From: here@tww.con   
      
   "diane"  wrote in message   
   news:1168898921.595155.289160@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...   
   > Just reading along in Kerouac's "Desolation Angels and on page 199, I   
   > find this:   
   >   
   [snip]   
   >Oh, and what must she do   
   > night-a-times, in her "bright nightgown," as W. C. Fields'd say,   
   > and sits up a-bed to listen to a strange noise downstairs then falls   
   > off to plotting her fate her brooding plan of defeat every day-   
   >   
   > diane   
   >   
      
   Nice one, Diane!   
      
   Meanwhile, reading in Pynchon's "Against the Day" last night I came upon   
   this passage, on page 397 - the year is 1903, and we're back with the Chums   
   of Chance, i.e. the merry (more or less) crew of  the airship   
   'Inconvenience':   
      
   'In New York for a few weeks of ground leave, the boys had set up camp in   
   Central Park. From time to time, messages arrived from Hierarchy via the   
   usual pigeons and spiritualists, rocks through windows, blindfolded couriers   
   reciting from memory, (...). With an obvius lack of desire to meet the boys   
   in person, their employers remained unknown to them, and contracts which   
   they didn't even get to sign were simply distributed, unannounced and often   
   it seemed blindly, from on high. "Well we are their proletariat, ain't we,"   
   snarled Darby, "the fools that do their 'dirty work' for next to nothing?   
   (...)"'   
      
   While certainly not a direct quote, I would say that this constitutes a   
   direct and wilful allusion to the work - dirty or otherwise - of mssrs.   
   Becker and Fagen from Mr. Pynchon, his penchant for pop being well known.   
      
   Pretty cool, I think.   
   (And I absolutely recommend the rest of the book - well, so far, anyway.)   
      
   Egil   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)