Atdtda23: [46.1ii] Codes and traces, 654

[David Payne]

On 12/17/07, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:> [654.10-13] ... though everybody liked to talk about the Code of the West as> if it really existed and you could borrow a copy from the local library when> you needed to check on details.
Common theme for Pynchon? M&D also explicitly references unwritten (invisible) codes & occasionally provides silly examples of how they may be recorded:
 
"Oh, one may, if one wishes, find Insult at ev'ry step,-- from insolent Stares to mortal Assault, an Orgy of Insult uninterrupted,-- yet how does one proceed to call out each offender in turn, or choose among 'em, and in obedience to what code? So, one soon understands it, as yet another Term in the Contract between the City and oneself ..." (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 14)
 
"In return for freedom to range upon the Sea, one was bound by a Code as strict as that of any ancient Knight." (M&D, Ch. 4, p. 36)
 
"But here is a Collective Ghost of more than household Scale,-- the Wrongs committed Daily against the Slaves, petty and grave ones alike, going unrecorded, charm'd invisible to his­tory, invisible yet possessing Mass, and Velocity, able not only to rattle Chains but to break them as well. The precariousness to Life here, the need to keep the Ghost propitiated, Day to Day, via the Company's merciless Priesthoods and many-Volum'd Codes, brings all but the hardiest souls sooner or late to consider the Primary Questions more or less undiluted." (M&D, Ch. 7, pp. 68-69)
 
" 'There is something irresistibly perverse,' as the Revd then noted, 'about a young white woman sitting upon a Stoep in the evening, among a steady coming and going of black servants meant, as in the Theater of the Japanese, to be read as invisible, whilst she poses all a-shine, she and her friends. According to which steps they sit upon, and which are then claim'd by the Feet of young Sparks who might wish to linger, the possible viewing-angles, for both Parties, are more or less multiplied, each combination of Steps having its own elaborate Codes for what is allow'd, and what transgresses, from Eye-play to the readjustment of skirts and underskirts, and the length of time 'tis consider'd proper to gaze.' " (M&D, Ch. 8, p. 80)
 
"... he stands para­lyzed, powder horn slipping from his grasp, screaming, 'No! I am sup­posed to do this!' [<br>] Dixon takes the weapon gently away. 'My life, for that ass Mason's? Excuse me, the Mails, I've not been getting my Gazette,-- was there some amendment to the Code of Honor that no one told me of?' " (M&D, Ch. 14, p. 148)

 
> And of course:> > http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=123228&sort=date
This links to a posting referencing "the suffering could be read on each body, as a document written in insults to flesh and bone" (AtD, Pt. III, p. 654). 
 
Cf.: "The Driver's Whip is an evil thing, an expression of ill feeling worse than any between Master and Slave,-- the contempt of the monger of perish­able goods for his Merchandise,-- in its tatter'd braiding, darken'd to its Lash-Tips with the sweat and blood of Drove after Drove of human tar­gets, the metal Wires work'd in to each Lash, its purpose purely to express hate with, and Hate's Corollary,-- to beg for the same denial of Mercy, should, one day, the roles be revers'd. Gambling that they may not be. Or, that they may. [<br>] Dixon has spoken with him already ..." (M&D, Ch. 72, p. ?) 
 
Not to mention the Mason & Dixon line: also a physical codification scarred on a body?
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