Venery by reason of the wind

[jbor]

on 6/10/02 8:25 AM, cathy ramirez at cathyramirez69 at yahoo.com wrote:

> Is the machine connection that Mason
> suggests, of the named and charted (taking Blake's
> term for the poem London etc) above and the boundry
> lines below, madness?

No, I think Mason has had, or thinks he has had, a revelation. He has become
a "Deist", wherein his "Bible is Nature" (772). He was never a "Deist"
before this, though Dixon's beliefs may have tended that way. Looking into
the heavens after Herschel's "discovery" of Uranus Mason had seen a
prophecy, "fore-inklings of the dark Forces of Over-Throw", part of which
was his own personal mortality and part of which was the future of humanity
(the Terror and despotism which came after the French Revolution, the
American Civil War, the two WWs as well perhaps, to the present day). I
think the long paragraph on p. 769 is very important, as is the middle
paragraph on p. 771, Chas's hypnagogic vision, which seems to imply a
continuity in human history, and brutality, from ancient times.

> And I wonder about Tim's madness
> too. 
> Is Tim mad at this point?

I think Tim Tox hiding there in another room in the house, suddenly
appearing, is a reminder to the reader of Pynchon the author.

Hamlet, Lear, Blake, Eliot. Yes. And 'TSI' is also my favourite Pynchon
story.

best wishes, Terrance



> Or is he a dead satirist,
> now Brannigan's ghost? A dithyrambic from the forest
> mixing the living and the dead with desire?
> 
> All reminds me of King Lear and Hamlet. And Eliot too.
> 
> 
> 
> But you've got me thinking about my favorite Pynchon
> tale, "TSI" too. Tox, so the folks think, fancies
> himself a Moses leading the people out of the City,
> out of captivity.
> 
> Tim and Grover and 80N.
> 
> But what of the people already living in the promised
> land? The "Canaanites" and so on. And what of those
> that hope to integrate later?  Captivity. Slavery.
> Frienship.  A magical, innocent, childish, secret
> integration,  captive in the prisons of all that
> adults abandon and trash, With their language, naming,
> laws, police, and terror. Can Mason be mad if dreams
> are no longer safe, but those attenuated ghosts return
> in the poet's song?