IVIV1: Introducing Pynchon's burgher

[Paul Nightingale]

I meant "investigative work" in the most general sense; Shasta has found out
something Doc doesn't know she knows, allowing her to seize the initiative.
The paragraph in question, at the bottom of 3:

"Nobody's telling me, Doc, I'm just the bait." Come to think of it, there'd
never been this much sorrow in her voice either. "I heard you're seeing
somebody downtown?"

Shasta as "bait": for Mickey or for Doc, perhaps (one of the moments where
the text aligns Doc with Mickey). And then Doc still trying to read her, it
seems only half-listening. And then Shasta changing the subject, changing
the dynamics of the exchange: he is no longer questioning her.

The chapter's opening lines suggest that she hasn't been seen at all in the
neighbourhood, although this might well be Doc going from 'me' to everyone
else' and nothing more (that in itself, immediately leaping from the
particular to the general, is noteworthy, I think, the narrative claiming on
behalf of Doc some kind of omniscience). Later, bottom of 10, Denis mentions
Shasta's car at the first opportunity; perhaps, if she had been back in the
neighbourhood, someone would have mentioned it to Doc?

On Doc's moral centre ... I'm never quite sure what this kind of thing is
supposed to mean. Words on the page. Doc does make a decision that he will
investigate this case without being formally hired; as I've said, this
recalls late-Marlowe, the PI who isn't selling a service (or, more
accurately, considers something else more important). On 5 Doc wonders "how
ready she was to go back ..." etc, so he is hardly disinterested; but it
isn't business as usual.