VLVL2 (10) Hi-tech Heaven, 192-193

[Paul Nightingale]

(192.27-29) "The place was full of computer terminals, facsimile machines, all-band transmitter/receivers ..."

The narrative account of Takeshi's office simply lists the appropriate signifiers. Of course, one shouldn't forget the way location can be used to construct character. Cf the first view we're given of Marlowe's ("seedy and picturesque") office in The Big Sleep (1939):

"'Well, you do get up,' she said, wrinkling her nose at the faded red settee, the two odd semi-easy chairs, the net curtains that needed laundering and the boy's size library table with the venerable magazines on it to give the place a professional touch."

[...]

"We went into the rest of my suite, which contained a rust-red carpet, not very young, five green filing cases, three of them full of California climate, an advertising calendar showing the Quins rolling around on a sky-blue floor, in pink dresses with seal-brown hair and sharp black eyes as large as mammoth prunes. There were three near-walnut chairs, the usual desk with the usual blotter, pen set, ashtray and telephone, and the usual squeaky swivel chair behind it.

"'You don't put on much of a front,' she said ..." (Penguin 1974 ed, 58-59).

Even though the narrative adopts Marlowe's point of view, a passage like this clearly emphasises the impact the scene has on Vivian. At the same time the narrative depends on the reader's familiarity with this kind of writing: the repetition of "usual" indicates the narrator's impatience, he can't quite see the point of such detail to the account he gives.

Pynchon's text operates differently:

(193.1-2) DL, still in screwball comedy mode: "Most of it's just props to make ol' Sleazebrain here look good."

DL is performing (or quoting) a role in a way the Chandler-narrator isn't. Moreover, in the passage that follows Pynchon will cite the importance, in a consumer society, of those designer goods (or "props") that have the power to "make [individuals] look good".