Grand Cohen, orange tabs/pink tabs, tarot wandering

[Monte Davis]

TRA:

> Robin's guess that there might be a Civil War novel hidden 
> somewhere is a 
> good one. There have been rumours of such a novel over the 
> years...

I believe that pearl of rumor accreted around nothing more than (accurate)
report that he was researching the Mason-Dixon line.

By synecdoche, the MDL came to stand for the North/South divide in culture
and politics of the Civil War -- although in fact only the
Pennsylvania-Virginia portion tracks the line between Union and Confederacy
(Maryland stayed with the Union, if uneasily, and West Virginia broke away
from Virginia to do so). , I assure you that if you asked Americans today
about the MDL, nearly all who recognize the name at all would say "North and
South, Civil War" rather than "mid-18th-century survey." Hence the rumor --
I'm not aware of any other, independent evidence to back it.

Of course, by my "offstage but central" principle, just as GR is the
Holocaust and Cold War novel,   M&D *is* the Civil War novel, because
slavery -- the dark twin of all the colonies' freedom and possibility, the
North/South split clumsily compromised and finessed in the Constitution --
was going to drive so much of US history.