IVIV (1) "She came along the alley and up the back steps ..."

[Dave Monroe]

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Tore Rye Andersen<torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always
>> used to." (IV, Ch. 1, p. 1)
>
> This differs somewhat from Pynchon's other first lines, which can more
> or less be grouped into two different categories:

[...]

> The first line of IV is closest to the first category, in that it
> introduces a character, but it differs significantly from them in
> the familiarity, almost intimacy, it implies. Not "Shasta Fay Hepworth
> came along the alley," but "she" came along the alley, as if we already
> knew her. The intimacy is underscored by that "the way she always used
> to." It's almost as if we've been here before. So IV's intro is not like
> the gentle, more or less traditional introductions from category 1. It's
> more like we're thrown right into the thick of it, from an intimate
> perspective which in these first few lines seems close to Doc's.

Thesis/antithesis --> synthesis?