A line from Thomas Pynchon

This is a line I found in Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day"


Despite having gone in with the determination to cut the place some slack, Kit had seen Y. almost immediately for what it was. The book-learning part of it, two or three good companions not quite crippled into the reflexive and humorless caution which leading the nation would require-that was all just swell, and almost made up for the rest of it.