GRGR(3) talking dog 44.20

[Michael Perez]

Keith Woodward wrote:
"I'll agree (as I have earlier) that it is possible that this is a
third-person omniscient narrator revealing the dog's POV, I just also
see hints that it may be being indirectly narrated through Pointsman. 
I answered before that I don't think that Pointsman narrates the
'Lessie' dialogue (but MEXICO perhaps narrates it/imagines it).  The
possible dialogue at 42.9-10 '(still raw, still needs licking)' may,
however, be from the POV of the dog or from an indirect narrative by
Pointsman.  It's certainly a surreal enough novel to have a talking
dog, but it's also a complex enough narrative in the novel to have a
framed narrative (if you will) through Pointsman."

Might I be so bold as to suggest an alternate reading here regarding
the dog.  Although the seeming utterance is attributed to the dog by
virtue of the quotation marks, as Doug pointed out earlier, could it be
that the dogs EXPRESSION, so to speak, - any dog owner, though I am not
one, knows that dogs have "facial" expressions - is what Pynchon is
communicating here.  It is a visual image translated into prose AS a
quotation.  This was always my view of it (I chuckle every time I think
of it). It is actually quite clever of Pynchon to communicate the dog's
POV this way.  In addition, it is *interpreted* through Roger, who has
just made a reference to "Allen's Alley" and the dog, of course,
"answers" (that is, has an expression as if to answer) as Mrs.
Nussbaum, who was always asking Fred Allen who he vas exshpectink
mebbe.  All this even though Weisenburger reports that "Allen's Alley"
was not one of the radio shows that the Beeb carried at the time.

Michael

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