Pynchon's Humor

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Part the first of GR ends with some very sad and black minor
keys ---bugs and babies and dead fathers and children
singing like machine guns about learning to die. Part II
opens with great comedy. Bloat and Tantivy and the
lady-killer Slothrop like college freshman talking about
girls and beds and attire and singing of the "reckless
transatlantic" woman find so romantic. Slothrop with the
cigarettes and bathroom pranks, the smoke from a volcano out
the top of his shirt and Hogan's colorful gift, a Norfolk
jacket woven of barbed wire and sheep venerably posed.
Children laugh and are helplessly tickled in that little-kid
way. Flowery wine for breakfast (quite a contrast to Snipe
and Shaft paranoid boozing) and smiling sun, an evil octopus
out of the movies and "WHAM" it is gone, but our favorite
Dutchy is back as "the simple day, birds and sunlight, girls
and wine, [have] sneaked away from Slothrop" as he walks
from the sunny dream with two imps astride, one to remind
little Tyrone to be very careful and one he was meant to
meet...

TF