ATDTDA (3) The way it happens, 91-96

[Monte Davis]

Moss Gatlin, 87: " 'For dynamite is both the miner's curse, the outward and
audible sign of his enslavement to mineral extraction, and the American
working man's equalizer, his agent of deliverance, if he would only dare to
use it. . . . Every time a stick goes off in the service of the owners, a
blast convertible at the end of some chain of accountancy to dollar sums no
miner ever saw, there will have to be a corresponding entry on the other
side of God's ledger, convertible to human freedom no owner is willing to
grant.' "

91: "Turned out the Rev was yet another casualty of the Rebellion. 'So this
is how we found our dear lost South again, maybe not exactly the redemption
we had in mind. Instead of the old plantation, this time it was likely to be
a silver camp, and the Negro slaves turned out to be us...'
   ...
   'That's wicked, Rev.'
   'Maybe, but we got just what we deserved.' "

The "accountancy" here is first metaphorically commercial, then explicitly
moral. But with Pynchon, there's also a subtext of the scientific: a matter
of chemical affinities, collisions, pressures, vectors, forces coming to
equilibrium -- as we saw when Merle let go of his anger about Erlys, and
Dally acquired the"charge" that would take her to New York.

With Webb's reference to the Gettysburg Address coming up, I find it hard to
believe that at some point in writing these passages Pynchon didn't also
think of the equations posed in Lincoln's second inaugural -- among the most
somber, resonant words in American history.

"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it
has already attained....Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God,
and each invokes His aid against the other....
   If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which,
in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to
both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the
offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth
piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall
be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still
it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether."

***

Having brought Merle and Webb together, this section now ties in Lew
Basnight 's story line. There's a little thrill of recognition, like hearing
an extended  jazz solo returning to the melody, in "[the mine owners] hired
what they called 'detectives,' "  who started keeping dossiers on persons of
interest..."

Bilocation is anticipated: Reef wants to be the avenger he believes his
father to be, "and take to the trails, grim and focused, to do the people's
work, if not God's, the two forces according to Reverend Gatlin having the
same voice. Or even some supernormal power, such as multiplying himself so
he could be in several places at once."

There's deep ambivalence here: Webb has charming aspects, "but always, Reef
noted, that part withheld that you felt you couldn't get to. The other Webb
who rode by night, invisible." This book is full of split and doubled people
-- and worlds -- trying different strategies to become whole.

***

95: "Just good old dynamite rounders." A nice fusion on the fly of
"rounders" the game
 <http://www.letsplayrounders.com/> http://www.letsplayrounders.com/
and  "a dissolute person... living a honky tonk life. As the Shorter Oxford
Dictionary puts it, 'one who makes the rounds of prisons, workhouses,
drinking saloons, etc; a habitual criminal, loafer, or drunkard'."
 <http://www.answers.com/topic/rounder> http://www.answers.com/topic/rounder

***

I've drawn attention before to the pathos of the description, at the bottom
of p. 95,  of Webb's emotional separation from his family: the "terrible
real ballooning of emptiness at the core of his body." (What an odd turn of
phrase -- as if there were not-real ballooning going on somewhere.) He is a
dead man walking well before Deuce and Sloat get to him. When Veikko asks
"what do you want, end of the world?" Webb's response suggests that
apocalypse -- all opposing vectors balanced, all debts paid, the world well
lost for justice -- is to him a real and desirable alternative, if out of
practical reach for the moment.

***

Michel Ryckx will take over next week. I wish him luck.



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