he quite the incompetent Fool depicted
> in the London press")

Are you sure this is Wicks? There's no indication in the text that he ever
met Washington.

> and suggests we cut the guy some slack despite all
> appearances 

Actually, what the narrator of this episode notes here is that, despite both
prior expectations and negative depictions in the English press, George is
neither puritanical nor an "incompetent Fool":

    In his mature person, tho' he will seem from time to time to allow his
    Gaze to refocus on something more remote,-- yet 'tis as little Fidgeting
    as Reverie, something purposeful, rather, allowing him to remain
    attentive to the Topick at hand. (276.4)

Quite a complimentary description in fact, admiring even.

> -- sort of like the way people who don't like Bush Jr. talk
> about his dip-stick not reaching his oil,  lights-on-nobody-home, that sort
> of mockery. Then Washington launches into a  real estate investment pitch.
> 
> Booby, real estate huckster ("Dismal Swamp Land Shares")

Actually, this was the real name of the region and the company:

http://www.vmnh.org/swmpsusn.htm

http://members.visi.net/~lawrence/chronolo.html

> , paranoid pot
> smoker not quite right in the head,

I must have missed that bit too!

> as W.C. Fields  ("my Treasure"; "my
> Nosegay of Virtues") inviting us to compare Washington to a well-liked
> comedian equally well known as a child-hating drunkard....

Where's the connection with W.C. Fields as "child-hating drunkard"?

> Yeah, Pynchon's
> layering on the respect for the Father of Our Country.
> 
> Washington's quip, "My man" and the response of the "African servant", "Yes
> Massuh Washington Suh" may wring a laugh but also reminds us the latter is
> the property of the former, hardly a flattering situationfor Washington at
> the time Pynchon's writing.  A singing bird in a cage is a prisoner no
> matter how its master dotes on the entertaining creature.

Ah, but what Washington grants Gershom is absolute *liberty*. The banter
between them is the banter of *friends*. Gershom is free to come and go as
he pleases, free to eat and drink and smoke whatever he wants, whenever he
wants, free to say whatever he likes and poke fun at his master and the
prevailing social conditions (as in the examples you cite), free to express
his opinions and criticisms, free to invest his wages as he chooses etc etc,
even though he's not technically "free" in this society. The word Washington
uses on a couple of occasions is chosen carefully by Pynchon: they are not
his slaves but "Tithables".
> 
> I read this against the backdrop of the black/white race politics material
> in GR, those black musicians entertaining the rich drunk white college boys
> with their sphincter-tightening fears of black shoeshine boys, beginning on
> page 62 of GR. 

Where's there a reference to George Washington in _GR_? Of course, the more
telling comparison would be with "white Jack", young "Jack Kennedy (the
Ambassador's son)", whose regrettable failure of insight regarding men's
skin colour and civil rights some 200 hundred years after GW's time is
lamented by Pynchon's text. (GR 688.19)

As I think I mentioned, it's pretty clear that Pynchon doesn't buy into the
partisan politics game in the slightest. In the same way that the political
critiques in his fiction and non-fiction "cut across mainstream (US
Democratic/ Republican) party lines", so likewise do the particular
attitudes, beliefs and behaviours which are upheld therein.

best

> The closer you look at it (Washington and his slave) in this
> broader context, the less attractive Washington appears, in my view.
> 
> This whole chapter is funny, of course, but not in a way that adds to the
> stature of Geo. Washington, in my view.
> 
> I suppose you can get to the position of benign or even affectionate
> respect you seem to read in P's portrait of Washington, but only by
> throwing overboard most of the darts Pynchon actually shoots.
>