The Excluded Middle and the Construction of Reality in Mason & Dixon

by

Tim Mooney

Finally, the artist is not asked to construct an adequate philosophy, but a philosophically adequate world, a different matter altogether. He creates an object, often as intricate and rigorous as any mathematic, of as simple and undemanding as a baby’s toy, from whose nature, as from our own world, a philosophical system may be inferred; but he does not, except by inadvertence or mistaken esthetic principle, deem it his task to philosophize.

William Gass

"Philosophy and the Form of Fiction"

The Excluded Middle and the Construction of Reality in Mason & Dixon

Before embarking on this voyage that takes us through two transits of Venus and the surveying of the Mason-Dixon line, it is essential to examine and understand the concepts of the excluded middle and the construction of "reality." William Gass, in his essay "Philosophy and the Form of Fiction," writes "Novelist and philosopher are both obsessed with language, and make themselves up out of concepts. Both, in a way, create worlds" (4). Italo Calvino perceives the relationship somewhat differently, writing, "Philosophy and literature are embattled adversaries. The eyes of philosophers see through the opaqueness of the world, eliminate the flesh of it, reduce the variety of existing things to a spider’s web of relationships between general ideas,[....]" ("Philosophy and Literature" 39). He goes on to add that the role of the of the writer is antipodal, and that their role includes "revealing an order of things quite different from that of the philosophers" (Calvino 40). Using Calvino’s logic, Pynchon seems to be functioning in both roles. Using Gass’ logic, Aristotle and his Laws of Thought can be used to examine the construction of reality in literature through the use of the excluded middle. These Laws form the foundation of logic, and it established a way for humans to rationally analyze their surroundings and their dealings with language, and can be used to examine the construction of reality in literature.

The first of these laws, known as the Law of Identity, is expressed as "A is A." Or, everything is what it is. The second is known as the Law of Non-Contradiction, meaning that, in regards to language, something cannot be true and false at the same time. Aristotle’s final law, The Law of the Excluded Middle, says that something is or it isn’t, that, in language, something is true or false (Reese 297). For Aristotle, there is no maybe. This simplistic view of language has shaped Western thought for centuries. Thomas Pynchon, on the other hand, takes anything but a simplistic view of language. Where the world Aristotle would create with his words is one of black and white, a thing is, or it isn’t, the world Pynchon creates in his novel, Mason & Dixon, as well as is other works, is the proverbial coat of many colors. According to Aristotle’s thought, the binarisms that exist in Pynchon’s novel should be exclusive of each other. Reality should not impinge on fiction and vice versa.

Commenting on the quote by Frege,"The law of the excluded middle is really just another form of the requirement that the concept should have a sharp boundary," Neil Cooper writes:

He seems to be saying that it is more than appropriate to apply this law to fiction, especially one as complex as Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon. An examination of binaries, such as good and evil, light and dark, present and past, etc., shows that no fewer than twenty-two exist in the novel.

Charles Cleric, in his book, Mason & Dixon & Pynchon, points out that the novel takes the "ABA form" with "the America section as the meat of the book’s structural sandwich" (55). Ignoring the Law of Non-Contradiction, one might also look at the two Transits of Venus (TOV) as opposing binaries with the America section as the excluded middle. If this is the case, the "excluded middle" is far more meaty than either of the binary pair. While the TOVs are certain, happening on a given date and exact time, the surveying of the line is less certain. During a meeting with "Rogues" in New York, the Cap’n tells Mason, "‘In a few seasons hence, all your Work must be left to grow over, never to be redrawn, for in the world that is to come, all boundaries shall be erased" (M&D 406). The Reverend Cherrycoke, Mason & Dixon’s narrator, could also be said to be the excluded middle, with Mason and Dixon forming the binary. Even though he spins the tale to his relatives, he is not privy to the thoughts of either primary character. He is neither one nor the other. However, when he narrates the story to his extended family, he does fabricate the time the pair spent in South Africa to connect the TOVs to Mason and Dixon’s time in America. It can also be argued that the many side tales, such as The Ghastly Fop, also act as the excluded middle, the place where reality blurs. For example, Zhang, the Chinese mystic, migrates from being a character in The Ghastly Fop, into someone who encounters Mason and Dixon and warns them of the evil of their project (M&D 542).

In what Margaret Jane Wall Hinds calls, "a ubiquitous deployment of anachronism" (188), Pynchon also deploys numerous puns. It is her view that, along with the calendar reform, this serves to "operate(s) at several levels of plot and style to recast the eighteenth century in twentieth-century terms," (189). It can be argued that this, too, is the excluded middle at work, both in word meaning and temporal understanding. For the former, an excellent illustration is when Mason and Dixon are exploring the Indian cone with Captain Shelby, and "Mason, slow to enthusiasm, sniffs the air, ‘No fermented Maize fumes about, but then, ‘tis Still, so to speak, early in the Day" (M&D 598 italics original). Hinds continues, "Pynchon’s frequent use of puns [...]participates in a resistance to delineating the boundaries of meaningful language" (191). The binary of meaningful/meaningless language is held together by the excluded middle of the pun. de Grazia posited that "puns with their multiple, sometimes unclassifiable proliferations of meaning, were as central to the making of meaning as any other kind of language" (qtd. in Hinds 191). Additionally, Hayles believes "puns, [...], become instruments of revelation, exposing what ‘they’ want to keep hidden" (qtd. in Hinds 191). It is exactly these multiple layers of meaning that allow Pynchon, and his readers, to construct multiple layers of reality, rather than the binary reality of Aristotle.

Critics, including Hinds and Samuel Cohen, have focused on the drawing of lines in Mason & Dixon. In fact, Cohen calls it the "dominant reading" (266). While acquiescing to the drawing of lines, I would posit that the lines drawn do not divide the world, or the work, into clean binaries, or even boundaries. When discussing the inverted five pointed star on the finial of a locally manufactured rifle, Wade LeSpark notes "there remains a standing Quarrel, as to what Rifle may have serv’d as the Model,–that is, if any at all did,–too much, out here, failing to mark the Boundaries between Reality and Representation" (429), and not just on rifles.

Cohen also examines the Captain Zhang, the expert in feng shui, mostly for Zhang’s perspective on the visto. However, Zhang is also an embodiment of the excluded middle. As a character, Zhang migrates between poles, continually blurring the boundaries of reality. The first boundary Zhang crosses is that of reality and fiction. As a character in The Ghastly Fop, read by Brae and Ethelmer in 1786, Zhang is Captain Fang, the rescuer of Eliza Fields of Conestoga. Yet, he also appears in Mason and Dixon’s present as the feng shui expert who warns the pair of the evil of their endeavor, saying of it:

Even though he is warning the duo of the inauspiciousness of their work, he notes that even it is not a clear division, "‘Nor has your Line any Primacy in this, being rather a Stage-Setting, dark and fearful as the Battlements of Elsinore, for the struggle Zarpazo and I must enact upon the very mortal edge of this great Torrent of sha [...]" (M&D 545). Though ostensibly in the middle, the "Line" is merely another part of the excluded middle.

However, Zhang’s exploration into the excluded middle does not stop with his migration from fiction to fact. In the Fop, as well as in the reality of the novel, Zhang is pursued by the Jesuit, Father Zarpazo, the Wolf of Jesus. Like Zhang and Eliza, Zarpazo crosses over. However, to escape his own paranoia, and the "master of disguise," Zarpazo, Zhang chooses to become his hunter, and over time, transmogrifies into Zarpazo (M&D 548-52). Even though he believes Zarpazo to already be in Mason and Dixon’s camp, Zhang says, "‘By the time he finally arrives in this Camp,[...], no one will be able to tell, which is the real Zarpazo. We Two will meet then in a struggle to the death" (M&D 549). When questioned about the imminent arrival, and the possibility that only one of the combatants might appear with its ensuing confusion as to which of them it was, Zhang replies:

So, as the story progresses, the binary of Zhang and Zarpazo becomes muddled into an excluded middle, a person who is neither one nor the other, and indistinguishable to the casual, or even close, observer.

Another binary involving people is, obviously, that of the title pair, Mason and Dixon. As mentioned earlier, one excluded middle for them might be the Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke. However, there are other possibilities. As they measure their line, confusion reigns when they return to Susquehanna, and Mason and Dixon find that they are being impersonated by Darby and Cope. Even there, there is no clear identity. When confronted by an onlooker who assumes them to be Mason and Dixon and calls them by those names, the following dialogue ensues:

"Get on," says Darby.

"Why should anyone wish to be us?" wonders Cope. (471)

The duo of imposters is not even clear who they are, creating yet more ambiguity. This is further expanded when the new Axemen approach Mason and Dixon, while Darby and Cope are tussling:

"Ah."

"Not the same,—" (474)

So, not only is the pair confused for Mason and Dixon, but for "foreigners" as well. The other excluded middle for Mason and Dixon is possibly the stranger at the dock as they board ship to return to England (704-5); or, even the Third Surveyor Captain Shelby inquires after (604). Are these men alter egos of the two, or something totally different? The reader never knows.

While Cohen draws on many of the definitions of the word, line, such as a division, a thin mark, etc., he ignores one that should have been examined. Early on in his article, he notes, "Mason & Dixon is filled with geometry" (Cohen 266), but he does not explore the geometric definition of line, which is "the path of a moving point, thought of as having length, but not breadth, whether straight or curved" (Webster’s 821), which describes a line in much the same way the excluded middle is explained in logic.

Two other lines in Mason & Dixon that Cohen examines are between slaves and masters, and between the Europeans and the Native Americans. For the former, he uses the example of the pairs stay in Cape Town with the Vrooms. After brushing Jet Vroom’s hair, he retires, only to be awakened by the slave girl, Austra, for the purpose of impregnation. When broaching the subject, Austra tells him:

Except, it doesn’t really end there. If the "breeding" program is successful, each successive generation of light skinned children become, more and more, the excluded middle. They are neither white nor black. And some, as in the latter day United States, will even be able to "pass" as white. As well, Mason and Dixon act as the excluded middle in Cape Town. They live with the Vrooms, a part of the Dutch society; yet, they also spend as much time among the "natives" eating, drinking, and, in Dixon’s case, carousing, acting as go-between for the two societies, creating a fuller, more "realistic" reality for the reader.

Cohen moves on to examine the line between the slaves and masters in the Colonies. He uses this passage from Mason & Dixon to make his point:

What goes unnoticed by Cohen is that here is a line drawn from Mason and Dixon to the present, and that the excluded middle of the wage slave existed in the present of Mason and Dixon as well as in the readers’. Perhaps, this was the "public Secret" of Dixon, that in some manner, we are all slaves, just with different masters. In a conversation with Dixon about slavery and the line, Capt. Zhang points out, "‘If you think you see no Slaves in Pennsylvania,’ replies Capt. Zhang, his face as smooth as Suet, "why look again. They are not all African, not do some of them even yet know,—may never know,—that they are Slaves" (M&D 615).

Next, Cohen examines the "line drawn between Native Americans and colonists" (271). Again, focusing on the clear division formed, both by the visto, and by the Warrior Path that marks the Western boundary of the surveyor’s work. Here, too, is an excluded middle, the place where nothing is clear, where meaning and individualitybegin to become murky. As the party sets up on the bluffs of the Monongahela, they are visited by other Indians:

Catfish and his band have become the excluded middle, neither colonist nor native. Though Cohen believes that the binaries are connected by the ampersand of the title of his essay, it seems to me that they are more clearly connected by the excluded middles that help construct the intricate realities of Pynchon’s novel.

In his essay, "The Luddite Vision: Mason & Dixon," David Cowart also examines the boundaries that are delineated in the novel. He states, "Pynchon problematizes the lines supposedly differentiating history and fiction" (356), and goes on to use the words of Wade LeSpark to further his argument. LeSpark grouses, in the novel, of "too much...failing to mark the Boundaries between Reality and Representation" (429), but this is not really a problem, it seems to be Pynchon’s purpose. By use of the frame story, that of Wicks Cherrycoke’s narration, Pynchon reaches one level of reality, but when he move to frames-within-frames, he moves the reader to another level. Italo Calvino, in his transcription of a talk entitled, "Levels of Reality in Literature," closes by saying:

And, Pynchon’s frame-within-a-frame-within-a-frame novel, appears to acknowledge the truth of this statement. He constructs level after level with only a partial aspect of Mason and Dixon’s world. While literature can only approximate reality as experienced by the reader in the "real world," the use of the excluded middle to create ambiguity and uncertainty on the part of the reader allows them to perceive a closer representation of that reality. In his essay, "Multiplicity," in regards to a work by Carlo Gadda, Calvino posits:

Calvino might as well have been explicating Mason & Dixon with its tangential lines moving backward and forward across time, the Atlantic Ocean, and even, in the case of the mechanical duck, around the world. To do this, Pynchon exploits the excluded middle to the fullest, casting doubt upon the very binaries he sets up. The reader is never sure at which extreme of the binary Pynchon has taken them. The Ghastly Fop exists for the twenty odd years of the novel, and as pointed out, captures Zhang and Zarpazo from Mason and Dixon’s present to bring them to the present of Rev’d. Cherrycoke. Just as Calvino pointed out about Gappa, the movement in time, description, and, even narration, allow the novel to stretch into "the infinite."

William Gass wrote, in "Representation and the War for Reality:"

And, this is what Pynchon gives his reader through the use of the excluded middle, that thing that doesn’t quite exist, more data. In the reader’s of Pynchon, it might be a case of too much data, but data nonetheless. By providing the maybe’s that are not included in the myriad of binaries of Mason & Dixon, Pynchon provides far more connection between them than an ampersand. Gass, in "Philosophy and the Form of Literature," writes "The esthetic aim of any fiction is the creation of a verbal world, or a significant part of such a world, alive through every order of its Being" (7). Without the use of the excluded middle, Pynchon could not create "a significant part" of the world of Mason and Dixon.

Works Cited

_____"Philosophy and Literature," and "Levels of Reality in Literature." Trans. Patrick Creagh. The Uses of Literature: Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1986.

Clerc, Charles. Mason & Dixon & Pynchon. New York: University Press of America, 2000.

Cooper, Neil. "The Law of the Excluded Middle." Mind 87 (1978): 161-180.

Cowart, David. "The Luddite Vision: Mason & Dixon." American Literature 71 (1999): 343-63.

Gass, William H. Fiction and the Figures of Life. Boston: Nonpareil, 1980.

_____Habitations of the Word. New York: Touchstone Books, 1985.

Geyh, Paula E. "Assembling Postmodernism: Experience, Meaning, and the Space In-Between." College Literature 30 (2003): 1-29.

Pynchon, Thomas. Mason & Dixon. New York: Holt, 1997.

Last Updated on 07/06/06 © t. mooney