VLVL Sentences (looks, body language, shades, contact lenses ... )

[Terrance]

Steve Maas wrote:
> 
> The excerpt actually reads: “[
] the no-eye-contact eyes, [
]” (p.139), not
> “lenses.” I took this to mean that he won’t meet her eyes. Does the book
> actually say somewhere that he’s wearing shades?
> 
> I guess the luminous shade and the tightly rationed smile factor into her
> decision that on balance she likes and/or trusts him. To each her or his
> own. I wonder, though, about those “other, less hopeful arrangements.”


False teeth, false breasts, false hair, false eyes, $700 shades, purple
contact lenses...  decadence. 

Pynchon's characters communicate with body language throughout the text.
For example, when DL meets Frenesi she uses lopsided and sideways
smiles. Recall I-24's eyebrows flapping like wings when he is playing
the awed groupie after DL does her number with the Gun and hops into her
hot rod. Sometimes these  "looks" communicate something at odds with
what is being said. Pretty common in the real and the reel world. 


Top of page 131 

Ralph, responding to DL's look, says, "we know your history, it's all on
the computer." 

The narrator doesn't tell us anything about DL's look. We have to assume
that her look (a response to his claim that she has the motivation to
kill BV) is something like, "yeah, what do you know?" 

DL, suspicious, a little paranoid, thinks of the white limo connection. 
If he has her computer file, Ralph should know that DL has a very
person; grudge against BV and if he  wants to buy skill, he should look
elsewhere cause she has conflicted interests. 

But he persists, saying, he can see it in her eyes (her look). Her face,
her real presence and her body language, her look,  is contracted here
with her file. 

Replying to his claim that he can see it in her eyes, she doesn't
exactly shift her eyes away. She's admitting that it can be detected in
her look, but she doesn't exactly react to his proposal. 

Her thoughts shift back to the file. 

He had her number ... the FBI ... Who wants BV dead ... the FBI? Or is
it a setup? 

Ralph, we are told (and this is news to us) can read more that body
language and eyes shifting, he is a master of telepathic anxieties. He's
read her mind. He answers her anxiety about the  FBI even though she
never says a word to him. 

Disguises or clothes, cars, haircuts, watches, jewelry, so on are all
clues. If a guy is wearing a $1,500 suit (DL can tell by the cut and the
fabric, that Ralph has money) and $500 shoes ... a $3,000 watch,
characters assume that he has cash and is connected. 

We all do this. That's why the guys down in Washington wear uniforms of
various cuts and colors so we can identify them. 


DL, comes to think of Others as God at Play in various disguises. 
She's a very troubled woman.