M&D Deep Duck: Why Start Here?

[Joseph Tracy]

Excellent question and elegant answer.  These are recurrent themes that apply to the present with equal or greater significance  as to  the 1700s ,but there is also the whole question of virgin territory, of new beginnings, new worlds, which is really the question of whether there can be a change in direction for the human enterprise. In Panentheism or Taoism the future is not predetermined and in M&D  P brings us into a time that teemed with alternate possibilities to the one followed. I would suggest that along with the logic of what actually happened he wishes to suggest in the crazed encounters within M&D  some of what might have been and what therefor might be. 
  
I think we have to note that In GR and V  Pynchon had gone with  a sprawling depth into as dark a terrain as any writer I have encountered . Humor is there but there is a bleak finality to this work that constitutes an almost insurmountable argument against the meaningful existence of moral agency in the modern world. But in that intense dark there are also sparks that won't die.  It seems to me that Pychon then asks himself about the role of comedy as a literary form and the roles of family connectedness and love that have yet to be explored in his work. 
  
But friendship and family are not the same as work and this is in many ways about the work of the growing educated middle class.  In our culture there is a huge automatic endorsement and positivity assigned to this class but is it deserved? Is it justified by the role of the work done?

On Jan 20, 2015, at 6:07 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Pynchon, looking for the roots of the present, zeroed in on the Mason-Dixon line, which promised a starting point for exploring racism/slavery intertwined with geometry/technology. Burrowing deeper, he discovered Mason and Dixon, as individuals - men of science, math and reason - and realized he could explore said themes and more by extrapolating outward?
> 
> Laura
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Jan 20, 2015 5:49 PM
>> To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Subject: Re: M&D Deep Duck: Why Start Here?
>> 
>> Maybe they are perfect for the postmodern novel, or whatever you
>> choose to call it, but on the other they are not Ebenezer Cooke, but
>> men of science, math and reason, who embark on a journey into mystery,
>> into America, where God has not quite left the building and where
>> magic still swirls in the Newtonian Clockwork.
>> 
>> On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 5:19 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I agree, so maybe the setting question (Why start with this time and
>>> place?) can be expanded to an exposition question like, Why start with
>>> these men in this time and in this place? Why Dixon and why Mason? Why
>>> the work of these men? What have they to do with us, the reader who is
>>> living at the end of the 20th century. Surely his comic and
>>> iconoclastic description of our historical figures, including our
>>> founding fathers,  is not merely meant to amuse us and keep us
>>> entertained. But I can't ignore the fact that the author chose these
>>> men of science, men employed by the royal society to apply mathematics
>>> and astronomy, physics to the mapping of the Earth. I don't think P is
>>> out to show off his knowledge of history and science. The measurements
>>> and lines are a mighty big industry, a hunt for a white whale in this
>>> book, like the quest for the Rocket in GR. And, thus far we see that
>>> science and technology are disturbed, haunted by the not so scientific
>>> or even Natural, but by the magical, supernatural, other worldly, and
>>> that the hauntings and visitations are taking place from both sides.
>>> It seems Pynchon has written another book about Work and the impact of
>>> science and technology on it. So why these men? What have they to do
>>> with we the reader at the end of the 20th century?
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 3:18 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>> I agree that "The language... for the chosen." could be obvious to anyone who reads the headlines.  But that doesn't mean it is, and isn't that a point here?  Because, like that sort of canine lens the L.E.D. mentioned (the one that keeps us from eating them), aren't there also the warping and concealing filters, etc. that need to be navigated first?  And to navigate them, aren't there ways of seeing, techniques for understanding that must be developed (our own lenses to be ground, parabolized, and fine-tuned...) in order to get a decent read on things?
>>>> Sorry for committing Corniness against these metaphors, but to Joseph's point: I think a lot of us pick up these tools and techniques "upon the Fly," by encountering hints that resonate with us as trustworthy; that in turn lead to other hints, that lead... so from point to point we make our own survey/transit...  and (to answer the title question) we got to start somewhere.  When I was a kid, my philosophical hero was Joe Strummer.  While a lot things that I might consider obvious now weren't so obvious then, lines like "I believe this and it's been tested by research, that he who fucks nuns will later join the church" or "If Adolph Hitler flew in today they'd send a limousine anyway..." resonated, and definitely pointed me in a certain direction.   I believe I found Thomas Pynchon a few years later on that same line.  I guess my point is, I'm glad Pynchon's wavelength is broad enough to connect to previous/more obviously obvious points in the Line before doing his prismatic thing with it.
>>>> 
>>>> "...put down your bad shit history and laugh your way into love with humanity."  That's beautiful.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Jan 20, 2015, at 10:11 AM, alice malice wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Joseph, this is exactly what we agree to and you say it better than I
>>>>> can so....here it is.....
>>>>> 'The language of economics, of ownership, of boundaries is still
>>>>> intensely biased in the dominant culture toward principles of
>>>>> measurement in coins, lines, grids, areas and populations controlled
>>>>> and securely generating wealth for the chosen."
>>>>> 
>>>>> But isn't that obvious enough to readers of this novel? Hell, isn't
>>>>> that obvious to anyone who reads the headlines? One doesn't need to
>>>>> struggle through Thomas Piketty's Capital to see how obvious this is.
>>>>> heck, the President of the US is going to address it tonight. The Pope
>>>>> is shouting it from the forgotten corners of the Earth.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Humor is a powerful force, as recent events in France attest. Pynchon,
>>>>> in getting us to laugh at our ridiculous rationalizations of poverty
>>>>> and violence, organized murder on a global scale, is not out to show
>>>>> us what we can't or refuse to see. It's there. He doesn't say, open
>>>>> your eyes. He says, put down your bad shit history and  laugh your way
>>>>> into love with humanity. There but for Grace....Mason and Dixon might
>>>>> have been steaming corpses on the Seahorse deck. Will that
>>>>> brotherhood, newly wed, make a family withe fellows in Africa, out in
>>>>> the Indian Lands?
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>>>> I guess I wonder obvious to whom? Obviously not so obvious to everyone. The language of economics, of ownership, of boundaries is still intensely biased in the dominant culture toward principles of measurement in coins, lines, grids, areas and populations controlled and securely generating wealth for the chosen. We still measure GDP as the movement of imaginary numbers  and so include war disease and weather or environmental disaster in the plus column.That this language is accepted by a majority is reflected in the international political gridlock.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I don't think this exercise which is perhaps, as you argue, more a mockery than a proof has proven to be a waste of time at all.  New readers are ever coming of age, searching the literature and for many people, these connections to the roots of corporatism, to  science -mapping-and-global-positioning  as the technos of dominance, these connections between personal power and global power, and particularly their specific role in America  are still able to surprise, shock, enlighten, and even inspire change. That P's intentions go beyond this and cover a broad range goes without saying to those who have spent time with his work.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> At any rate I think we are in more agreement than disagreement if we think of M&D as a satire of globalization which goes back to the roots of that phenomena as it appeared at the cusp of the industrial age.
>>>>>> On Jan 20, 2015, at 11:11 AM, alice malice wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Why Pynchon would waste his time to prove the obvious, I can't say,
>>>>>>> but the book seems directed from the 1760 to the 1960s through then to
>>>>>>> the end of the 20th century and so a satire of globalization. BTW,
>>>>>>> Melville wrote a wonderful short on this, not Bartleby but "The
>>>>>>> Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids"
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The Bachelors, the Slothful Authors of P's essay and the Maids, Mad
>>>>>>> Scribblers are Virgins made Dynamo.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 6:49 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> "Of course the whole idea of grids, triangles and numbered objects of trade
>>>>>>>> is wildly dishonest in it's simplification and violence and part of Pychon's
>>>>>>>> goal seems to be to prove that."
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Talk more about this?
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>>>>>>>> Sent from Beyond the Zero
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Jan 20, 2015, at 5:39 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Laura, I do not think Dixon's comment (at the end of ch. 4) would mean they
>>>>>>>> were bound for a transit of Mars but that the transit of Mars was now behind
>>>>>>>> them, after the skirmish, and that's what Mason's reply seems to play with:
>>>>>>>> With us going 'cross its face.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> And the story starts here because here is where the two men from the title
>>>>>>>> met for the first time.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Am I the only one that hears (sees, smells) an echo, just 3 lines before
>>>>>>>> Dixon's comment, in "the insides of Trees, and of Men....", of another, less
>>>>>>>> harmful battle at the beginning of the book, namely of the Snow-Balls that
>>>>>>>> have "starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins"?
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 2015-01-20 0:15 GMT+01:00 Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> agree about the England>Africa>America> triangle which is the golden
>>>>>>>>> triangle( rum sugar slaves) and relates to other aspects of the colonial and
>>>>>>>>> early corporate ventures( tea, East India Co,  whale oil as energy source of
>>>>>>>>> early industrialism) and also to the increasingly fast movement of peoples
>>>>>>>>> to and from all over the world north south east west. Finally there is
>>>>>>>>> something about the pursuit of precise linear distances as negotiated on
>>>>>>>>> spherical bodies in space- real estate speculation writ large, a topic which
>>>>>>>>> seems to carry through all of Pynchon.
> 
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