spoiler? 200 to be safe

[David Casseres]

It's down there --
























Paul York sez

>... the 
>capitalization is yet another example of Pynchon's deliberately 
>half-assed approach to historical accuracy.  ...I think 
>Pynchon's inconsistent use of caps is his way of having some fun.  That 
>is, he uses caps with just enough frequency to evoke 18th Century 
>conventions, but stops short of developing any systematic use of them.  
>Why?  Maybe this is Pynchon's idea of a joke (wouldn't surprise me if it 
>was).

Having finally dived into M&D, I may say that within the first 20 pages 
or so I saw that Pynchon was making up his own flavor of English -- 
evoking 18th Century usage along with plenty of 20th-century idioms, as 
Paul notes, but not, I think, at random.  The author's voice is very much 
the same one we heard in the other novels, with new embellishments, and 
these embellishments are placed in the service of that voice.  The 
capitalized nouns provide a certain kind of emphasis, not necessarily a 
vocal stress (as with italics) but something more abstract.  I notice 
that some passages are liberally sprinkled with these capitals, while 
others have hardly any; it corresponds to a different tone.  Something 
similar is true of the other anachronistic effects.

Like some other foax here, I think it's interesting how unobtrusive all 
this becomes within a few dozen pages, at least if one is used to 
Pynchon's prose.  It's just a new component of the wonderful and seamless 
fabric of language that makes all the other narrative gymnastics work.


Cheers,
David