"Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf," replied Pugnax without looking up, which Darby, having like the others in the crew got used to Pugnax's voice—easier, really, than some of the regional American accents the boys heard in their travels—now interpreted as, "The Princess Casamassima."
* * * * * * * * * *
This dog is better at stressing syllables than I'll ever be! Good boy.
Pynchon probably decided to have the crew understand Pugnax through this thought process: "In Mason & Dixon, the dog could actually speak English so it was like Scooby Doo. But maybe more like Scrappy Doo since once Scrappy arrived, we saw that dogs can speak perfectly good English and that Scooby Doo must have had a speech impediment (or did we learn that already with the arrival of Scooby Dum? No matter, I suppose!). But weren't there other cartoon dogs that just did their usual dog noises and dog movements and the dog's human companions were all, 'Oh, yes, buddy ol' chum of mine. I know exactly what you mean!' Perhaps this was more believable and more in keeping with my new book which will be somewhat more believable than Mason & Dixon and totally more believable than Gravity's Rainbow (which was almost exclusively about dogs in a Pavlovian sort of way)."
Or maybe Pynchon didn't think that at all. I'm putting a lot of speculative words in Pynchon's mouth in this blog! But that's what Pynchon gets for being so aloof and mysterious!
I wonder what regional American accents Pynchon is taking a shot at here?! "Those people from Mississippi are harder to understand than a yapping mutt, by gee golly whiz!" is something somebody from North Dakota would probably say. That wasn't Pynchon that time!
The Princess Casamassima is a novel about anarchy and revolution is what I have been informed by Wikipedia. The full book is available online and maybe I should read it because isn't Pynchon sort of suggesting readers do that by introducing it so early here? And introducing it by showing the reading dog (representing us, the readers!) reading it?! But also maybe I shouldn't read it because there's no way I'm reading a Henry James novel. That wouldn't look cool in public at all. I might actually get a wedgie or a swirly because of it!
I also don't have to read it because I think Lindsay is going to tell us all about it soon anyway! Oh how I love shortcuts! Now if I can think of a shortcut for this blog! I'm beginning to suspect that this is a project that cannot be completed! By anybody!
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