M&D Deep Duck: Contract with the City

[Monte Davis]

My impression is that at historical/thematic level it's city life as old as
Jericho or Sumer, overlapping with "modernity" or "the Stranger" only
insofar as they all bring together "people not like me." If you're going to
have millions in close quarters -- or even collect a bunch of thinly-spread
farmers on market day -- you will soon feel the need of implicit or
explicit codes to slow the cocking of a fist, the drawing of a dagger. (The
code duello may seem barbaric to us, but at least it offered rules that got
the combatants away from the melon stand.)

What interests me is the way it's immediately followed by the
getting-to-know-you dance between Chas and Jere, with those hints of
prickliness I quoted, as if deliberately to embed the Londoner and
Yorkshireman in history. There's a lot of that going on in M&D, e.g.
Cherrycoke's "anonymity" rap again, understanding in jail "...that my name
had never been my own,— rather belonging, all this time, to the
Authorities, who forbade me to change it, or withhold it, as ’twere a Ring
upon the Collar of a Beast, ever waiting for the Lead to be fasten’d
on...."

Yes, that's a discourse of power -- They want you in Their Herod's census,
Domesday book, card file, blacklist, Muslim social-network node analysis,
whatever. But it's also a reflection of deep history and the sheer numbers
in a society, from tribal groups so small they scarcely have use for
names... through villages just big enough to need to distinguish Mark the
Publisher from Mark the Oxherd... to "papers, please" and "this big cerise
ID badge, reading Hi My Name Is *Arnold Snarb! *And I’m Lookin’ For A Good
Time!"

One of the things I treasure in Pynchon is this always coexisting, always
interpenetrating awareness of history in the given world ("of course it has
to be this way, because it was that way") and angry reaction ("but look
what Those bastards have done with it").


On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 7:46 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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