Mass and Velocity of Slavery Ch 7

[Keith Davis]

These are all interesting ideas. The PTSD comparison works. It's not exactly shell-shock, but the emotional damage may be comparable.

Loss of an intense love relationship calls all other such relationships, or the possibility of such, into question.

It does seem that Mason is looking for larger meanings, while Dixon is content with experiencing more sensual stimulation. Two sides of our nature as humans?


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> On Feb 7, 2015, at 11:09 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> What part is confusing? I was just trying to move on in Ch 7 with some things that caught my own interest. 
> 
> The first was the similarity between P's description of the socio-psychological effects of slavery, and the possibility that these are comparable to the psychological effects of recent US imperial wars or all wars to dominate and seize resouces. They both sound like PTSD to me. He metaphorically gives abuse, exploitation and violence a karmic mass and velocity  which is as destructive to the abuser as the abused.  Whether this passage is being put in the mouth of Cherrycoke or not it is very reminiscent of similarly omniscient sounding sentences in GR.
> 
> The second was the recurrent Pynchonian theme of escape into the domain of the preterite. Allow me to expand on that theme.  Dixon feels right at home in the wilder, non-Dutch areas of capetown and invites Mason to check it out. This is an interesting contrast to Mason's invite to Dixon to enjoy the public hangings as an intro to local Urban English culture. Now Mason is not a Blicero or Pointsman but he is  attracted to something in the culture of death  and control which bears some similarity to the struggle with that deterministic mindset explored in GR. He is on the other hand repulsed by the police state of the Voc and the practice of slavery. 
> Mason is fearful about the dangers but goes with Dixon; he likes the food, sociability, drink  and ambience but when it comes to sexual exploration is still bound by the puritanism Mark is elaborating on, or maybe he sees sexual union as much more intense and fraught than other pleasures. He seems to be looking for messages about the larger meaning of life and  and needs something to resolve the loss of his wife. It seems to me that what he needs to know was whether the love he shared in marriage was a taste of ultimate reality or a self delusion in a world ruled by physics and death.
>> On Feb 6, 2015, at 11:06 PM, David Morris wrote:
>> 
>> Whaa....
>> 
>> On Friday, February 6, 2015, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> On Pg 68 P describes slavery and all its accumulated cruelties as having weight and velocity. He then describes what sounds like what is currently described as PTSD, how despair and  suicides are high among both slaves and slavers. P then "lightens the mood with Mason and Dixon's brotherly bickering. Mason is handling it by imagining he has gone to a strange planet inhabited by aleins where the VOC owns all. Dixon points out there are regions not under their control and urges him to join him in escaping the Vroom house and exploring those places. Thus begins a series of adventures in those outposts not controlled by the Voc.
>> 
>> 
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> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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