AtDDtA(15): They ... They ...

[Dave Monroe]

   "They ... they ...'
   "Come on, man, get a grip on yourself,' admonished Lindsay.  'Who
are this 'they' to whom you refer?'" (AtD, Pt. II, p. 410)


Cf. ...

   "'You one of those right wing nut outfits?' inquired the diplomatic Metzger.
   "Fallopian twinkled. 'They accuse us of being paranoids.'
   "'They?' inquired Metzger, twinkling also.
   "'Us?' asked Oedipa." (Lot 49, Ch. 3, p. 41)

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_sperm.html

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon

THEY

    Jessica notes a coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with
dark-suited civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows.

        "Who're they?"
        [Mexico] shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot." (40)

"'They' embracing possibilities far far beyond Nazi Germany" 25;
"They" conversation (Major-General), 33; "(They?)" 72; "he's begun to
suspect, darkly, any number of Someones Over Here" 108; "an act of
suicide [...] which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the
real, the Empire commits by the thousands every day, completely
unaware of what it's doing" 129; "The true king only dies a mock
death. [...] Any number of young men may be selected to die in his
place while the real king, foxy old bastard, goes on." 131;
"death-by-government" 176; 177; 195; "two orders of being" 202; "a
clutch mechanism between [Slothrop] and Their iron-cased engine" 207;
"Mothers work for Them!" 219; "if there is a life force operating in
Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. . .It
all comes down. . .to the desires of individual men" 228; "All the
animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being
broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are
the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all." 230;
285; "They extinguish. . .not remind" 438; no physical locale, 251;
"They would not be who or where They are without a touch of Dante to
Their notions of reprisal." 350; "They sure must have the budget, all
right. Look at this desolation, all built then hammered back into
pieces" 374; "a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking
and not giving back, [...] removing from the rest of the World these
vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction
showing a profit: [...] most of the World, animal, vegetable and
mineral, is laid waste in the process" 412; "innocence and its many
uses" 419; keeping Earth "for the numb and joyless hardons of. .
.human elite" 521; "It is possible that They will not die. That it is
now within the state of Their art to go on forever" 539; "They need
our terror for Their survival" 539; "There's something still on, don't
call it a 'war' if it makes you nervous, maybe the deasth rate's gone
down a point or two [...] but Their enterprise goes on" 628; "necktie
or cock" 637; "Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough
a We-system as a They-system" 638; "They will come and shut off the
water first" 694; 697; "Their mission in this world is Bad Shit" 712;
"Which is worse: living on as Their pet, or death? 713; "It is our
mission to promote death. . .holding down the green uprising." 720;
"submission and dominance are resources it needs for its very
survival" 737; See also entropy/closed systems; paranoia; Technology

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/t.html

Of course, there's seemingly no end of commentary on They/Them (vs.
we/us or otherwise) in Those Pynchonian Texts (so if anyone wants to
use/mention any of it, please, go right ahead), bur see as well here,
relatively recently, on "control issues," e.g., ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0702&msg=115622

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0702&msg=115631

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0702&msg=115648

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0702&msg=115653

Thanks again, Monte, Tore, Robin, et al. ...