Vaucanson and the Automatic Duck

Almost everything in Mason and Dixon is based on historic fact. Pynchon takes a lot of liberties but the foundation is always true.

Near the middle of the book we meet an automatic duck, a piece of machinery, an automaton, created by one M. Vaucanson, who discovers how to love (the duck), quickly evolves beyond the bounds of its mechanical being and falls in love with a french chef. While the story of the duck's discovery of love and subsequent evolution are pure fiction, Vaucanson and his Canard Digérateur, or "Digesting Duck" are real.

Canard Digerateur

Jacques de Vaucanson was a french inventor in the early 1700s. Famous for creating highly complex automata and mechanical devices, including the first completely automated loom. (wikipedia). He designed the Canard to "eat", "digest", and "defecate."

It didn't actually look the picture above. Here's the real thing:

This is Pynchon's approach. Blending fact and fiction. You can't trust anything. The most absurd passages turn out to be fact, and when you think you have the whole truth, it turns out you don't know the half of it.

In other news:  I'm only halfway through this book, so we're going to stick with it for another month. OK.

Cheap Shot

Upon being insulted by Dixon:

" '-- Inexpensive Salvo,' Mason notes."


Funny, yeah?

Pynchon's Comedy

Pynchon likes to use his giant genius brain to make lots of low-brow dirty jokes.  Here's a funny article from Slate about it:  http://slate.me/1evZQJm

Pynchon's books are dripping with his sense of humor. High brow, low brow, super subtle, and slapsticky. One can practically see a smirking Pynchon typing out each sentence, even the more straightforward ones.

All light from the outside vanishes as something fills the Doorway.
"Gaahhrrhh!" it says.

Mason & Dixon is written in a pseudo-Olde English style, with random capitalization and lots of apostrophes. For example, in this passage, Dixon is expressing remorse for an altercation in his past where he threw a man at a dart board.

 "I admit, 'twas the improper way to test thee for Cranial Acuity, - I ought to have ta'en the Board from the Wall, brought it to thee, and then clash'd it upon thy Nob, tha Bugger."

You can almost hear Pynchon giggling when he types "clash'd it upon thy Nob."

Paranoia vs. Removal-of-blinders

Mason & Dixon are on an island in the southern latitudes to observe the transit of venus. They climb the hills to the island's interior and look out at the sea, remarking that the water appears higher than the land, as if poised to swallow the island. Our narrator says:

"For anyone deluded enough to remain down at sea level, there must come a moment when he finds himself looking upward at the Crests approaching."

This sentence is not about waves. It's classic Pynchon telling us dummies to get our heads out of the sand and look around. To question everything. To see the hidden power structure behind the seemingly random events of the world. And then to see even deeper to the hidden power behind the power. And on and on.


"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Look up and see the coming waves before it's too late!

Trust no one!

Open your eyes, sheeple.

Etc, etc.

Talking Dogs & Rhyming Songs

I was worried about this book being different from the other Pynchon books that I like so much, but then I found a talking, singing dog less than 20 pages in. This will be fine.

Selection for September/October

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon wrote some of the most influential novels of the century. Hyper-smart (His IQ is allegedly 190, one of the highest ever recorded), intensely private (There are only 4 or 5 pictures that exist online and 2 of them don't show his face. One is just his hand and two others show him in his twenties..he's 76 now) and funny (he's been on the Simpsons with a paper bag over his head). All of his books are brilliant and hilarious.

I've read most of his books - V, The Crying of Lot 49, Slow Learner, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, Against the Day, Inherent Vice. But I skipped one, Mason & Dixon from 1997. It's very long.

Pynchon is known for his paranoid, big-brother, conspiracy theory stuff. But Mason & Dixon really is the story of Mason & Dixon, the guys that drew the Line. It's fictionalized and massively weird, but it doesn't seem typically Pynchonian.

It's been sitting on my shelf for 5 years so I'm just going to read it now. It's the longest book we've done on the blog. But summer is over and it's time to get real. Plus, Pynchon has a new book coming out next month and I don't want to be two books behind.


Lots of people have tried tracking down Thomas Pynchon and it has led to some great pieces of writing:

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/48268/index1.html

http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/06/thomas-pynchon-back-new-york/66140/

I can't go on, I'll go on.

Beckett's characters, including Molloy and Moran, seem to be filled with a longing to stop. They want to rest, sit, lie down. They want to die, or at least to live without movement or emotion.

"Beckett Sitting"

Moran has his grave prepared:

"As long as the earth endures that spot is mine, in theory. Sometimes I went and looked at my grave. The stone was up already. It was a simple Latin cross, white. I wanted to have my name put on it with the here lies and the date of my birth. Then all it would have wanted is the date of my death. They would not let me. Sometimes I smiled as if I were dead already."

To sum up: Life is grim and it makes you unbearably tired.

Never Trust Molloy

As a narrator, Molloy is as unreliable as they come. He contradicts himself on every page. Often even within the same sentence:

     "They looked alike, but no more than others do."

     "I wasn't sure at the time and I'm still not sure, though I've hardly thought about it."

     "I don't know. I knew it and I did it, that's all I know."

Nothing surrounding Molloy -- his identity, his world, his past, what he's doing, where he's going -- is certain. He lives in a great fog of confusion. We're never sure or what is real because Molloy doesn't know. He actively changes his memories. He lies.

In fact, everything is so uncertain and so contradictory that, in the end, Molloy simply comes to a standstill. When we last see him, he is lying in a ditch.

     "Net result, I stayed where I was."



Further Reading

Molloy in Bloom: http://implicatedisorder.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/hello-world/

Molloy: As the Story was Told. Or not: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25781255

"You must choose between the things not worth mentioning and those even less so."

Reading is Hard Sometimes

Molloy is a tough little book. It's split into two sections. The first half consists of a long monologue by Molloy in which he is journeying to find his mother. The first paragraph is 1 page long, the second paragraph is 90 pages long. Suffice to say, getting through the first half of the book isn't easy.

Beckett is not an easy author to read -- but -- "He is a serious writer with something serious to say about the human condition: and therefore one of the dozen or so writers whom those who are concerned with the modern man in search of his soul, should read."

So, we have to ask, are you concerned with the modern man in search of his soul?

If you are, then hang tough and read this book. It's too hot to do anything else anyway.