IVIV1: Introducing Pynchon's burgher

[Paul Nightingale]

Things have changed, it seems; Doc now has an office (1) and Shasta has, or
had, moved to Hancock Park (3), even if, subsequently, she claims to be
"staying where I can anymore" (4), perhaps a means to keeping Doc at a
distance. Nonetheless, the opening chapter introduces Doc by emphasising
status. And Shasta, as he chooses to remember her, belongs to pre-office
days. The text homes in on her appearance, "all in flatland gear" (1); and
then, a few pages later, Doc describes Penny as a "nice flatland chick" (4),
so Shasta also belongs to Doc's present.

She might also be associated with another aspect of times past. On 3 the
narrative censors the "sum" that cannot be shared with the reader, but we
know, down the page, that Doc is "beginning to feel deeply nervous again".
On 4 we don't find out the one phone number she is prepared to share with
him either; but that might be dismissed as a mere convention, knowledge of
no use to the reader. We might insist, by way of contrast, that the money
Shasta says she has been offered is useful knowledge; instead, we are given
Doc's response, a sum of money rendered comparable to the choices that Doc,
once upon a time, made as a matter of course. Hancock Park similarly
functions as a signifier of wealth, status defined in relative terms.

Is Doc trying to achieve professional respectability, and with it an
elevated social status that Shasta's reappearance threatens? On 1, "nothing
romantic tonight" suggests that he wants her to say this is more than 'just'
business, but the office boast is still a boast; beneath the paving-stones
of the "day job and everything", the beach of "that reckless era" (3), a
return of the repressed. All of which begs the perennial Lacanian question:
what will we find beneath the beach? (Those of us interested in character
development and backstory might be inclined to start identifying dots to
join here. Shasta left Doc because he couldn't offer her a home on Hancock
Park; Doc tried to make money by taking risks. Whatever.)

And then, all of a sudden Shasta has become inscrutable: "... some heavy
combination of face ingredients ... that he couldn't read at all". At which
point she introduces the "somebody downtown" that Doc can give her access
to. Top of 3, she dismisses Doc as no better than "Dear Abby"; a page later
it becomes apparent that the job she has in mind is too big for Doc, he has
become no more than a go-between. Shasta has been doing some investigatory
work of her own: as Terrance has noted, she knows about Penny in the DA's
office. Doc has use-value in the here and now; and Shasta refuses to play
the game he has been playing, turning the clock back to wallow in something
approximating to sentimentality. Note the insert splitting Shasta's speech
at the bottom of 3: Doc is half-listening, until she brings up "somebody
downtown" and then, top of 4, he immediately connects the two women.
According to Doc, Penny is slumming, "out in search of secret hippy love
thrills"; it is Shasta--here to tell a story, to answer questions and insert
the PI into an already existing narrative--who confirms Penny's professional
status.
 
As the chapter opened, the narrative voice sided with Doc to emphasise the
difference between Shasta as she used to be and how she is in the text's
now. Just before they leave, and for the first time, Doc sees the room
through her eyes, "everything that hadn't changed ..." etc (4), a line we
have waited for since "Shasta ... sort of drifted around the place" (2); it
has taken a couple of pages for her female gaze to be acknowledged.
Moreover, "I heard you're seeing somebody downtown?" (bottom of 3) recalls
her opening words: "Thinks he's hallucinating" (1). Later: "At least her car
was the same ..." (5). And on 6 he supposes that Penny is with "some
shorthaired attorney with a promising career". By the bottom of 7 he has
decided he wants to go after Mickey, even though Shasta hasn't explicitly
asked him to: this while talking to Aunt Reet, like Penny a successful
careerist (and also like Penny with a date). On 1, "it still might be a
paying gig"; on 2, he is thinking of Shasta as "a client". On 7 Aunt Reet
confirms that, like late-Marlowe, he is working "on spec". If Shasta has
been introduced as a femme fatale we should acknowledge that the text, while
isolating her as an object of desire, also connects her to other female
characters rather more securely than it does to the narrative's putative
patriarch Mickey. Who in turn has now become an object of desire.