Chapter 1: Page 7: Line 17

 "Why haven't we heard a Tale about America?" Pitt licking Gobbets of Philadelphia Pudding from his best Jabot.

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Line 17 Vulgarized:
"Hey Uncle? What are you, a Communist?! Why haven't you given us an American story about America and Americans?" asked Pitt while licking some probably gross dessert from some article of clothing I've never heard of.

Subtext:
The subtext is that Reverend Cherrycoke hasn't told a story about America in the two or so months he's been there. Probably because America, though it's been around as an idea for some time yet, has only recently transformed into reality. The story of America is almost literally just starting here in 1786 with the revolution having just recently ended and the writing of the Constitution just around the corner. They have not heard an American story yet because there isn't one to tell, really. Of course Pynchon is telling an American story in 1990 which is this story. He wants to tell, from two hundred years in the future, a story about America as a toddler, still full of potential and hope. Not that any of that stupid potential and hope is left now! Boy did we squander that stuff! Just gobbled it up and wiped the remains on our best jabots.
    The subtext of my vulgarized line is that I'm too lazy too put "Philadelphia Pudding" and "Jabot" into a search engine on the Internet. That's probably not a good look for a poser Academic so let me actually look them up.
    Looking up "Philadelphia Pudding," I do not learn what the dessert is. But I do wind up on a page with a PDF of Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds AKA Janie Hinds' edited book of Mason & Dixon essays, The Multiple Worlds of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon: Eighteenth-Century Contexts, Postmodern Observations. I note this because Janie was my friend's advisor at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley when Mason & Dixon was published and the reason I wound up reading the novel back then. I'm not sure if I ever met her during one of my visits to UNC but I did engage with her and my friend in email exchanges discussing The X-Files. It also means she was probably present at the moment when my life peaked (which I was not present for): when Daniel Justice read my story, "A Really Scary Story," in front of a large crowd on Halloween that included novelist Connie Willis. (If you're curious about reading my story, just search for it and "Grunion Guy.")
    Looking up "Jabot," I just got loads and loads of pictures of Ruth Bader Ginsberg because a jabot is that lace cozy around the collar of her Supreme Court robes.