Keith's question re MDMD Dixon's act of nonviolence

[Dave Monroe]

You'll all forgive me for correcting my typo here ...

--- David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com> wrote:
>  
> Nevertheless, Mr. Monroe insists "... ex[cep]t that,
> in all accuracy, again, there is no punch (thrown or
> otherwise) per se, despite the end result being the
> same."  But he's wrong.  There was a punch which
> *happened* when the face hit the intentionally
> placed fist.

Only if one says the the Slave Driver punched Dixon in
the fist with his face here (and this by accident, so
far as the Driver is concerned).  Again (and again and
again ...) the net result may be the same, i.e., there
is indeed a collision of face and fist, but Dixon did
not throw a punch, he placed his fist in the way of an
oncoming face.  The collision, perhaps even the
resultant pain and injury, was inevitable, me, I've no
doubt Pynchon thus meant Dixon to mean some harm, but
these intentions are mitigated, complicated, at any
rate, by Pynchon's unusual phrasings, while the nuts
and bolts--or, at any rate, face, fist and
whip--mechanics of how Pynchon actually describes this
incident has been repeatedly misrepresented here. 
Though not by Doug, who, at the immediate level of,
well, what' on the page, and what isn't, i reading
quite closely indeed.  Doug's attributions of both
Pynchon's Dixon and Pynchon himeslf here remain, for
the time being, his own, but ...


 
> And as for *force*, it 
> took *force* to make that fist remain immobile when
> the face hit it.
> 
> Again, it seems clear to me that this whole shtick
> is a play on Dixon's 
> Quakerism vs. his passions.  Dixon chooses to "let"
> the face be struck, and 
> it's supposed to be funny.  But all this stupidity
> on the part of Doug and 
> Mr. Monroe will continue *till kingdom come* because
> Doug loves the 
> masochistic attention, and Monroe will continue to
> play his political games.
> 
> From Cambridge Dictionary Online:
> http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
> 
> Assault:  (law) Assault is any act which causes
> someone to think they are in 
> immediate danger of being physically harmed, whether
> or not injury follows. 
> [Dixon's threat to kill the slave driver]
> 
> David Morris
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>
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