M&D Deep Duck: Contract with the City

[Mark Kohut]

Monte writes: It's a perverse strength of this friendship that it will
never lack for variety of offer'd offense.

What are some meanings of this truth, perhaps, in M & D? The new world
future will mean millions will have to work together
in the new science/technology-enabled industrial revolution. Offenses
are constant with the clashes of character when strangers work/live
with strangers. Can we use 'stranger' stretchingly maybe here? Because
Stranger is a concept that developed to understand 'modernity' and
modernity does not exist without cities (and its contracts). The
concept has wide usage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(sociology)

We, they, do work together. Maybe Dixon's way of saying if 'thah is
all [the strangeness] is a suggestion of managing civility? necessary
in s society, maybe especially in the coming democracy where one has
the freedom to express personality?

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 9:00 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> IN M&D's first meeting, at 14.16, Dixon asks how Londoners avoid brawls and
> duels. Mason replies :
>
> " 'Oh, one may, if one wishes, find Insult at ev'ry step,-- from insolent
> Stares to mortal Assault, an Orgy of Insult uninterrupted,-- yet how does one
> proceed to call out each offender in turn, or choose among 'em, and in
> obedience to what code? So, one soon understands it, as yet another Term in
> the Contract between the City and oneself,-- a function of simple Density,
> ensuring that there never be time enough to acknowledge, let alone to
> resent, such a mad Variety of offer'd Offense.' "
>
>
> Over the next few pages, while it is clear that they are finding each other
> congenial, it is also clear that they are negotiating their own contract:
>
>
> "Taking it for the joke it must be, Dixon laughs..."
>
>
> "Dixon decides to register only annoyance..."
>
>
> "...Dixon...  finds himself laughing without... honest Mirth..."
>
>
> "Mason has been edging away..."
>
>
> "Mason retreats from  [Dixon's clasp] in a Flinch..."
>
>
> "...in some Uncertainty as to how the power may come to be sorted out
> betwixt 'em"
>
>
> Dixon "...seems disappointed in Mason, --or so the Astronomer, ever inclined
> to suspicion, fears."
>
>
> It's a perverse strength of this friendship that it will never lack for
> variety of offer'd offense.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l