IVIV Hope Harlingen: a wacky theory (possible spoilers)

[alice wellintown]

pg. 39 Juicegirl rises from a nap and, after grabbing her juice from
the fridge, sits next to Larry. While Hope "poured more coffee."

Is Coffee the standard beverage of ex-Junkies? Hope does draw quite a
few comparisons here of Junk users and booze abusers and coffee is the
standard for ex-boozehounds. Not exactly what I would recommend here
but ...I'm not here AA or NA sponser and it's Larry who will have to
put up with the reambling rationalizations and paranoia.

I want to focus on Juicegirl. Does her mother, Hope continues to
neglect/abuse her here?  Now, that's harsh, right? BUt all is not
right in this world where the text keeps pointing to Hope's teeth.
Doesn't smack rot more than teeth. Why the focus on the teeth? Hope is
standard issue California chick. But for those choppers. That she
looks like every other California chick, a copy if you will, and we've
seen such duplicate women going all the way back to V., where an
ex-sailor may suck a brew from a rubber breast and the barmaids are
named Beatrice (Dante), must cause Pynchon readers to, at least
question her role a allegorical Hope. Maybe not. But those teeth
bother me. That the California standard issue chick is described
through Larry's narrative is also quite important, I suppose. And,
Juicegirl sits on the couch next to Larry. Why? It's cute. I mean, she
is. What does this kid want? Well, she wants a grown-up to tell her a
story. Tell here a story. Jeeeeeez. How cute. And, Hope? She "poured
more coffee."

Juicegirl has her juice, Hope and Larry have their coffee. The kid is
waiting, we might say, hoping for, a story from a grown-up. Are there
any grown-ups in the room?

Next, we get a stream of Larry's thoughts, thoughts that are a
response to Hope's question about Coy and Shasta and Larry, thought
about his business: "kindness without a pricetag cam ealong only
rarely, and when it did usually it was too precious to accept, being
too easy, for Doc anyway, to abuse, which he was bound to."

Larry's view is that he needed to take care of business but he failed
to. p.40 Is that why Shasta is in the mess she's in? She's an adult.
She's free to Fall same as Adam, Eve, Larry, Hope. She's mot a child.

And, what is that **Business" exactly?

Is it Mankind?

Juicegirl, realizing that these grown-ups are not telling a story, at
least not one that is "her idea of entertainment,"  climbs off the
couch and heads for her kind of entertainment---The TUBE.

Read her a story, Hope. Engage the kid a bit. Juice and Tube is all
the kid gets so off to the Tube she goes. Her form of etertainment is
not made for kids. Mightmouse, although marketed to children from
1955-1966 is about as violent as the Tube can get.

Look Momma, Books!

In the Dickens tale, “A Christmas Carol”, the ghost of Jacob Marley
visits Ebeneezer Scrooge to warn him of his ultimate fate if he
continues on his current path. Marley bemoans his actions taken while
in life that led to his precarious circumstances after his death. As
he explained to Scrooge the faults of his own selfish actions done
while alive, Scrooge attempted to console him by saying “You were a
good man of business.” To this attempt, Marley responded emphatically
“Mankind was my business!!”