M&D Deep Duck 4-6: The Channel

[kelber at mindspring.com]

The English Channel:

It's an international strait now. Does anyone know what its status was back then? International or not, it served as an odd, amorphous, ill-defined border between two countries who were at war as Mason and Dixon sailed through on that fateful journey.

There was no imaginary line delineating this border, but one could imagine that M and D wished there was. What a relief to be able to say: You stay on your side of the border, we'll stay on ours.

What did M and D take away from this experience? Maybe, that borders can be a good thing?

When Cherrycoke says the Mason-Dixon line is meaningless, I think he's speaking for Pynchon. Pynchon doesn't like lines or borders, because they're unnatural, anti-indigenous, inherently colonialist. But M and D have just gotten a whopping lesson about what happens in the absence of discernible borders, and it's scared the shit out of them. Something to keep in mind as the group read continues.

Laura
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l