Re GR square brackets

[Jasper Fidget]

Material contained within brackets in fiction manuscripts is traditionally
information intended for editors, typesetters, or for the author himself
(eg. [check date] or [set block in italic]).  It is directed toward the text
outside of it, meta-text in a way, and therefore presents the "voice of the
author".  (Editors use brackets too, but typically preface with ed, for
instance [ed: bw?]).  Many "postmodern" novels have included brackets
therefore in order to bounce the reader out of the text--to meet the author
directly; sort of the novelist's version of what Bergman does in _Persona_
with the camera flipping back into view of the audience.

So the contention is that Pynchon himself is speaking here, but why assume
the "author" is Pynchon and not some other character, perhaps one elsewhere
in the text?  The brackets occur inside a spokesman for the Counterforce
speaking to a WSJ reporter.  There are brackets on that page too (738): [I'm
sure you want to hear about fatal weaknesses.] in reference to divided
opinions about "Slothrop *qua* Slothrop".  It might be reasonable to deduce
that the author of the bracketed text is the author of the WSJ article.  But
it makes more sense as the recorded, off-the-record, asides of the
Counterforce spokesman himself (imagine him leaning in, covering the
microphone, "I'm sure you want to hear about fatal weaknesses.", wink, then
continuing his response; later, the same action, "I am betraying them
all...").  The statement, "I know what your editors want" would be directed
toward the reporter/interviewer, and "We drank the blood of our enemies"
would therefore follow "A Raketen-Stadt Charlie Noble, you might say....",
just continuing the response to the question.

Jasper Fidget