rifles again and stars too

[umberto rossi]

In data 3 Jul 2004, verso le 9:11, pynchonoid si trovò a scrivere su 
Re: MDDM Scalping Lord Lepton:

> What really disturbs Mason and Dixon is to find that the "inverted
> Pentacle" (680) that they have seen in other places around the world
> where Europeans oppress the locals,  a "Sign"that, Mason warns, "has
> evil Powers" (681), has penetrated to the interior of this new world. 

In fact it's the sign that is important, and even more important is 
the interpretation of the sign. Good luck or bad luck? Real magic 
powers (hellish to boot) or just a projection of Mason's gothick 
imagination? There are Dutch rifles and American rifles, "real" 
rifles and a rifle painted on a sign which might be the 
representation of a real rifle, rifles made in Lancaster County but 
maybe also somehwere else, the rifle on the fireplace which might be 
the rifle in the scabbard (but where is the proof of this 
identification? Uh, these tricky postmodern novels...) but might also 
be another rifle (two rifles made by the same gunsmith, why not? cf. 
LeSpark's speech), but what appears again and again is the star, two-
points-up or two-points-down, and the variable-meaning term Sterloop, 
a false Afrikaans word and a real Dutch word which has no connections 
with rifles (maybe)--should we talk of an unstable artifact or 
construct...? Someone says no--I still can't understand why--but I 
guess this is a viable concept that can be applied to many objects we 
find in P.'s novels. Surely we have those objects (actually textual 
configurations, let's say) that reappear but never exactly the same, 
always with those small shifts of meaning or different details that 
can drive crazy anybody who looks for a solid, consistent, stable 
world behind or below P.'s texts.

umberto rossi
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