George Washington, the Revolutionary War, and Mason & Dixon

[Mark Kohut]

Please consider hosting a section on the Mason & Dixon Group Read. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 25, 2014, at 2:30 PM, gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Greetings and Salutations, 
> 
> I am new to the group but have been quietly observing for some time. I am a great admirer of the work of Thomas Pynchon. 2014 has been quite a remarkable year. It does seem rather fitting that it would be the year in which he makes his debut on the silver screen. I have mixed emotions about it all, as I'm sure most fans do... I've noticed that there have been distinctive murmurings of a M&D reading, and I think aside from Gravity's Rainbow, M&D is equally brilliant... Maybe, like in the novel, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, are dual aspects of Mr. Pynchon... I don't know... Like Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day, Pynchon intermingles fact with fiction, real historical figures with characters created with in his imagination... Like "Red" Malcolm and Slothrop thinking of JFK, his classmate at Harvard - Nalline writing Joe Kennedy- Slothrop and Mickey Rooney, etc. M&D are real historical figures, interpreted by both Rev'd Wicks Cherrycoke - Pynchon, that come into contact with other figures from history... Nevil Maskelyne, Dr. Bradley, the Peaches, Dixon's tutor Emerson... and most notably across the pond Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and even a young Thomas Jefferson... I'm currently reading The Return of George Washington 1783 - 1789 by Edward J Larson... The American Revolution is an interesting bit of history, as well as Washington's role... it is interesting that another good history read that came out this year was Napoleon : A Life by Andrew Roberts, and Napoleon and Washington make interesting bedfellows... Both were swept by the that Revolutionary sentiment that swept continents at the time, i.e mid- to late 18th Century, with dramatic and different results... think Ethelmer and Wick's discussion of Plato's Republic concerning the change of music indicates a social revolution and the Anacreon Song,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydAIdVKv84g, and Mason's discussion with a anachronistic Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco, with their Sons of Liberty crew about the Virtual Represntation of Parliament.... All very interesting... Anyway, Happy Christmastide of '14... 
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