M & D and ATD, thematic homage, parallels, etc.

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Daniel Harper:

>In M&D the Native Americans (and America in general) seem to be a sort of 
>extended metaphor >for purity, for "innocent savagery" or whatever, but are 
>not really intended to be "real" people.

Well put. While richly portrayed with plenty of realistic details, the 
America/Vineland the Good of M&D is in many ways a metaphor, or perhaps a 
dream of innocence and unlimited possibilities - see e.g. one of my 
favourite passages in the novel:

"Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?-- in which 
all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression 
away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 
'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, 
seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that 
*may yet be true*,-- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester 
John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory 
to the West be seen and recorded, measur'd and tied in, back into the 
Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the 
Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing 
Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,-- winning 
away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming 
them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair." (M&D, 
345)

This is not realistic history so much as myth, with Europe standing in for 
"the bare mortal World" and America for "the realm of the Sacred." To call 
it a myth or a metaphor, however, is not in any way equal to detracting from 
its importance in Pynchon's work. In both V., GR, Vineland, and M&D, Pynchon 
reserves some of his most beautiful and intense flights of rhetoric to 
elaborations of just this metaphor, cf. this sunset from GR:

""Holy shit." This is the kind of sunset you hardly see any more, a 
19th-century wilderness sunset, a few of which got set down, approximated, 
on canvas, landscapes of the American West by artists nobody ever heard of, 
when the land was still free and the eye innocent, and the presence of the 
Creator much more direct. Here it thunders now over the Mediterranean, high 
and lonely, this anachronism in primal red, in yellow purer than can be 
found anywhere today, a purity begging to be polluted... of course Empire 
took its way westward, what other way was there but into those virgin 
sunsets to penetrate and to foul?" (GR, 214)

Again, this is not history, it's myth and hyperbole (who would seriously 
believe that Pynchon considers the colours of previous centuries somehow 
purer than our poor, bleak 20th Century colours?)

Despite having published an early story in the journal "The Noble Savage", I 
don't think Pynchon seriously believes in that particular construction. I do 
think, however, that the colonizing instinct is probably the single greatest 
villain in Pynchon's novels and has been along - from Mondaugen's Story in 
V., up to and including most of AtD. And just as Pynchon does not portray 
any redeeming features in his cartoon villains Blicero and Scarsdale Vibe, 
so he's not interested in nuancing his depiction of the evils of colonialism 
by introducing realistic, un-mythical, musings over the possible 
imperialistic behaviour of those noble savages. Such a historical 
revisionism (or is it actually a revisionism in reverse?) would weaken this 
particular mythical edifice, and it would open up for possible excuses that 
Pynchon in this particular instance won't allow us.

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