M&D Deep Duck: Contract with the City

[David Ewers]

... & how lenses turn light waves (and everything riding on them) upside-down, past a point?


Maybe I'm just pointing out the obvious, but are we seeing in the dynamic between Mason and Dixon the seeds of North/South dynamic (with some of those ob/reversals, of course... someone mentioned shades of GR?) to come?  Dixon (the rural Northerner with the funny drawl; and as a surveyor, a land man...) has a distrust of the urban South (represented by Mason)?   (...or Mason thinks Dixon has..., or Dixon thinks Mason thinks Dixon...?; like two warped mirrors facing one another, compounding the misperceptions, or those "twin Telescopes" in Mason's letter?)

 Is this why I hear the American mock-Southern in Mason's English mock-Northern accent?


On Jan 14, 2015, at 9:33 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> Finer than miner....
> 
> yes to city life all the way back but it is coming to be more
> pervasive soon as what English America will become.
> 
> I am still focussing on the organic community of Dixon's upbringing
> verbally dramatized against Mason's London sort of thing
> And so forth into the future. .....I think I should withdraw extension
> to 'industrial revolution" although historically true, of course, Is
> not relevant here....only, perhaps, in other Pynchon works (a little,
> esp Against the DaY, of course)
> 
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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