SLPAD 6 - “the class angle”

[Michael Bailey]

Indeed. I think it’s unsurprising that the young Pynchon developed a
perception in the military of the -  or, let me just say, a sympathy for
the working classes.

As an intelligent person growing up in the 20th century, he already had
exposure to idiocy latent or flamboyantly evident among “adults…charged
with heavy-duty responsibilities” but the stark class contrasts in the Navy
would be harder to ignore.