BEg2 Chapter 4: Pow! Pow!

[Allen Ruch]

I just wanted to add that some of Chapter 4 is pretty funny. While I am not saying that Pynchon isn’t engaging in deeper satire, there’s also a lot of humor here, too. For instance, the videogame. There’s not a lot of New Yorkers who haven’t fantasized about eliminating the kinds of people who serve as “targets” in the game. To me, it’s a laugh-out-loud moment:

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“Come on,” sez Otis, “let’s just cruise around.” Off they go on a tour of the inexhaustible galleries of New York annoyance, zapping loudmouths on cellular phones, morally self-elevated bicycle riders, moms wheeling twins old enough to walk lounging in twin strollers, “One behind the other, we let them off with a warning, but not this one, look, side by side so nobody can get past? forget it.” Pow! Pow! The twins go flying, all smiles, above New York and into the Kiddy Bin. Passersby are largely oblivious to the sudden disappearances except for Christers, who think it’s the Rapture. “Guys,” Maxine astonished, “I had no idea— Wait, what’s this?” She has spotted a line jumper at a bus stop. Nobody paying attention. H&Kwoman to the rescue! “All right, how do I do this?” Otis is happy to instruct, and before you can say “Be more considerate,” the pushy bitch has been despatched and her children dragged to safety.

“Way to go Mom, that’s a thousand points.”

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I mean, this shit is funny, because it’s genuine. (“Morally self-elevated bicycle riders!”) Sure, talk about desensitization, drone strike training, dehumanizing young men so they can kill; fine—but this is also pure Mel Brooks here, and anyone who lives in a big city understands “Pow! Pow!”

—Quail, big fan of “Death Race 2000” (1975)