Dixon's Phat Baby

[Terrance Flaherty]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> I will be delighted if Terrance can make a convincing case that Dixon is
> pregnant with Mason's child.
> So far, however, all the textual evidence seems to be in _Moby Dick_.


Dixon, not unlike, but very unlike Slothrop, develops a paunch. It is
discussed at page 392. It seems that Dixon has been eating lots of pie
and sweets and so forth. Quakers, by the way, as far as I know, will
have very rich foods on the table (Ice cream and spiced cookies and pie
and so on and do recall the discussion of sin and rich food and blood
eating and the like, in the previous chapters and that Mason is wasting
away).
When I read the language here it sounds like Dixon is pregnant with
child. Of course he is not pregnant with Mason's baby, but with
something of theirs that is not simply and only a paunch from eating
rich food. 

Mason says, What is this Spheroid you bear.

Following a long tradition in American Literature and indeed of Western
Literature, Pynchon has Dixon and Mason share a bed. The clearest and
obvious example is Melville's Moby-Dick. 

1. Dixon and Mason share a bed. (This is not 1950s television, they
don't have separate beds). 

2. They have and so have the narrators and the family listening to RC's
tales been kidding about Dixon and Mason getting married, calling off
the marriage, being on a honeymoon, being married, being very close,
being inseparable, being one person,  and so on all along. 

In these chapters we now we learn that they have been sleeping in the
same bed and have even been using the honeymoon quilt of the Harlands
and Dixon looks pregnant. 

3. It's obviously not a baby-- a human child that Dixon is carrying. 

4. What is it? Well, it's male belly fat. 

5. Could it also be some sort of phat child? Like the way James Joyce
describes art as a child? Could it have something to do with eating for
two? Could it be a Phat Baby?