Kick-Ass Thank You

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Bekah:

>I agree with you,  Tore,  that Lake is uninteresting and a kind of "bad" 
>character - at least as a character.   But why do you think Pynchon 
>included her in the way he did?   Was it a balance to something?  Was it to 
>implicate the Gods?  Was it to throw some sex in?

Ha! Good question, and I wish I had a good answer. Lake obviously has a 
number of functions in AtD. She is one of four Traverse children (and the 
number four may very well be significant here, as in four dimensions, or 
four corners of the compass), and her behavior shows some of the 
ramifications of Webb's remoteness when he was alive and his absence after 
he's killed. She's also, I guess, meant to set up an echo to Vineland's 
children of the storm, and - as Laura pointed out - there's probably also an 
echo of Gottfried in there somewhere.

So I guess that her "function" was pretty clearly outlined in Pynchon's mind 
as he wrote AtD, but perhaps she never really moved beyond this function? In 
a novel with hundreds of characters, one can't really expect the author to 
care as much for all of them, so perhaps Pynchon simply lost interest in 
Lake? (A wild guess, of course). Perhaps he couldn't be bothered to flesh 
her out beyond her intended function in the plot? He may have intended 
Lake's shallowness, but I doubt, however, that he intended her to be as 
uninteresting as many of us apparently find her...

Like Ande, I don't primarily read Pynchon for subtle psychological 
characterizations (although I tend to find his characters very interesting). 
Usually, there is so much else going on (beautiful language, exotic locales, 
historical analysis, zany humour, elaborate metaphos, complex patternings, 
a-and CHASE SCENES - in BALLOONS!!!!), and one isn't too bothered with 
Pynchon's sometimes less than three-dimensional characterizations: 
Psychological nuances don't really seem to be the point in most of Pynchon's 
work. In the Lake-sections of AtD, though, they DO seem to be the main 
point. The prairie sections of AtD don't seem to have as much going for them 
as, say, the European or Asian sections, where the characters' actions take 
place on an elaborate (and elaborately described) world-historical backdrop. 
In the prairie sections, however, the interpersonal drama and the subtle 
psychological nuances seem to be the main point: No Chums there, no sinister 
forebodings of WW1, no ominous mayonnaise factories or manned torpedos, etc. 
Just the rather featureless prairie and the interpersonal drama between a 
handful of characters. If Lake had played her part in one of the richer 
sections of AtD, I doubt we would have really noticed her shallowness. In 
the prairie sections, however, the characters are really foregrounded, they 
take front and center stage. And Lake seems to be too flimsy a construction 
to carry the weight Pynchon tries to put on her shoulders. She seems, first 
and foremost, to be a function in some thematical equation, and while 
mathematical (and thematical) equations are fine for back in Göttingen, they 
seem somewhat inadequate for the intense personal drama Pynchon probably 
intended here.

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