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 "You are the proud grandfather, of course."

* * * * * * * * * *

Merle must look older than I realized. Although how am I expected to visualize any character when Pynchon mostly doesn't care to give a detailed description of most of them?! Usually Pynchon is, "This character is named Slovenbraut Tinkydorf. You can imagine what they looked like with that name, right?!"

Although Randolph is just a kid, basically, and to young people, even thirty year olds seem like old farts.

With all the controversy surrounding the podcast Reply All, and after having listened to it for years, I only recently saw what PJ and Alex looked like and I have to say: "I'm terrible at picturing what people look like based on their voices." So far off. Not even close. Never would have guessed!

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 "A fine-looking little girl, sir," Randolph, brimming with avuncularity.

* * * * * * * * * *

I swear these first few sections focusing on the Chums of Chance are just Pynchon fucking with his readers. He's all, "Here you go! A story that reads like a regular old story with a regular old plot with regular old characters with funny names! Just 1000 pages of easy peasy lemon squeezy stuff like this! I learned my lesson with Gravity's Rainbow! I'm an easy read now!" Then after a few dozen pages . . . WHAM! Here's some shit about the physical qualities of light! Here's some tough mathematical concepts! Here's how photography changed the way we viewed the world in much the same way as the Gutenberg press!"

I don't really know about any of that but I suspect it's all coming! I can tell all of this regular plot is just lulling me into a false sense of security. Pretty soon I'll be walking right into the punji pit!

"brimming with avuncularity"
Yes, it's a weird statement to say a person is brimming with the attributes of an uncle. But Thomas Pynchon is a weird guy. I suppose I could just read it as brimming with kindness and generosity but Pynchon chooses his words with care! He wants us to picture Randolph as an uncle. He's a person of authority but not so much that you can't sass him and he'll mostly play along. Lindsay is the dad! Miles is the mom. Darby is the child. And Chick is the cool guy in the leather jacket who owns a motorcycle and lives upstairs where you can hear him banging chicks all day long.

How come that was never an episode of Happy Days? Where none of the Cunninghams can get any sleep because Fonzi is always fucking so loud?

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 "This cannot be," he muttered. "Small children hate me."

* * * * * * * * * *

It isn't just small children, Noseworthy.

Here's why small children hate Lindsay: he's a control freak. It's why he's the master-at-arms of the ship. He loves rules because he fears chaos. If all rules are being followed, nothing bad can transpire. And who are the worst, most chaotic creatures? Small children. So Lindsay almost certainly ruins all of the fun being had by any children in his vicinity by shutting down whatever game they're playing due to rules and regulations not permitting their gambits and gambols. But this kid has just met him so she's interested! Especially since he was acting like such a clown over Merle's alcohol joke.

Have I mentioned previously how the name "Noseworthy" suggests a brown-noser? I probably did!

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 Lindsay blinked.

* * * * * * * * * *

Blinking is a sign of hesitation, a thing we haven't really seen from Lindsay before. Maybe in his grudging admiration for Miles Blundell's psychic seizure at the Fair. But that was not about a sudden lack of confidence or being unsure about his present predicament like this. That was just Lindsay not really wanting to say something nice to Blundell but being so overwhelmed with awe that he couldn't really stop himself. Here, he has stopped short and must assess the situation. Why is this little girl showing interest in him?

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Dally, intrigued, ran over and stood in front of him, peering up, as if waiting for the next part of some elaborate joke.

* * * * * * * * * *

 Even a five year old thinks Lindsay must be putting on the act of a silly man, spewing his stick-up-the-butt nonsense to whoever is trying desperately not to listen. Dally is my kind of human being. She would have understood my hyperbolic anger used for comic effect in my comic book blog. Oh, sure, at first I was pretty earnest! Some readers (who I must have eventually disappointed) loved the blog because it was so free of cynicism and snark. Because I wanted to love DC's The New 52. I wanted it to mean something! I wanted the change to have been thought out. I wanted drama and stories that were telling some kind of coherent story within their new universe. I thought there would be monumental changes! Exciting new avenues to explore in the stale and old personalities that couldn't be changed due to years of continuity! But eventually I realized it was all a sham and DC had hired some of the worst writers for their project and even the editors didn't give a damn. It broke me! It was the last time I was eager and earnest and full of wonder at what the world could offer! But it didn't give me what I expected. It gave me a pie in the face and an atomic wedgie. So of course I got angry! Of course I got cynical! Any sane person would have done the same! But, as Dally would have realized, I was never really angry. My life wasn't so invested in DC Comics that I was giving myself three strokes a week reading Lobdell and Nocenti comics.

One time, Marcus To discovered one of my Batwing reviews where I drilled him a new asshole due to his cover. In his post about how he'd never had a negative review like that, he mentioned how one of his friends thought it was funny in how angry I was. Yes! That was the point, Marcus To's friend! And here's how I ended that review, by the way:

"Ha ha! Look at how much I can bitch and still enjoy reading a comic book! What the fuck is wrong with me?"

But really, I can't blame anybody who thought my blog was reviewing comic books seriously. At some point in the 2000s, people forgot that the Internet was meant for fun and whimsy. Now everybody thinks everything is an argument. Being facetious on the Internet is almost a high crime these days! And I'm not talking about being facetious about things like race or gender; I usually treat that stuff seriously because, as Kurt Vonnegut writes in Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend." I don't mind being a super angry super fan of comic books (which I'm not; I really am just pretending at that! Stupid Vonnegut! Take it back!) but I won't participate in racism or sexism by pretending to be a Nazi asshole! Who thinks that's funny?! No, what I'm talking about is going on a huge rant about how terrible Superboy might be in a comic that's written terribly by a terrible writer only to have huge Superboy stans constantly yell at me for criticizing their fictional love boy!

Um, you know what, never mind this entry! I'll get back to Against the Day in the next post!

Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 27: Line 36 (408)

 "Sir, one must protest!"

* * * * * * * * * *

"One must protest all common men who might
give poison to a child. One must contest
all use of slang. One must protest all spite
engendered by protesting all unrest.
Sir. SIR, I say. One must protest the sight
of shirts untucked, unpolished shoes, and messed
up beds left long unmade. One must, despite
all threats, protest all sins left unconfessed.
One must protest against the day, the light
that shines on only some. One must attest
to those unseen long covered by the night.
One must protest all those who won't protest.
One must protest the ones who close their eyes,
Who choose to dismiss truth and feast on lies."