Webb Traverse

[Daniel Harper]

On a hopefully related note, I've got about 130 pages left of M&D, and I'm 
finding that the structures of that book and ATD are interesting to compare 
and contrast. M&D is, in a basic structural sense, a very straightforward 
story, in which two guys meet and go on adventures. The "story" of M&D is 
intercut with other things, but we're always aware that we're basically on 
this little side-jaunt because of something M&D have done.

ATD, on the other hand, _seems_ to be this wholly random sequence of events 
that are mishmashed together for nebulously thematic reasons, but I think it 
has an internal structure of its own that is just as apparent. I think the 
basic "thrust" of the plot is Webb Traverse, and the way his children respond 
to his death, and the way that the people connected to the Traverse children 
handle the world around them.

In other words, if we were to tell the basic "story" of ATD, we could easily 
start with something like, "There was this guy Webb Traverse, who was an 
anarchist, and he was killed by a couple of thugs. Webb had four kids, and 
they each went off in their own directions. Along the way they met so-and-so 
and such-and-such, who had their own little interesting backstories...."

That said, I think the stuff with Lew Basnight is probably equally important, 
and if we view his material as a sort of secondary narrative "thrust" to the 
novel, it's interesting to compare and contrast the two. Since Webb is an 
anarchist, and Lew is at least at the beginning called upon to go after 
anarchists, we can view their relative starting-points as a sort of 
counterpoint to M&D, as while Mason and Dixon were put together to work on 
the same goal (the Visto), Webb and Lew are working at cross-purposes, at 
least to begin with. 

The number of bilocations or similar themes that pop up in M&D also seem to 
support some deep connection between the two works. In general, the concept 
of dualities working together or against one another pops up often in 
Pynchon's later work, ie Vond/Zoyd in Vineland. 

Then again, I've only read ATD once, and I haven't read more than fifteen 
pages or so of it in the last several months, so I'm maybe way off. But I 
remember getting to the last couple of hundred pages and thinking, "Oh, so 
_this_ is what all this chaos has been leading to all this time" with the 
basic aforementioned superstructure in mind.

On Monday 16 April 2007 17:14, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> The death of Webb Traverse is THE central episode in the book.  Every
> review (I think) mentions it.  Any attempt to describe what ATD is about
> (not in terms of themes, but in terms of what happens in the book) would
> have to mention the life and death of Webb Traverse.  He's the closest
> thing to Slothrop the book has:  appearing in spirit, if not actually on
> the page, throughout the book.
>
> On p. 187, TRP writes of the Kiselguhr Kid (who may, of course, be Webb
> Traverse):
>
> "...sometimes it was like he was out there, a spirit hovering just over the
> nearest ridgeline, the embodiment of a past obligation that would not let
> him [Lew] go but continued to haunt, to insist."
>
> This could be a description of Webb's effect on his children.
>
> What I wonder is, did TRP mean Webb's death to be so central to the story,
> or did it become that because of the laconic, reader-friendly writing style
> of the Western episodes?  Any thoughts on this, anyone?
>
> Laura

-- 
No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
--Daniel Harper
countermonkey.blogspot.com