VLVL2 (3) A Finesi Romance #1

[Paul Nightingale]

> 
> Hector is not a cartoon cat. He knows what Sylvester doesn't and can't
> know. That shouldn't surprise us. He's a cop. DEA  Sure, he watches a
> lot of TV and like lots of P characters from the novel V. to VL he
> constructs his own identity based on Film and TV characters, but he's
> not a cartoon.  Hector is not a cat on a cartoon program. He pops in
now
> and then. He doesn't know why, exactly, he just does. That's not the
> same as being no less driven than Sylvester.

Hector isn't a cartoon cat, and I never said he was. But he's
nonetheless fictional, and therefore not a cop but a fictional cop.
Important differences there. The comic drive of the chapter derives from
Pynchon's use of the cartoon (and I suspect the word 'mere' hangs in the
air in your version, but never mind) to locate and colour the
relationship between Zoyd and Hector. And the text (opening paragraph)
still makes it quite clear that Hector doesn't know why he keeps after
Zoyd. And he is driven: Pynchon uses the word "obsessed" to round off
Hector's hyperbolic character assassination of Zoyd, a perfect example
of the kind of 'overkill' one might associate with the cartoon.

As I've suggested already, the cartoon narrative is one that takes place
in a neverending present; the characters are always, essentially, the
same, even when the location shifts. Sylvester isn't capable of learning
from experience, ie adopting a perspective on the action, but is caught
up in an endless cycle of ambition and frustration. In such narratives
it is the knowing reader, rather than the character, who brings
experience to the text (and Ch3, in my view, does feature Hector and
Zoyd reading themselves and each other).

It is indeed slapstick, and Don's explication of The Fatal Glass of Beer
fits. I wasn't aware of that film: my only excuse being, I'm not a big
Fields' fan, sorry.