AtDTDA: (8) Quit fooling

[Tore Rye Andersen]

One of Tyrone Slothrop's verbal tics in GR is "Quit fooling" - by it shall 
we know him. With one notable exception, Slothrop's the only character in GR 
who says it, and he says it frequently (see e.g. 198, 242, 373, 381, 395, 
438, 479, 526, 553, etc.). The exception? Skippy, in the fantasy of Skippy & 
Mr. Information, also uses the phrase (see p. 644), but Skippy may easily be 
read as a metaphorical version of Slothrop, who skips around the zone while 
his temporal bandwidth gets smaller and smaller.

On page 234 of AtD, Slothrop's verbal tic surfaces once again, this time in 
the mouth of Lew Basnight. Of course, "quit fooling" may just be an 
Americanism, which Pynchon in GR ascribed to Slothrop (but not to any of the 
other American characters), and which he in AtD ascribes to Lew, but it does 
seem significant, and at least it points to certain shared characeristics of 
personality between Slothrop and Lew: "Hey, I'm a Yank in that Europe, and 
perhaps I feel a bit out of my depth, but you can't fool me - that is, if 
you are indeed fooling (I'm not entirely sure - I've been let down in my 
past, and like those insecure children who can't understand irony, I have a 
hard time telling when someone's pulling my leg)"...

_________________________________________________________________
Opret en personlig blog og del dine billeder på MSN Spaces:  
http://spaces.msn.com/