The American will win the cup again

[public domain]

The central question, the one being abused here, is in
fact a political one: the central political question
of both the eighteenth and 19th centuries (and of
course Pynchon straddles these historically as
historical events prescribe; one leg in either century
and at the V-spot or the center, America's 1960s) has
to do with interpretation (the novel may not be
politically centered-Pynchon's Left leaning is well
documented-but is clearly a latitudinarian's project
(this is achieved with the Stencil-like narrators-the
RC the elder & RC the younger. The younger (as
described by the elder narrator and the documents of
his youth-SDB, Unpublished sermons, etc.) is converted
by his experiences, the elder by the oral
tradition-this includes, of course, the active
participation of the family or audience. 
Together, these narratives (ultimately broad, tolerant
in views, especially in religious matters, because of
the historical facts Pynchon must work with and
because religion (in Freud's or Graves' comprehensive
sense)  is the axis upon which all Pynchon's fictions
turn) do not simply cut across political party
politics, but illustrate how political factions are
inherently deficient because they can't give real
meaning to words because  politics has so infected
language that nothing true or meaningful can be
expressed or understood. So, as Clinto said, "that
depends on what "is" is or what is the meaning of the
word is. How about the word "genocide"? How does one
say genocide in Rwanda if you are the President of the
USA? In M&D, Thomas Jefferson's "happiness" is
spontaneously spoken and mutually, even universally, 
understood, interpreted, by the members of the bar,
but the reading, interpretation, of both the
Declaration and the Constitution will become the most
important political issue of the day and its
ambiguity, its political subtleties, its meanings for
men, black men  and white men , free men and men in
bondage, for women, for children, for young and old, 
will be debated and decided by members of the Bar. The
Bar, where revolutionary words are salient,
fortuitously pronounced, and will divide the earth and
spill over the broken world. Remember Sammy Davis Jr.
and here comes the judge on Laughing? 

See Thomas Gustafson, Representative Words: Politics,
Literature, and the American Language, 1776-1865. 





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