'Genug!'

'… men and women in organizations establish affinities with others in their cohorts based especially on shared occupational experiences. They work hard to attract their superiors' attention and to break into social circles anchored by bosses. With both peers and higher-ups, the task is to demonstrate that one grasps and shares frameworks of understanding about how the world works and "what has to be done." Only those men and women who allow peers and superiors to feel morally comfortable in the ambiguous muddles of the world of affairs have a chance to survive and flourish in the big organizations when power and authority shift due to changes in markets, internal power struggles, or the need to respond to external exigencies. The larger the organization, the more thorough are the shake-ups and the shorter the intervals between the upheavals that reshuffle hierarchies and determine personal fates.'

'I don't feel a connection with passengers anymore.'

(Note ca. p. 23: 'Could it be that human beings are in human guise?', i.e., could it be that what we take to be human beings, might only be beings simulating humanity? In other words: by thinking this possibility named via the phrase 'human guise' through, might we leave 'epistemological agnosticism' behind and reach a 'metaphysical skepticism', 'a surmise that perhaps there are no human beings' [p. 13], just as we might surmise by reasoning about our experience that there is no world behind it, outside it, for it to be experience of? 'Could it be that human beings…?' sets out from an epistemological starting point, even if to try to leave it behind.)

Wake, peep, work, sweep, creep, sleep, repeat.

There's one worker, an obnoxious, artlessly profane, belligerent complainer, who I'll be glad to hear the last of. The wall is almost up, the summer of constant annoyances outside my window is almost over. But I could take maybe a little bit more: throwing a piece of metal into the house, and shouted back at from inside, the complainer, alone out in the yard with hardly anyone to behold him, ridiculously, taunts: 'What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it?' He keeps repeating himself. 'What are you gonna do about it?' Finally! Some action! I'm willing to let this play out.

But, no, no one else wants to play his game. Everyone goes back to banging on things and ignores him.

'It's a tweet.'

'… both are sought in silence.'

On Pynchon's California Novels