As I started reading chapter three, I noticed something peculiar in the novel, but by no means meaningless. Pynchon described the TV set as the “TV tube”… the TV tube revealed the father…” (pg, 30), which made me think about when you look very closely through a tube. As you look into a tube, your vision becomes more limited and specific in a certain object due to the fact that the tube’s walls hamper your vision. And limiting your vision is exactly what the TV set does to its viewers, it shows most of the times only one perspective about an event. It evens show the viewers tampered images and videos of things that never happened. So, the fact that the TV only lets the viewer see what the person controlling the images wants you to see made me think on how a tube, by limiting you vision, only lets you look at what it wants you to see.
“Things then did not delay in turning curious.” ( pg, 31). This is the line which the speaker uses to begin chapter 3. I found this line very interesting in the sense that it directly gives the reader a clue that something “curious” will happen shortly. Normally, I as a reader can see if something is going to be “curious”; however, Pynchon may use this line not only to introduce what will happen soon, but to mock the reader. I believe that Pynchon mocks the reader because he explicitly tells the reader that something IS going to happen in case the reader was too distracted, or in some cases incapable to catch.
“If one object behind her discovery of what she was to label the Tristero System or often only The Tristero (as if it might be something’s secret title) were to bring to an end to her encapsulation in her tower, then that night’s infidelity with Metzger would logically be the starting point; logically.” (pg, 31). Notice how the speaker emphasizes on the word “logically”, but why? Is Pynchon trying to make the reader remember Metzger and his role in the newly created Tristero system? Is Pynchon just foreshadowing or playing one of his tricks on the reader to humiliate his naive fan? Maybe, I’ll like to find out as I read the novel.
Pynchon once again made me laugh with one of his jokes against private lawyers: “…Leonard the drummer now reached into the pocket of his beach robe and produced a fistful of marijuana cigarettes and distributed them among his chums. Metzger closed his eyes, turned his head, muttering, “Possession” (pg, 48). Metzger, a lawyer is closing his eyes to make himself believe that he wasn’t a witness of the drugs that Leonard carried. This attitude that Metzger demonstrates is, I believe, a target of Pynchon’s mockery. Pynchon wants to laugh at the attitude that private lawyers take toward their guilty clients. Even though the client may be guilty of an atrocious crime such as a raping, the lawyer just ignores this fact and manipulates the evidence in such a way that the criminal can walk free with the condition that the lawyer receives his paycheck. What I mean, is that private lawyers tend to apparent ignorance towards his/her client’s crime.
Speaking of lawyer jokes, Pynchon again makes a jeer at the lawyers of the U.S. and their lawsuits. For me personally, the U.S. is completely ridiculous when speaking of lawsuits due to the fact that anybody can sew an entity if they screw up. For example, a kid was skating in a building and fell and broke an arm. In my opinion, it was the kids fault of braking an arm; however, in the U.S. the kid is allowed to sew his building manager because he fell. In the book, Di Presso, a private lawyer, is going to sew Inverarity for not paying some bones left over form deceased soldiers in the Second World War. What kind of lawsuit is that? Nobody wants the bones, so why is it a big deal?
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