MDMD: Washington

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
>I'm not denying that the revisionist histories exist, or suggesting that
>Pynchon is unaware of them. What I'm saying is that Pynchon's depiction of
>GW at home in _M&D_ in fact *contests* the negative - and often highly
>polemical - assessments of GW which typify those histories.


Highly debatable.  The text offers many opportunities to say otherwise, and
I've highlighted several of them. I expect that the view needs to be
broadened to encompass both of these interpretations -- yours and mine.
Any "final" assessment of the novel's judgement of Washington probably
remains out of reach.  But I think it's pretty clear that Pynchon has
sufficiently undermined confidence in Washington and the other Founding
Fathers to  underscore the point in M&D about the "Revolution" leaving most
of the class divisions and and economic inequalities untouched and failing
to address the deeper issues of genocide and racism in which Washington and
his peers are involved.


>Nowhere in the novel does Pynchon depict GW trying to "corrupt Gershom by
>giving him the opportunity to profit from the labor of fellow slaves".


That's what Gershom would be doing if he yields to his owner's sales pitch
and buys shares in the Great Dismal Swamp Land boondoggle.


http://www.albemarle-nc.com/camden/history/canal.htm
" Digging began in 1793 and progressed slowly since the canal had to be dug
completely by hand. Most of the labor was done by slaves hired from nearby
land owners. It took approximately 12 years of back-breaking construction
under highly unfavorable conditions to complete the 22-mile long waterway."


>nowhere in Pynchon's fiction or non-fiction is smoking marijuana identified
>as one of "the means They use to befuddle and co-opt".


I think you overreach here.  It's not clear at all that marijuana is benign
in M&D -- it seems to cushion Dixon's otherwise tender sensibilities to let
him take advantage of the native girls in his adventures in the flesh pots
of the empire, as well as in the present circumstance at Mr. Vernon,
helping to forget the objections he and Mason had previously expressed
about slavery and genocide in America ("'Tis said these people keep Slaves,
as did our late Hosts,-- that they are likewise inclin'd to kill the People
already living where they wish to settle" M&D 248)  -- much less throughout
Pynchon's fiction.


> Again, it's by choice rather than compulsion that Gershom behaves as he
>does.


But Gershom remains a slave, as did all of Washington's "tithables" until
his death, and in such a situation to talk about the slave having a
meaningful "choice" is absurd.  That's the bone that sticks in the throat,
no matter how "liberal" Washington is in his treatment of his slaves -- as
it did with many of his contemporaries as demonstrated in that letter from
Edward Rushton:


http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/slavery/index.html
" There is no reason to think that either man [ Jefferson or Washington]
thought that Africans, if free and given opportunities to advance, could
have become the intellectual equals of whites. At least a handful of
Americans saw that as a possibility, including Alexander Hamilton and
Benjamin Franklin.  [...] In 1796 George Washington received a letter from
Edward Rushton, a prominent English antislavery advocate.  [...] My
business is with George Washington of Mount Vernon in Virginia, a man who
not withstanding his hatred of oppression and his ardent love of liberty
holds at this moment hundreds of his fellow being in a state of abject
bondage--Yes: you who conquered under the banners of freedom--you who are
now the first magistrate of a free people are (strange to relate) a slave
holder. . . . [...]  Ages to come will read with Astonishment that the man
who was foremost to wrench the rights of America from the tyrannical grasp
of Britain was among the last to relinquish his own oppressive hold of poor
unoffending negroes. In the name of justice what can induce you thus to
tarnish your own well earned celebrity and to impair the fair features of
American liberty with so foul and indelibile a blot."



>It's Gershom's choice of faith, not George's. (And the stereotype in your
>suggestion here is a pretty narrow-minded one, just quietly.)


Perhaps you don't know that African slaves were generally forbidden to
practice their native religions, just as they were not generally permitted
to learn to read and write, in America.  Just as they were forced to take
their masters' names, they were forced to take their masters' religion --
generally speaking, minus the occasional exception I'm sure.  Perhaps you
haven't read enough of American history to know the facts of these matters.


>Again, it's by choice rather than compulsion that Gershom behaves as he
>does.


Wishful thinking.  American history contains many stories of slaves who
professed gratitude to "benevolent" masters and who also were eager to
escape the bondage of slavery. You accept too much of the ante-bellum
mythology of the kind master/happy slave, I fear. Perhaps you should read
some of the slave narratives.


 >In fact, much in his humour and behaviour makes fun of George, and
>George plays along with it. It's more of a double-act than a court jester.
>Their rapport, and the friendship which underpins it, is sound.


Friendship?  The text makes it explicitly _folie a deux_ . Pynchon shows
the two of them thoroughly enmeshed in an insane institution that
ultimately degrades both.


"In their Decadency these Virginians practice an elaborate Folly of Courtly
Love, unmodified since the Dark Ages, so relentlessly that at length they
cannot distinguish Fancy from the substantial world, and their Folly
absorbs them into itself."  (M&D 275)


Who are these decadent Virginians?  One of them is George Washington.  This
is another of Pynchon's classic "dances" of prey and predator, victim and
perpetrator, locked in a dance that dehumanizes both, it's gone on since
the Dark Ages, it deludes the participants into such a state that they no
longer distinguish fantasy from reality, they are completely subsumed into
the fantasy.  In this characterization, Pynchon does cut Washington some
slack -- he's funny in a W.C. Fields flim-flam man sort of way, he
obviously gets on well with Martha, the historical record to which Pynchon
points us shows that, especially later in life, Washington did have second
thoughts about slavery but never could break free of his caste prejudices
in that respect, he's a struggling human who winds up perpetuating an
institution that does incalculable harm to millions of human beings. This
humanizes Washington, but doesn't let him off the hook (no more than
Pynchon lets Pokler off the hook in GR for his part in the Holocaust).
Looking down the road to the history of the US, Pynchon's text here advises
that "No good can come of such dangerous Boobyism" (M&D 275), and indeed no
good does come from it, instead a bloody civil war. "What sort of Politics
may proceed herefrom" -- well, Pynchon and the rest of us are still dealing
with that.


>And, after all, Dixon feels no inclination
>whatsoever to punch GW in the face


Well, perhaps that's explained by the fact that Washington got him stoned
and buzzed on "punch" and provided a comedy act to keep him entertained.
And Washington isn't beating Gershom with a whip.  Washington's
mistreatment and exploitation is more subtle and cuts deeper, however; the
institution of slavery that helped enrich Washington (and upon which the
wealth of the US was largely built) leads us rather directly and
insistently to Slothrop's nightmare trip down the toilet as he seeks to
escape the revenge of the big bad black man.