ATDTDA (17): Pynchon's Sandburg (473)

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Former bank officers whose sleeping heads were pillowed on satchels of U.S. currency, fifteen-year-old gold prospectors who inside were already old and crazy, with growing into it just a bothersome detail, girls 'in trouble' and boys who'd gotten them there, wives in love with clergymen, clergymen in love with clergymen, horse thieves and stackers of decks -- and every last absquatulator among them somebody's child, not so much gone as consciously committing absence, and folded that quick into family legend ... " (p. 473).
 
 
By using the phrase "stackers of decks," Pynchon tips his hand in terms of the influence for this catalog of rowdies:  Carl Sandburg's "Chicago."
 
http://carl-sandburg.com/chicago.htm
 
Ultimately, for Sandburg laughter redeems the burly, hustling, hard-working belligerence that is Chicago (laughter itself being a metaphor here), whereas in the ATD passage no redemption if offered for the "sinful."