Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 16: Line 86 (191)

 Darby, left solitary in the glow of the watch-fire, applied himself, with his customary vivacity, to the repair of the main hydrogen valve whose mechanical disruption earlier had nearly spelt their doom.

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Why is the word "vivacious" annotated in the dictionary as "typically used of a woman"? Do men just not look attractive when they're lively and animated? Is that emasculating?! Or is this use some unquestioned holdover from a literary tradition of white males (probably majority heterosexual or, at least, passing?) being the creators of the Western Literary Canon? Why would they ever describe a male character as "vivacious"? The term was probably the indicator of a manic pixie dream girl so it would never be used to describe a guy in the old straight white man's canon. And being that it was used in this way by males who dominated and gate-keeped the field of Western Literature (for the most part), somebody looking at the history of the word might note, "Oh, it only really gets used to describe women. That must be part of the intrinsic qualities of the word." Which of course it isn't. It's just sexism.

But Pynchon decides to subvert the use of the word by using it on Darby! Unless it's also acceptable to use it on a young boy because a lot of those old white men were gross sex pests. I can't be sued from the grave for disparaging them all, can I? It's not like I named any names like Alexander Pope or T.S. Eliot! Those were just examples of names I could have named and not of old white writers whom I thought were sex pests! Please don't sue me, the Estates of Alexander Pope and T.S. Eliot!

Or it could be I was wrong in thinking Chick Counterfly was the girl masquerading as a boy! Maybe it's Darby and that's why Darby is full of vivacity!

Interestingly, if Pugnax had been vivacious, he would have been named Vivax.

I thought Miles Blundell was the handyman. Shouldn't he be fixing the valve for that reason and also for the other reason that he broke it? No, instead he's rewarded with a trip to the Fair! Which is so not fair at all!