BE Ch 9 summary - Chunky Monkey

[Mark Kohut]

I hate to sound like an echoic suck-up but I do this too....esp
couple--three and, yes, sorta, kinda.....

Really.

On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 3:15 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 1:11 PM Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com>
> wrote:
>
> And David—"sorta?!?"
> > Even the word is funny
>
>
> I use “sorta” in tribute to Pynchon.  I think he’s used it around (kinda,
> sorta) a few times.  Pynchon’s got a fairly large stable of word
> contractions and combinations that are kinds of speech that feel to me like
> “aw-gee” phrases that you might hear on 50’s TV shows like the “Andy
> Griffith Show” or “Bonanza.”  To me they feel like a mid-western dialect
> from the Wonder-bread era.  And he uses them all the  time in contexts that
> aren’t really true to the locales or eras of the mouths they come from.
> For example, in ATD a detective boss tells Lew Basnight that an anarchist’s
> gathering is happening “down the El line a couple-three stops.”  And
> Pynchon uses that one all the time.  Some feel like maybe they come from
> the LA valley in the 70s.  I should start gathering up a list of examples.
> I think BE is full of them.  They might be more locale-correct than I give
> Pynchon credit for. But I think maybe (probably) he uses them incorrectly
> on purpose.
>
> David Morris
>
> >
> --
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>