IV (10) page 154

[alice wellintown]

It is no secret nowadays, particularly to women, that many American
males, even those of middle-aged appearance, wearing suits and holding
down jobs, are in fact, incredible as it sounds, still small boys
inside. Flange is this type of a character, although when I wrote this
story I thought he was pretty cool. He wants children--why isn't made
clear--but not at the price of developing any real life shared with an
adult woman.

see Homoerotic Bonding as Escape from Heterosexual Responsibility in
Pynchon's Slow Learner - Thomas Pynchon
Style, Fall, 2000 by Mark D. Hawthorne Online ...

Back to IV we note that the narrative is quite contrived and moves
along in jerks and spurts. We could say it is jerked on and we are
jerked off but that would only piss on and piss off the "this book
isn't crap crew." Jade calls giving Dorothy one more reason to go to
Oz. This is an old plot device P makes fairly smooth use of in other
works, but is jerky in IV. OK, he has reason to get off the couch of
sloth and head out to work a ticket.

The telephone, and specifically the Princess Telephone as I noted in a
prior post about how the use and abuse of technology in TSI adds up to
Pynchon's first story about The Rocket, is now hooked up by Eddie to
the wake up call that screams "Fire" in the theater of Larry's dreams,
an act of terror. That a telephone call can interrupt repose or quiet
reverie or even reefa retarded REM is as easy for us to accept as the
dynamo that hums along rocking a baby in the cradle described by Henry
Adams. Larry, who hangs and we can assume smokes dope with,  teen
Vandals, is immature. He quizzes  Jade because she's at a concert when
she might be out looking for her lost friend. Is she selfish,
immature? Just a bit. Lick my clit some more . . .right here on the
floor. Oooooo. But P's use of the infantile Freudisms grows tiresome.
Larry is a baby too. Grow up, cut your hair, get a job, buy a lot,
have some kids, be a man. But of course all of these sermons are
undermined by other narratives like Wolfmann's. Be a Wolf, man. Yeah,
make a ton of gold and push the poor off their turf. Wolfmann is
regressing. LSD has that effect in P's novels. It turns people into
thumb sucking babies of wacki-ness. A Cuckoo's Next flew east and
west, but as RPM always sez, "you're one big fucking Indian."