MD3PAD 376-378

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Toby G Levy [mailto:tobylevy at juno.com]

>         Armand promises the duck safety whenever Armand is present.  The
> duck agrees to spare Armand in return for a favor. He wants Armand to
> give Vaucanson a message.

the duck's place in the mythic America M&D is constructing is as pivotal as Dixon's reaction to slavery is in the factual tale of the two surveyors, I think.  Utterly fanciful, yet with a solid basis in Pynchon's symbolic universe: homo faber's creation takes life like Pygmalion, and opposite of the metamorphosis of the lady V.
"Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind," said Emerson (or was it Lake, or Palmer?) and so much effort goes into synthetic things that their maintenance might be said to have become burdensome to organic life.
Just so, the maintenance of master-slave relations, at first a convenience (even a necessity) for certain soci-economic structures, becomes a nightmare, in Capetown and in America.
Like the slaver, Armand is but a passing acquaintance to M&D, but the duck and the slaver both bear meditation.

OM

mike bailey