Shutting down New York

[Terrance]

> 
> Something else folks might do well to remember is that whatever
> the SDS may have preached, they represented a tiny fraction of
> those involved in protesting against the war, or, for that matter,
> for civil rights. Most anti-war activists were not active in the SDS.

True. However, Pynchon's satire doesn't target the civil-rights movement
or the anti-war protesters. You were on to something when you were
looking at the females in this novel. That's where Pynchon's satire hits
its mark. Frenesi and DL are both the same age, both are born right
after W.W.II. Prairie is born in 1970. The novel is set in 1984. The
Japanese stuff doesn't demonstrate that Pynchon has been to Japan or
that he knows a lot about Japanese culture of films or TV, but that
Pynchon couldn't quite finish his novel about a Japanese Insurance Agent
and M&D at the same time and the Takeshi stuff  been dropped into the
middle of the novel and is set in 1978. The Takeshi stuff doesn't quite
make a banker's sandwitch, but it's still essential to the novel because
of the Karmic Adjustment business.