MDDM Ch. 42 An ontological upset

[jbor]

on 18/3/02 10:43 PM, jbor at jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> and then into the pages of
> Mason's "hidden Journal", we discover how Cha. was "bedazzl'd" by a numinous
> experience within the electrical phenomenon, and how he imagined himself as
> having a personal rapport with Felípe and came to nurture same thereafter.
> (Cf. Dixon's teasing and Mason's dissemination re. "the Torpedo" to the
> Washingtons and Gershom back at 285-6.)

I'm pretty sure that the numinous vision which Mason experiences at 433.23,
and his odd rapport with Felípe which develops thereafter, are what Dixon
and Mason were referring to back in Ch. 28 at Chez Washington. However, the
visit to Mount Vernon must have happened long *before* the boys met Voam and
his Torpedo, mustn't it?

This could be Wicks or another of the narrators getting it mixed up, of
course, or an error on the author's part, but I think that it might be
Pynchon deliberately playing around with the temporal sequence of events in
order to destabilise the "integrity" of the narrative, as he does elsewhere
in his postmodernist fictions.

best