MD3PAD 376-378

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 25/05/2006, at 4:27 PM, mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:

>> -----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,

Armand Allegre. Get it. But Dixon's possession of the slave-driver's 
whip is documented I think. So's the Duck's existence, though not its 
superpowers.

best



> 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
>
>
>