The implausibility of Maxine's "What" (p. 419)

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

I understand that Pynchon wants to make Ernie's explanations more 
interactive by giving Maxine a line to throw in but how could she not 
know about DARPAnet and its function to enable communication after a 
nuclear war? When the Internet went through the roof by the mid 1990s 
every second media report on the issue had that story in extended 
version. How could an intelligent and educated person like Maxine have 
missed it? How could we imagine her not being interested in the 
historical origin of such a game changer? No, this is not plausible at 
all. Future editions should have, instead of "What," something like "But 
Pop, that's so long ago," an argument Maxine ("The Cold War ended, 
right?", p. 420) is trying to develop later in the conversation anyway. 
But the "What" damages the whole character.

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