ATDTDA (23): "it's way too late anymore" (643.10)

[Michael Bailey]

I remember being vaguely disconcerted when a co-worker in
1977 said, "Anymore, it's not what you know, it's who you know"

but I blanched the first few times I heard "impact" used as a verb,
so what do I know?  And I actually cringed the first (many) times
somebody asked for my "social" (meaning social security number),
and the first couple hundred times I heard people say "PIN Number"

Anymore, those phrases seem right, and I use them myself...



On 11/28/07, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Ewball, now arms merchant, sounds massively cynical to me with
>
> some kind of colloquialism...
>
>
>
>  "it's always been a bad time" ............It's always been doomed up there"
>
>
> ----- Original Message ---
> -
> From: Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net>
> To: Pynchon-L <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 5:06:37 AM
> Subject: ATDTDA (23): "it's way too late anymore" (643.10)
>
> "For you-all, it's way too late anymore."
>
>
> Strange.
>
> I keep returning to this phrase, trying to figure it out.
>
> In the context of the paragraph, Ewball is commenting to Dwayne on how
> Americans are more or less beyond hope because they've "delivered
> [themselves] into the hands of capitalists and Christers,"  whereas "folks
> down here still have a chance."
>
> But to my ear it's an odd construction. Why follow up "It's way too late"
> with the word "anymore"?  Is this Pynchon trying to evoke colloquial
> folk-speak, or broken English?  Or is there the subtle suggestion of a
> double-negative in the phrase:  wouldn't "anymore" seem more befitting a
> sentence like, "It's not too late"?  So, does "It's way too late anymore"
> function as an ironic statement by the unwitting Ewball?
>
> Strange.
>
>
>
>
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