MD3PAD 229-231

[David Casseres]

On 4/2/06, Toby G Levy <tobylevy at juno.com> wrote:
>         Maire tells Dixon that owing to the cult of Feng Shui, there are
> no 360 degree circles to be found in China. This is the first of many
> mentions of Feng Shui in the novel. Maire and Emerson seem to be
> equating China with America in their conversation with Dixon. Why?

This has to do with Our Author's leitmotiv of Lines upon the Land.  It
reaches backward in publishing time, and forward in history, to
Gravity's Rainbow which introduces the Grid, aqnd enLightenment, in
the story of Bernard the Bulb.  M&D is much about the imposition of
Enlightenment geometry upon the formerly natural (unenLightened) New
World.  (I have seen any number of Philosophickal propositions that
begin with "Let us draw a Line," which of course then divides on thing
forever from another.  That's what Our Guy is onto here.)

For contrast, he notes a Chinese gesture of Feng Shui in response the
the European Geomancy.  As usual, he wants to indicate an alternative
to the rationalist Western understanding of the Landscape, and of
Space itself.