Washington

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2002 7:15 PM
Subject: MDMD: Washington

Jbor:
>
> >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.
>
>

"Ridiculous" and "ominous" -- strong adjectives.

What we historically know is that GW had grown hemp and that he'd been a
slave-holder. What we do not know is to what purposes he grew hemp and if
he's been a relatively "nice" slave-holder or an asshole like the one who
meets Dixon's fist. Pynchon makes GW a relatively nice one who even smokes
dope with his house-slave, who additionally is treated as if he were a white
man when the pipe is being passed around and who seems to have the freedom
of going where we wants to.

I suspect this is partly to remind us that this is not an historical novel,
and that national history normally borders such literature qua content of
truth it includes. My reading: this by historical glimpses de-mystified
Founding Father is as far from reality as the great figure we get from the
history books.

Otto


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