For De Mille, Young Fur-Henchmen….

There’s a section of Gravity’s Rainbow detailing the criminal activities of, I think, 30 fur-coat-stealing dwarves. They auditioned en masse for a part on a galleon in a biblical epic but failed to get parts. Apparently “For De Mille young Fur-Henchmen can’t be rowing” This “pun” on the expression “Forty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong” would have been completely lost on me but for the Steven Weisenburger companion.

Would I have enjoyed the book any less if I’d remained in the dark? Probably not. Whilst it’s possible to treat books as puzzles to be solved, If they’re any good they ought to work as plain old stories. This is true of anything by Pynchon. He may occasionally be wilfully obscure (the sections on Quaternions in “Against The Day” would defeat anyone without a Maths degree) but he also writes gorgeous prose and wonderful shaggy-dog stories.

In just the same way TMITHC works as an alternative history without needing to be aware of Dick’s ideas on simulacra. In fact pretty much everything he wrote can be seen as riffs on two concerns – “What is human?” And “What is real?” ( It’s an open question whether this is the result or the driver of his paranoia )
However I think it’s still possible to read “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?” as hard boiled detective fiction with a sci-fi edge and treat the philosophy as a gloss.

Is this true or am I getting my excuses in early?