Pynchon and babies

[Penny Padgett]

Hi all,

Chrissie Jolley's description of TRP as "a doting father" and my
own recent entry into the world of parenthood has caused me to
reflect on the appearance of babies and children in Pynchon's work.

I can't recall anything having to do with kids in V., and I can
summon up only a couple of things in GR.  (One is "The Gross Suckling,"
which I like a lot, and the other is the "Sunshine" section, which
has always intrigued me and about which I wrote my first post to this
list in 1990.)  It is in _Vineland_ that babies really become prominent:
there are many lovely passages about Zoyd and Prairie (my favorite is
Zoyd's "belated realization" that he "would, would have to, do anything
to keep this dear small life from harm"). 

We don't know when Pynchon became a father, but the passages in _Vineland_
ring so true that I suspect it must have been around then.  I'll be 
interested to see how fatherhood continues to inform his fiction, though
there may not be many opportunities in a story about Mason & Dixon.

Penny