Pynchon Japan Playboy

[Terrance]

> 
> So because someone can't make sense of it means that it doesn't *have*
> meaning?

It means there are many ways of saying one thing and meaning another.
Irony, sarcasm, and figures of speech are such devices, and they are
wonderful when they work. The Irish worked such wonders with irony that
their enemies feared going to war with them. The Irish were often led
into battle by an Ironist spewing jokes on their foes. Joking is a kind
of irony that has both rapport and defensive payoffs. The rapport
benefit lies in the sensual pleasure of shared laughter as the evidence
of rapport in having matching senses of humor. 

Rummy: Osama is a Rodeo Clown stapled to a dying dialysis machine. 

President of The American Rodeo Riders Busted Kidney Foundation: What? 


The defensive benefit is in the ability to retreat: 

Rummy: "I was just joking." 

We can see that there are complex metamessages in jokes. 

And in songs. Like the worm song. 

Play it again. They are playing our song, Love. 

The "Our Song" phenomenon: the existence of a shared history and shared
associations both attests to and enhance intimacy. That's why is is
painful for Frenesi to hear the worm song (even though she never does
here it being sung since the worms of song don't sing they crawl and
play cards and so forth) in her head: Weed is Dead and her relationships
have all ended, all but the one she stuck in with Brock). In a sense,
Weed is Dead (well, he's a Thanatoid) and DL is dead, and the collective
is dead. AND a language has died: the private language that a couple or
a group or clique created and used. That Language has no meaning. 

There is an aesthetic pleasure in indirectness. Sending and getting
unstated meaning is aesthetically pleasing. 

Look Mom, No Hands! 

 When we get good at something we want to do it in ever more complicated
and artful ways, like driving a california spike with a single blow.
After you've framed a couple thousand houses it gets boring. Some guys
get excited by new tools, new machine tools, new machines, before you
know it they're working as comedians. 
Others like to do things the way the old man did it, and his old man... 
and they like to have young apprentices about, but with all these new
machines and materials ... unions powerless   ...  we need to get funny,
cryptic, subtle, stylized. If someone else understands the humor, the
style, the implications--breaks the code--it is pleasurable for both and
sends metamessages of rapport. 

McMurphy thinks.  

The pitcher thinks himself clever for having thrown a curve, the hearer
for having caught it. The batter looks back for the signal, but he can't
get it. Who is on second? Third base. There he goes. If the curve is 
not caught-- if it hits someone in the head or hits the screen behind
the catcher, the runner takes off, the catcher shakes his head, the
pitcher bows his. 



"There was no longer walks slow because there was no one left to call
her that." 

water speaks, Brian Hall's I should be extremely happy in your company

Grease Monkey wheels himself from under your magazine, "Translations are
very complex, Mr. Tim. Gonna need to drop this here rodeo clown and
replace the horns. Ya lookin at 2 bills. 

Worms: 



That's right, she never hears the famous worms song, she sees the worms
from the song playing cards on Weed's snout and she hears the East Coast
Lowlifes (Wilbur, Wesley, Wanda). She hears the same phrases again when
she looks into a Judge's chamber. The Lowlifes are drinking and smoking
and playing cards. Wanda is serving them. They know the rules of the
game. Frenesi knows the song from childhood. It's a song about Death
that little kids sing. 

He routine with Weed doesn't include sleep. But this night she sleeps
over with him. She wakes in the middle of the night, hears the Lowlife
phrases. She goes after them with a ball-peen hammer she happens to have
in her purse. Is she still dreaming? She has a ball-peen hammer? OK, it
looks like she crushed a worm on the sheet, but the only trace of the
sucker is a pixel smear. 

This is typical Pynchon fantasy-parody. It's a parody of cartoon. That's
why the little worm people are Lowlife East Coast from Frenesi's
perspective, she doesn't know enough about the East Coast or Cartoons to
know that they must be from the New England East Caost, these ain't
Georgian Low Lifes, more likely NY or Philly, Boston, Newark cartoons.
When they see her looking at them and she sees them looking at her the
frame stops, the figures,  as if some paralysis, stop, then it starts up
again and we them running down Weeds face like Lilliputians on Guliver's
mug.