Dixon: a Scotsman?

Mon Jan 5 10:04:04 CST 2015

I've only just into the fifth chapter, on my first reading, but Dixon is
clearly from Durham. It borders Scotland but has its own distinct dialect,
speech patterns and behavioural quirks, which Pynchon makes a game attempt
at imitating through the open ended vowels in Dixon's speech. Dixon makes
an early jibe at Geordies, who are from Newcastle, the major city in the
county - Durham is the major University town.

For those unfamiliar with British geography, Durham's as similar to but as
separate from Scotland as the Netherlands are to Germany.

James Wood is from Durham and writes evocatively about it in this article
(although as an Etonian he's hardly representative of the local community,
as he quietly acknowledges)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n04/james-wood/on-not-going-home

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> You're not but no matter....Jump, jump all...
> A--Jumping we will go.....
>
> the book moves in time too! (coming up soon)
>
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 9:39 AM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>
> wrote:
> > The reading has begun! And I notice (excitedly) that Dixon's letter to
> Mason (p.12) was sent from County Durham which is basically next to
> Scarborough, ...or North Yorkshire, at least. Similar landscape: dales,
> little rivers, villages... the lot.
> > I can't wait to find out for sure. The last day and night, with Dixon
> not being Dixon, and a Scotsman at that, and, while putting an unexpected
> spin on this second reading, it left me a little at loss.
> >
> > Tell me Dixon is not really Scottish, is he?
> >
> > Sorry if I'm jumping ahead here, Mark!
> >
> >
> > (And btw, I read Trainspotting back in the Day, I presume that's the
> book you meant Thomas?)
> >
> >> 5. jan. 2015 kl. 13.57 skrev Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
> >>
> >> On Being Scottish. Two Google Books' snippets:
> >>
> >> Mason's personal desire to eventually earn his place in the Royal
> >> Society's "purer region, where Mathesis should rule" is foiled by his
> >> father's lineage (one "line" failing another), and he is packed off
> >> once again, this time to Scotland to observe  ...
> >>
> >> There are discussions of racist stereotypes of the Scots in Pynchon's
> >> Mason & Dixon 276-77, 280, 572. W.J. Cash refers to the Virginia Scots
> >> of this period as " ragged throat-slitting Highlanders" (9). 7.
> >> Faulkner describes such resentment in  ...
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 12:04 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> It's news to all of us.
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 3:12 PM, Heikki R
> >>> <situations.journeys.comedy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> This is news to me. Have always regarded him as a Durham County lad
> >>>> through and through.
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 9:40 PM, M Thomas Stevenson
> >>>> <m.thomas.stevenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Yes! All of that, very well put Elizabeth. One slight ellision: you
> would
> >>>>> be forgiven for thinking Dixon is Northern but it's even more of a
> divider
> >>>>> than that: he's Scottish! All those Yese and thahs are classic.
> Being a
> >>>>> Northern-Englander, though, TRP's ear is impeccable.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 4 January 2015, at 19:33, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Like you said Thomas, much is made of their differences! Like them
> being
> >>>>> Northern and Southern (English). Very different cultures, and
> knowingly so.
> >>>>> Jokingly so. Caricaturish? London like a country to itself (which
> The City
> >>>>> of London actually is), and The North: mores and dales, fairs and
> faries,
> >>>>> old magic...! Only because I once lived in North Yorkshire near
> Scarborough
> >>>>> (where Dixon is from?), was I able to grasp Dixons Northern accent
> and
> >>>>> character when I read the book in 99(?) So, because being Norwegian
> (my
> >>>>> English sadly deteriorating), I always wondered: TP must have stayed
> in
> >>>>> England over a longer period of time doing research to have got
> under the
> >>>>> skin/language/culture/dress/history whatever, but most importantly
> the sense
> >>>>> of humor a language or an accent contains? ...of the two very
> different
> >>>>> cultures the two characters embodies?
> >>>>> Uhm, ...like Yin&Yang?
> >>>>> I'd like to add that to me M&D is not only an "American novel" but
> also
> >>>>> an <<English>> one, which in some way or another the cover coveys,
> but this is
> >>>>> a personal association of course.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Also my first association to the name of this thread was 'Anders And'
> >>>>> (Donald Duck in Danish). 'And' meaning 'duck' in Scandinavian
> languages.
> >>>>> Then I thought it said ampersand, as in an amper (mad) duck. All
> this was
> >>>>> very fitting I thought, very clever, and way over my head of course,
> but
> >>>>> then I realised what you were Actually discussing...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> A bit of a ramble, quite embarrassing, but I might as well get stuck
> in,
> >>>>> or else I get too worried about saying something good to the point
> where I
> >>>>> don't say anything.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Cheers for all your input so far, and we haven't even started yet!
> >>>>> Brilliant!
> >>>>> Elisabeth
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> 4. jan. 2015 kl. 19.35 skrev Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> yeah, their own Almost-Trinity (to blaspheme from TRP's growing-up
> >>>>>> religion). They are One,
> >>>>>> in very important American ways, yes?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> A--and, to save another posting, the book is also a buddy book, a
> >>>>>> buddy 'movie', too, right?
> >>>>>> From Don Quixote thru Kerouac (and beyond), we got books full of
> duos.
> >>>>>> Having meaningful
> >>>>>> adventures.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 1:06 PM, M Thomas Stevenson
> >>>>>> <m.thomas.stevenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>> A-and the way I read it though was how the ampersand originated
> >>>>>>> formerly from "and per se and", when & was tagged-on at the end of
> the
> >>>>>>> alphabet, becoming a blurred andperseand, anpersand, etc., so:
> borders of
> >>>>>>> words becoming blurred, Mason & Dixon no longer singular entities
> with
> >>>>>>> individuated selves, but like "Smith's & Sons", a body, a corpus.
> Much is
> >>>>>>> made of their differences so far, as I've seen.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On 4 January 2015, at 16:15, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Here's something to think on (maybe): the Ampersand symbol has been
> >>>>>>> largely lost
> >>>>>>> to history as the future has unfolded from 1789,  in title use,
> book
> >>>>>>> cataloguing, title copyrighting, etc.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Gone. Not yet but soon a Dodo?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> A small but meaningful loss in History? Another one?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 11:03 AM, alice malice <
> alicewmalice at gmail.com>
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Mike wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> For me, aesthetics. Pure and simple. Sometimes an ampersand is
> just
> >>>>>>>>> an
> >>>>>>>>> ampersand. Unsatisfying to you close readers, but there you have
> it.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> The symbol is pretty. And it suggests a story set long ago if not
> so
> >>>>>>>> very far away.
> >>>>>>>> So a good argument for the aesthetic use of the symbol.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> With the handheld communication device, now a tool in the hands of
> >>>>>>>> our
> >>>>>>>> young as they learn to write, the symbol is in common use when
> >>>>>>>> texting. Symbols, letters of alphabets and so forth do not
> correspond
> >>>>>>>> with sounds. Nor would we want this to be the case. They
> approximate
> >>>>>>>> the mental lexicon of phonemes and with other stuff, call this
> other
> >>>>>>>> stuff " rules", to avoid linguistic jargon, and given a particular
> >>>>>>>> context, the writer provides a symbolic framework upon with the
> >>>>>>>> reader
> >>>>>>>> builds meaning. So, what you made up here (below) is wrong.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Here, I will make something up.
> >>>>>>>>> When reading there is a certain tendency to translate the text
> into
> >>>>>>>>> language. In a way,  our brains hear the words that we are
> reading.
> >>>>>>>>> You see
> >>>>>>>>> 'and' and hear 'and'. Which might indicate a definite distinction
> >>>>>>>>> between
> >>>>>>>>> the linked terms. But with a symbol, you first have to translate
> the
> >>>>>>>>> symbol
> >>>>>>>>> into a word, then hear it. I would suggest that the ampersand is
> >>>>>>>>> heard more
> >>>>>>>>> of an 'n' than a 'and'. This elision blurs the distinction
> between
> >>>>>>>>> the two
> >>>>>>>>> terms. Mark hinted at that by suggesting that Melanie and Jackson
> >>>>>>>>> are two
> >>>>>>>>> separate entities. The 'and' in the dedication. If, as I suggest,
> >>>>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>>> ampersand is heard as 'n', it connects the terms in a more
> intimate
> >>>>>>>>> way, not
> >>>>>>>>> so distinct.
> >>>>>>>>> To summarize, Mason and Dixon are two distinct individuals, while
> >>>>>>>>> Mason &
> >>>>>>>>> Dixon are much closer and linked in more permanent way. There is
> not
> >>>>>>>>> one
> >>>>>>>>> without the other.
> >>>>>>>>> Hey, there is a graduate thesis here. "The Ampersand and the
> >>>>>>>>> Dissolution of
> >>>>>>>>> Interpersonal Boundaries in the Writings of TRP". Or not.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Regards,
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Mike
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> On 1/4/2015 6:30 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Mike, any notions re 'What gives?'
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 6:00 AM, Mike <beider19 at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Also it is not "For Melanie & For Jackson".
> >>>>>>>>> What gives?
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> On 1/4/2015 4:44 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> What meaningful differences exist if not "Mason and Dixon"?
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Dedication: " For Melanie and for Jackson" ...not " for Melanie
> and
> >>>>>>>>> Jackson".....Pynchon's precision singles each out, the separate
> >>>>>>>>> individuals
> >>>>>>>>> that they are.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>>>> *********************************
> >>>>>>>>>          Just for fun
> >>>>>>>>> http://beider19.home.comcast.net
> >>>>>>>>> *********************************
> >>>>>>>> -
> >>>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>>>>>> -
> >>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>>>>> -
> >>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -
> >>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listÒnchon-l
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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