MDDM: ch. 67 "Garden Pests"

[Doug Millison]

This story of the giant Veggies also recalls the kinds
of American tall tales that M&D sometimes seems to be
playing with, as in the Werebeaver tale.  What
specific reasons are there for not assuming that Wicks
is narrating this part of the novel? The tall tale
seems within the scope of his repetoire and
story-telling skills. (Pynchon and no other writes and
manages all of the story-telling between the covers of
this fat tome, but sorting out the narratological
details is interesting enough, I suppose.) And the
"fee fi fo fum" Jack and the Beanstalk detail seems
intended to entertain the children as well as the
adults present for the telling.  I guess you could
assume that, off-stage, in a scene that Pynchon
doesn't include in the novel, they've all gotten
stoned and somebody is now hallucinating this episode
(something that Pynchon doesn't seem to say, either),
but why the need to explain it that way, it seems a
tad cumbersome, rather more elegant to give Wicks the
honors and honor the author's conceit.

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