MDMD Dixon's act of nonviolence

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> My quibble with jbor's formulation below is the use of the word "brute" to
> describe force.  

How about the fact that he assumes that Pynchon's portrayal of Dixon
tells us anything at all about what Pynchon thinks about justice and how
to achieve it? Just absurd really. This is the old Jbor falling into
your trap. The trap that will derail MDDM and get us talking about you
again. Please, cut it out. We are not up to Chapter 72. We have a fairly
successful read going. If we start skipping ahead 30 chapters we might
as well hang it up. If we stick to the schedule we can get through the
book. You have contributed just about nothing to this reading of M&D.
That's fine, but recently you started digging through the archives and
posting stuff from the previous reading of the book and focusing on
chapter 72. As you know (and I can dig into the archives an post your
old stuff too) chapter 72 cause one of the worst flame wars on Pynchon-L
and you were right in the middle of it. So stop, please. Please! 

First, Dixon is a complex character and does not represent justice or
how it may be achieved. He is not passive resistance or violence. M&D is
not a Morality Play, Dixon is no more Justice and Pacifism than Mason is
Piety and Fortitude. Second, Dixon is not a pacifist. He tells us this
himself and actions belie this characterization. Third, although you
could argue that M&D is a anti-war novel or that GR is or that V. and
Vineland and CL49 are, you have not. 


In fact, Dixon's use of force appears measured and
> thoughtful -- he pulls the punch instead of following it through, and after
> consulting his conscience he decides not to inflict any further harm, takes
> the whip so the slave driver can't harm the slaves with it, with some stern
> parting words (which the slave driver mocks -- apparently not taking them
> for a serious death threat).  Dixon uses just enough force to prevent
> further harm to these slaves in this situation, having resisted his urge to
> kill the slave driver, and he appears to use the force in a thoughtful way
> -- stopping to think about it -- instead of proceeding as an unthinking
> brute intent only on inflicting violence to effect the desired change in
> the slave driver's behavior.
> 
> Pynchon may or may not have had in mind, as he finishes M&D in the
> early-to-mid '90s, the Vietnam War or  the more recent Gulf War. but a good
> example of brute force and violence (as opposed to the smart, judicious use
> of force in nonviolence that Dixon exhibits) would be carpetbombing --
> that's brute force with no obvious concern for the consequences to innocent
> bystanders, and with no concern for the possibility of reconciliation with
> the enemy, for the possibility of finding creative ways to resolve
> differences.    Dixon's use of force is categorically different, congruent
> in many ways with the principles of nonviolence that became widely known,
> in the U.S., in the '50s and '60s (the period in which Pynchon comes of age
> as a writer), in the civil rights and anti-war struggles in the US.
> 
> Pynchon Notes has published an interesting article on the relationship of
> Pynchon's texts to the discourse of environmentalism beginning in the late
> '50s (taking, if I remember correctly, the book _Silent Spring_ as a
> starting point).  I suggest that an equally interesting article could be
> written on the relationship of Pynchon's texts to the discourse of
> nonviolence; I'm thinking in particular of Vineland and Mason &  Dixon, but
> I expect GR, V. and COL49 offer much in this vein as well.
> 
> >Pynchon acknowledges
> > through his portrayal of Dixon's "act" that the only way to begin to achieve
> > "justice" in certain extreme situations of injustice and violence is to
> > neutralise the adversary's potential to do violence through an initial act of
> > brute force