M&D article

[jbor]

on 22/7/04 10:21 AM, jbor wrote:

> One excerpt (the second half of this passage) caught my eye as rather odd:
> 
> [...]
> Sterloop rifles with five-pointed stars abuse Africans in the Cape of Good
> Hope (101) just as Sterloops effect "the Catastrophick Resolution of
> Inter-Populational Cross-Purposes" in Pennsylvania (342-43) just as Sterloops
> drive Africans to labor in Lord and Lady Lepton's Chesapeake Iron-Plantation
> and to perform in their Ridotto's Slave Orchestra, prototype for the musical
> reception committee at Auschwitz (427-28). All of which makes moot all
> questions of whether the provenance of the gun is Dutch, as Mason insists, or
> American, as Dixon claims (428), or whether Americans are any more British
> than the Cape Dutch are Dutch (248).
> [...] (286)

What I found strange here is that there is no reference to Lepton's
orchestra on pp. 427-8, nor anything there or anywhere in the text which
supports the suggestion that it is meant to be a prototype of the orchestra
at Auschwitz. 

I also think questions relating to how and why Pynchon's text makes moot (or
"mute") the piece of information confirming the identity of the Sterloop
rifle's owner are important ones, and not only technically. In terms of both
the narrative and Pynchon's attitude towards European imperialism of
*whichever* nationality and era, specifically and in general, the deliberate
way in which Pynchon has crafted indeterminacies to surround the rifle's (or
rifles') provenance should be given some consideration rather than
attempting to discount it in such a cursory manner. It almost sounds as if
she decided to buy into a separate argument at the last minute.

It really is a very interesting, perceptive and well-researched essay
nevertheless.

> 'A "PATCH OF ENGLAND, AT A THREE-THOUSAND-MILE OFF-SET"? REPRESENTING AMERICA
> IN _MASON & DIXON_' by Stacey Olster. _Modern Fiction Studies_, Volume 50,
> number 2, Summer 2004, 283-302.

best