Two Encyclopedias, Fat and Thin

[Chris Broderick]

As well as in Tom Swift novels...

But Pynchon's always been good at the cliffhanger (see
the end of Lot 49).  He just avoids the amazing escape
that usually follows, preferring to leave the reader
hanging off the cliff.  I've always thought of
Pynchon's plotting as similar to a very cruel shaggy
dog joke that I used to love telling about a young boy
who was obsessed with pink ping pong balls.  The short
version is that he is a poor student, and his parents
tell him they will get him anything he wants if he
gets his grades up.  So he does, and asks for a pink
ping pong ball.  As the boy grows up, this occurs over
& over (starting with one ping-pong ball, and
eventually building up to a pink garbage truck filled
with pink ping-pong balls).  Then he is hit by a car. 
On his death bed, his father asks him what the deal
was with the pink ping-pong balls.  He says "I-," and
dies.  If you spend enough time on the joke, you can
have every person in a room really hating your guts.

-Chris


--- robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:


> Of course,
> the cliffhanger is the defining dramatic trope of
> the
> silent film era.
> 



 
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