Atdtda23: [46.1ii] Codes and traces, 654

[David Payne]

Not to immediately redirect the conversation, but on 12/17/07, I wrote: >"... 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)
 
(That "he" in the first sentence, BTW, is Cornelius Vroom, Vrou's husband, believing himself jilted and therefore chasing down Dixon in the street, gun drawn and blazin'.)
 
>"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. ?) 
 
(Note that Dixon is soon to take the driver's whip & frees his slaves. BTW, the quote p. 696, right by a big honkin' star in my PB edition.)
 
Re-reading these quotes I wonder if Dixon fulfills Slothrop's wish: "He [Slothrop] has become obsessed with the idea of a rocket with his name written on it [...] It's nothing he can lay his hands on [...] a Word, spoken with no warning into your ear, and then silence forever [...] the one Word that rips apart the day...." (GR, Scene ?, p. 26).
 
And how's about them rockets for "a document written in insults to flesh and bone"?!? (ATD, Pt. II., p. 654; see http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=123228&sort=date)
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