M&D new question?

[David Ewers]

Oh, yes.  Certainly in the mix.  Maybe heavier than I remember.


On Jan 13, 2015, at 2:29 PM, David Morris wrote:

> The episode with Austra on the Cape was a great examination of the slave/owner dynamic.  Pynchon is expert at portraying the possible permutations of an exceptionally imbalanced power dynamic, and Austra is a great example. Shades of the Herero there.
> 
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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