Mason's Fancy & Iron Tubs of Global War

[Terrance Flaherty]

Tale of the tub #42 

If we study the chapter we realize that the entire scene can be read as
Mr. Mason's dream. Perhaps, Professor Voam is none other than Dr.
Franklin or at least in part (electricity and the  macaronis...) 
because he could also represent Mr. Mason or Mr. Mason's anxiety in the
form of the the torpedo and  the outdated wig. 

In any event, the scene has those famous Pynchon  anachronisms. And it
has characters, even a love scene,  that seem to be created from fancy,
but as we know, in Pynchon, dreams or characters in dreams are no less
real than real time or space  Franklin or Washington or  Darlene.
Remember her? She is in GR or she was. 

Also, we should remember that Mason and Dixon, in addition to sharing a
bed, share dreams or the stuff they are made on. Mason at one point
considers recording Dixon's snoring and reading it. Sounds like  like
the characters in GR who read whip welts or reefers or texts of
anything, scraps of the rocket like pages from the bible. 

Mason is haunting old RC. The RC, the younger that is, is being
satirized by the elder. 
The elder is being satirize by another narrator. ANd none of these are
reliable. Nothing Postmodern about all this, but it useful to apply some
postmodern literary analysis. Neither the  elder RC nor the younger,
should be confused for  Mr. Pynchon or even the implied author.  Pynchon
employs the ironic distance and narrative techniques that led not a few
reviewers to suggest that this novel was indebted no so much to
Melville's M-D, but to C-M, I-P, B-B.
In fact, the captive tale, the ghastly fop, the books within books, all
very DQ indeed, are a minor toy for Pynchon here. The narrative
blending, the voices that Dave Monroe's post on Eliot note, are very
much an American thing. Well, Eliot was an American first. From
Shakespeare to Hawthorne and Melville and back on Mr. Eliot's yellow
stained fingers we go. 

I'm not surprized that Tony Tanner, one of the most astute and readable 
scholars of American fiction, thought that GR was more Confidence-Man
than anything European. 

Chapter 42 opens with the RC and Wade talking business. Business as risk
and reward. 
Recall that Dixon and Mason, prior to shipping  out, seek out insurance,
not exactly Lloyds of London, and there is a discussion of that powerful
concern.  
The RC has got Weber's or God's double book entry accounting in mind. 
Gambling on good faith and credit is one thing, gambling when there are
lives in the balance, or souls as the case may be, is quite another.
Millions of pounds and Global War. Now how's that for a cast iron tub?
Where is Lepton's foundry? Iron sides, iron lady, and this giant magnet
(business Sir, business) attracts nails and bends them. And, as every
carpenter and iron worker, every steam fitter and groundhog, every
blacksmith and irish servant knows, it's tough to build an economy with
bent nails. 

The tale of  the tub: 

In 1750 the English Parliament passed a law limiting the erection of
iron mills and forges in America, so as to compel the importation of
wrought iron from England.
This policy had been used already in connection with other manufactured
products, but
only in this instance was an infant industry stifled. It was a part of
England's mercantile policy to confine the colonies to the production of
raw materials.