Webb Traverse

[Daniel Harper]

I agree with every word of this. An insightful and well-argued piece. It's 
possible that the similarities of the two works (M&D and ATD) are simply 
indicative of the state of Pynchon's attitudes at the later stages of his 
career, but if I have any point of disagreement with you (and it's only a 
slight one), I would think that the structural differences you mention are a 
clue that we're supposed to view the two books as in some way interconnected 
on a level that, say, ATD and Vineland aren't.

I sympathize with Mark's theories about the density and complexity of ATD, and 
agree that it must've taken Pynchon nearly a lifetime to compose it. I am 
also sympathetic to the idea that ATD is intended to illuminate M&D, although 
I'd require some serious textual evidence (ie something nontrivial and 
noncoincidental that connects the later work directly to the former in a 
narratively causal way) before I'd treat it as "fact". 

In other words, I pretty much agree with everybody, and probably find myself 
somewhere between Tore's position and Mark's. How's _that_ for taking the 
middle ground?

On Thursday 19 April 2007 02:55, you wrote:
> In reply to Daniel Harper's suggestion that M&D and AtD were "originally
>
> conceived of as companion pieces," David Morris wrote:
> >Would you care to elaborate?  So far I haven't read anything in AtD
> >that illuminates MD, but I'd like to hear how it has for you.
>
> Perhaps it would be better to say that AtD and M&D illuminate each other.
> Having read M&D one is much better prepared to read AtD, and reading AtD
> helps one to understand M&D better.
> I think there are numerous formal and thematical similarities between the
> two novels, but rather than providing an exhaustive catalogue I'll just try
> to point to a few of them:
>
> - Both are vast historical novels set on a cusp of historical change, and
> both novels are ambitious attempts to salvage numerous ideas from the
> dustbin of history. Pynchon tries to reproduce how people thought and what
> they believed in, and this includes describing ideas that posterity have
> more or less discarded as just as valid as the ideas that eventually won
> out. Both M&D and AtD in a sense try to show us different historical
> periods as the people living in them saw them, rather than as we normally
> see them from our privileged (?) retrospective vantage point.
>
> - Both novels are to a large extent written in the literary style of the
> period in question. This stylistical choice seems partly designed to draw
> the reader into the mindset of the period described (as opposed to, say,
> John Barth's 'The Sot-Weed Factor', which seems to be first and foremost a
> pastiche - what Fredric Jameson has called "blank parody." While Pynchon
> certainly also has fun with the period style of M&D and AtD, he seems to
> aim much higher than a mere pastiche).
>
> - The stories of "The Chums of Chance" function in a similar way to "The
> Ghastly Fop" in M&D: Characters in both novels read and enjoy these
> colourful adventure stories, AND they also interact with the characters in
> those stories. Thus, both serialized narratives-within-the-narrative blur
> the boundaries between fiction and reality in much the same way.
>
> - Both novels depict central characters who abandon their families to take
> care of some higher purpose. Mason abandons his sons in order to go to
> America, and Webb abandons his family in favour of his anarchistic ideals,
> and in both M&D and AtD Pynchon shows us the devastating consequences for
> those left behind.
>
> - The railroads in AtD are more or less depicted as the natural
> continuation of the Visto in M&D. Both are in a sense a rape of nature, and
> in both novels the characters are warned against continuing this rape (the
> ghosts in the woods try to get Mason and Dixon to turn back, and the
> Tatzelwurm in AtD try to warn the railroad engineers off).
>
> The list of similarities could continue (and I'd be happy to supply more
> examples). Having said that, though, I don't so much see M&D and AtD in
> particular as companion pieces: rather, I see them as natural parts of
> Pynchon's work in general. While AtD has much in common with M&D, it has
> just as much in common with Vineland, and perhaps even more in common with
> GR. My guess is that both M&D and AtD were part of the larger plan
> conceived by the young and ferociously ambitious Pynchon back in the 60'es:
> a plan which also included GR. We know that Pynchon was working seriously
> on a novel about the Mason-Dixon line as early as 1975, and it seems very
> likely that he was working on AtD - at least researching it - concurrently
> with his work on M&D. My guess is that he has probably written the majority
> of AtD in the years since M&D's publication, but that he has thought about
> the novel and researched it for much longer than that.
>
> /Tore
>
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-- 
No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
--Daniel Harper
countermonkey.blogspot.com