preterite” (i.e., class)—a world where democracy, equality, and liberty truly prevailed. But the
Puritans set the stage for a continuation of elite domination and elaborate systems of mastery and
control. The readers of Mason & Dixon get to witness Pynchon’s fictional recreation of
America’s corruption as the astronomer and the surveyor draw a line across the continent that
will separate free and slave states. America was “a purity begging to be polluted…of course
Empire took its way westward, what other way was there but into those virgin sunsets to
penetrate and to foul” (GR 214)? The corrupted American idyll represents a paradise lost.
Now that we have fallen to our wretched condition, Pynchon says, only through
embracing preterition can we hope to find something that resembles freedom. Unfortunately, the
best our corrupted world can offer is a negative freedom, a freedom from the undue influences of
the system. The only way to reach this preterite freedom is to drop out of conventional society
as Slothrop does so effectively in GR. The symbolism of his disappearance or invisibility should
not be overlooked. Slothrop has withdrawn from the grip of the system, but he must pay a heavy
price: an indeterminate identity. One might say that Slothrop has been atomized, an apt
metaphor for a world in which individuals can only achieve negative freedom. Classical liberals
have long viewed freedom in solely negative terms; Slothrop’s disintegration demonstrates the
inadequacy of negative freedom for those who wants to live a full life. Hannah Arendt claimed
that only a deeply political life can be called a full one. Unfortunately, Pynchon counters, the
political in our age leads inevitably to cooptation and corruption. Even those who have every
intention of waging war against the powers that be and toppling their system will see their rage
tamed, their subversion normalized. With nothing else to hope for, Pynchon points to the
apolitical as the best option available to us.
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Convention