2 questions for the WE.

[Michel Ryckx]

1.  Vineland, p. 180 -Minerva paperback: "(...) to inherit his own entanglement in the world, and now (...) with the past as well, and the crimes behind the world, the thousand bloody arroyos in the hinterlands of time that stretched somberly inland from the honky-tonk coast of Now."
GR, first page: "No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into..."
The Vineland quotation touched (not: struck) me as the heart of mr. Pynchon's works.  (It is the first thing I see when I open up my eyes in the morning, having put this period into a little homemade poster). Am I wrong?
2.  I have never been able to figure out why mr. Pynchon uses italics sometimes.  Can anybody help me?  Why does he want to stress those words -and why doesn't he stress other ones?  Has this technique evolved (I thought it rather confusing in Mason and Dixon).

Kind regards,
Michel Ryckx.