MDDM: melancholy, Mason, Lolita

[Doug Millison]

cathyramirez69 at yahoo.com:
> So, all that stuff about ripping a label from a
> worldview was just a bunch of nonsese. 

Hardly.  The distance from Burton to Humbert Humbert
is significant. You've yet to make the case that  
Burton's treatment of melancholy has anything to do
with Lolita, or how reading Burton into Nabokov  might
be relevant to a discussion of Mason & Dixon -- but
please do, if you can.   Absent the worldview in which
"melancholy" means what it means for Burton and can
stand as a medical diagnosis, it doesn't seem to make
much sense, imo,  to rip this label out of the 16th
century, taking it out of the setting in which Burton
develops his topic and the period it which he
publishes The Anatomy of Melancholy, and stick it to
20th century Humbert -- and I'm not sure that adds
much of anything to a reading of Pynchon -- but if you
can show how it might apply, please do.  Besides
juxtaposing the sort of understanding of Burton's work
that could be gleaned from a reading of its table of
contents with some vague generalities about Pynchon's
novels, you haven't offered much to evaluate. 


>Can you name one symptom or cause
> that
> Burton describes that does not apply to Mason's
> condition? 

I understand how, generally and in in the present
instance, having to deal with a flaming asshole can
get depressing -- but, I'd be interested to see
textual evidence from M&D showing hemorrhoids as a
cause of Mason's "melancholy". 







  







=====
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