M&D new question?

[Monte Davis]

As John B. recalls from p. 692:  “Slaves. Ev’ry day at the Cape, we lived
with Slavery in our faces,— more of it at St. Helena,— and now here we are
again, in another Colony, this time having drawn them a Line between their
Slave-Keepers, and their Wage-Payers, as if doom’d to re-encounter thro’
the World this public Secret, this shameful Core.... "

101 appearances of "slave" and 18 of "slavery," plus a visit to Mount
Vernon that raises questions about who's running the show, plus the whip
incident...

Yeahp, I'd say it's in the mix.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 5:02 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:

> I haven't read Mason & Dixon since it came out, but I similarly don't
> remember slavery being a particularly central theme.
>
> I've just got a fuzzy outline of a curiosity stuck in my head, that the
> War for Independence and subsequent coming together process would in some
> circumstances be replacing (arguable, but still hard-won) meaning with
> meaninglessness (as borders become sub-borders, exteriors become interiors,
> etc.)...
>
> Cheers,
> (another) David
>
> On Jan 13, 2015, at 1:18 PM, Becky Lindroos wrote:
>
> > On Jan 13, 2015, at 12:12 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> What do you think of the idea that, maybe to Cherrycoke, the Uniting of
> the States itself (the artifice of it, or...?) contains some ominous
> potential, maybe regarding slavery?  Maybe he understood that the line's
> role would change from an simple separator of two distinct sovereignties
> (one with slaves, one without...), to a sublimated, buried, so more
> dangerous element of a larger identity (from schism to schiz-...)?
> >
> > I think we have to keep reading to find out - I don’t remember slavery
> as being any kind of a theme or motif in the book but it might be there to
> discerning readers -  ??
> >
> > Bekah
> > who gave herself that online name after reading M&D the first time back
> in ?? - (there were too many Beckys in my groups back then)
> >
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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