Dulcinea Enchanted

[Lucky Pierre]

Cervantine Echoes in Early Pynchon 
CAROLE HOLDSWORTH

In his extremely interesting Introduction to Slow
Learner, the mature Pynchon (born in 1937) writes as
follows: "In a way this is more of a character sketch
than a story . . .  Oddly enough, I had
not intended this to be Dennis's story at all -he was
supposed to have been a straight man for Pig Bodine"
(9-10).

P's failure to develop Pig seems to be connected to
his failure to make much more of Flange than a
character sketch. What would Mason be minus Dixon?
What would Ishmael be without Queequeg?  Hal without
Fallstaff?  Don Quijote menos Sancho? 
NADA! 

When Flange is called out of Bolingbroke's home by the
Gypsy, Flange tries to rouse Pig and talk with him.
Pig is asleep. P does give him a bit of humorous
grumble and snore, but not much more. 
The boys have been drinking excessively much. Had they
smoked pot or taken some mushrooms or if the dump were
truly an enchanted or alternative world (one of those
Preterit-Possible -Worlds that P is known for and so
many of his contemporaries are as well, not only
DeLillo, so I'm not sure Don is swiping from his
"master" because the dump of cast away magic shored
against the ruins of Modernism's  detritus dreams is
ubiquitous in the art of a generation) that rise from
the ashes like a Phoenix or ferment  and foam from the
fecund waste holes of the Western world. But the boys
are not mad, not high, not romantic, not even mock
Prufrockian Romantic (although this is what P seems
fixated on in this tale and in SR). They are not even
drunk as Falstaff and Hal or Dixon and Mason are
drunk.  Pig sleeps and Flange is left to the narrator.

Opportunity for the development of both Pig and Flange
and the Gypsy,  missed. Flange is no Don Quijote (he's
not even a shadow of Rip or Zoyd) and Pig is no
Sancho. The gypsy is not Dulcinea by any stretching of
a character sketch by the imagination. 
For starters, she is not enchanted. 

One of the most discussed scenes in DQ is in Part 2,
Chapter 10. 

When Don sees her there is the possibility that he
will be cured of his madness and there is the
possibility that he will be driven even deeper into
the wells of insanity. Neither happens. Don resolves
this crisis with enchantment, Dulcinea is enchanted.
Don is saved from the despair that the ever
threatening reality of a recovered sanity would surely
bring about. 

CHAPTER X WHEREIN IS RELATED THE CRAFTY DEVICE SANCHO
ADOPTED TO  ENCHANT THE LADY DULCINEA, AND OTHER
INCIDENTS AS LUDICROUS AS THEY ARE TRUE

http://www.grtbooks.com/donq/dq_2_10.html


Like Don Quixote, Flange is dominated by a romantic
obsession, not indeed books of chivalry but the sea,
which he transforms into his Dulcinea: "He had read or
heard somewhere in his
pre-adolescence that the sea was a woman, and the
metaphor had enslaved him and largely determined what
he became from that moment" (58-59).

Wha? Transforms into his Dulcinea? Wha?  
Oh, if young Tom had pulled this off he would have
been quite a quick learner indeed. 






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