Single up all lines

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>To: torerye at hotmail.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>CC: johncarvill at hotmail.com
>Subject: RE: Single up all lines
>Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 21:30:33 +0300
>
>>I've got to say that this is the perfect opening line for 'Against the 
>>Day'. Pynchon does indeed seem to be singling up all lines, gathering up 
>>the threads from his previous novels before setting off on this latest 
>>(last?) journey. "Wow, I-I can't wait to see Happyville!"
>>
>>
>Well put! After the apocalyptic screaming of GR and the placid 'Snowballs 
>have flown their Arcs' of M&D, we have "single up all the lines", oops, 
>don't know how to characterise it yet...
>

And that initial "Now" is simply perfectly Pynchonesque: Note the frequency 
of the deictic markers "now" and "here" in Pynchon's novels, especially 
Gravity's Rainbow. They serve to situate the reader squarely in the 
historical moment Pynchon is describing, and by denying us any outside 
perspective, so to speak, Pynchon aligns us with the poor schmucks in his 
novels - all-too-human fools like Slothrop and Mason and Dixon who lack any 
clear historical perspective on what they're right down in the middle of. 
Pynchon doesn't render the past AS past, but as the present that it once 
was.
(Apropos "right down in the middle of": did anyone else ever notice that the 
only italicized words on page 380 of Gravity's Rainbow's 760 pages are: 
"right in the middle of it"? That's GOT to be deliberate, or am I just being 
paranoid?)