Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 28: Line 63 (435)

 "Seems a little long to wait, don't it?" leered Chick Counterfly.

* * * * * * * * * *

Great! Now I have to defend a character I was really liking when he acts like a disgusting pervert! Thanks a lot, Pynchon! I suppose it's no different than in Gravity's Rainbow when you've (probably) been cheering Slothrop on in his travails and then suddenly he begins fucking Bianca. When Slothrop first sees her, she's costumed up to seem like a girl of 11 or 12 and Slothrop believes that's her age when he fucks her. So even realizing Bianca is about 17 based on other factors in the plot's timeline, Slothrop still believes she's an absolute child (as opposed to a mere child which isn't any greater defense!).

But here's the thing: I don't believe Pynchon wants a reader to defend these kinds of actions. I think Pynchon just wants to say something like, "Look. The 1940s were a fucked up time. Have you seen the way people wrote about young starlets?! It's fucking disgusting! And I'm writing Gravity's Rainbow in the late 60s/early 70s which really hasn't gotten much better about the fetishizing of child and teenaged girls. Now look at it. Feel whatever you're going to feel but there it is. It's an equivalent scene to Brigadier Pudding eating shit or Pointsman fantasizing about abusing women. What do you want? All cherry blossoms and prancing kittens?"

Also that was me defending Pynchon and not what Pynchon probably actually wanted to say. Perhaps Pynchon is a gross pervert! How am I supposed to know?! But I doubt it. Just like I doubt Vladimir Nabokov was a gross pervert for writing Lolita. But he could have been, I suppose! But it's not what I'm saying, Mr. Libel Laws!

Now in Against the Day, he's taking a moment again to portray the power dynamics in old fashioned gender roles (while also, because this book was published in 2006, commenting on the way those power dynamics have shifted (if only barely, at times!) in the modern era). Here we see that a father treats his daughter not only like property but like property whose sole purpose is to provide another man with some kind of sexual pleasure. And we have a male's response that sixteen is an awful long time to wait for this cutie. It's fucking disgusting.

Unless Chick was just commenting on how long waiting for a delivery by rail takes! Then, um, never mind!

Man, I really sound like Lindsay now, don't I?! Refusing to simply laugh at the ribald humor!