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

[J Tracy]

> On Feb 8, 2026, at 8:48 AM, 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.

That’s ridiculous. 
He looked in the YP ; no heading for flag or anything starting with flag. The fact that a category is common does not make it universal; phone books are local. Apparently he does not think of military surplus stores, Sears, K-Mart…but how intent on finding a flag is someone who does not already have one, how much have they prepared for a sudden wave of patriotic fervor? I’m thinking probably not much.
> 
> 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
>> 
> --
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