MDDM Ch 76 Purposive lamination...Powers Invisible

[Dave Monroe]

>From Charles Clerc, Mason & Dixon & Pynchon (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, 2000), Ch. V, "Fact
and Structure," pp. 53-6 ...

"... the way the novel is put together.  Simply asked,
is it fragmented? linear? sandwiched?  I happen to
believe in Pynchon's deliberate choice of the America
sectionas the meat of the book's structural sandwich
in ABA form.  Two transits of Venus = A; protracted
survey in America = B.  In support of this notion,
Pynchon has a character speak to the very issue: 'When
they come to explain about the two Transits of Venus
and the American Work filling the Years between,' Mr.
Edgewise [intrudes], 'By Heaven, a "Sandwich."' (366) 
Such three-part structuring is common, say, for a
novel which in Part I conveys 'the going out,' Part
II, the major journey or adventure, a transposing
event, and Part III, 'the return,' always in altered
condition.  With or without enumeration of parts, many
novels have followed this structural pattern: from
Falubert's Madame Bovary to Conrad's Heart of Darkness
to Dreiser's An American Tragedy." (p. 55)

--- Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> In this self-reflexive chapter- Boswell's Boswell,
> etc., this notion of agency somehow being manifested
> by and through *lamination* seems particularly apt
> as a trope for the way the book, M&D, itself has
> been constructed, by "Agents Unknown of Powers
> Invisible."

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