Re: Not P but DFW: There’s nothing in the Yellow Pages under Flag.

[Mike Jing]

Well, this certainly wouldn't be the first time I was wrong, if it is
indeed the case that Yellow Pages always include a set of predefined
categories even if some of them contain no entries.

But I don't think the reference is about saving one’s Fourth of July flags,
since nobody would expect such information from the Yellow Pages. It seems
that he was just looking for a place that sells flags in the YP but found
none.

On Sun, Feb 8, 2026 at 9:48 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> My wild guess is that Wallace might be saying that the YP CATEGORY
> reference means that there is nothing under it about saving one’s Fourth of
> July flags per previous sentence.
>
> On Sun, Feb 8, 2026 at 7:54 AM Mike Weaver via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>
>> The Trials and Tolerance of a Translator by Mike Jing
>> You are of course right Mike and your proofreader needs to loosen up a
>> little. To say there's nothing under... on a list is a way of saying
>> there's no such category on the list.
>>
>> On 08/02/2026 11:32, Mike Jing wrote:
>> > The following excerpt is from David Foster Wallace's *The View from Mrs.
>> > Thompson's*:
>> >
>> > The overall point being that on Wednesday here there’s a weird accretive
>> > pressure to have a flag out. If the purpose of displaying a flag is to
>> make
>> > a statement, it seems like at a certain point of density of flags you’re
>> > making more of a statement if you don’t have a flag out. It’s not
>> totally
>> > clear what statement this would be, though. What if you just don’t
>> happen
>> > to have a flag? Where has everyone gotten these flags, especially the
>> > little ones you can fasten to your mailbox? Are they all from the
>> Fourth of
>> > July and people just save them, like Christmas ornaments? How do they
>> know
>> > to do this? There’s nothing in the Yellow Pages under Flag.
>> >
>> > I assume this means there isn't a category named "Flag" in the Yellow
>> > Pages, is that correct? It seems pointless to have such a category and
>> just
>> > leave it empty, but that's just what one proofreader thinks is the case.
>> > This person is taking everything way too literally and it's getting
>> > tiresome.
>> > --
>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>