V.

[LOT64 at aol.com]

Upon this rereading I have no great illuminations, but keep coming up with
little tidbits that seem interesting...

" 2. Chapter 1.  "Love for an object..."  (HP, p.23) "
On page 88 of the Bantam paperback: "If alignment with the inanimate is the
mark of a Bad Guy, Schoenmaker at least made a sympathetic beginning."  TRP
is really laying it out directly.

I guess Schoenmaker is like 'sweet maker'? Making people's appearance
sweeter?

I am noticing more and more references to loving the inanimate as I reread,
unfortunately I haven't been keeping track.

" 4.  Chapter 3.  What is the point of the arrangement of this chapter?"

Each vignette, except the last is told from the point of view of one of the
stock figures of Baedeker land...waiter, waitress, moocher, taxi driver,
acrobat/hotel thief, train conductor etc. (Bantam p.66) "Merely train's
hardware for any casual onlooker, Waldetar..." These are the not quite real
people for the tourists. These are all people who are inanimate to the
tourists. The final section is from the pov of our friendly narrator or is it
Stencil's point of view in his imaginings?

"(I don't remember if this same question was answered the 
     first time around, when posed by Lot64--and sent to me some months ago 
     when I joined this list on a motherquest. "

 Check out p.41 "Raised motherless." p.43 "STEN: You'll ask next if he
believes her to be his mother. The question is ridiculous."  I guess that
shows us.

Also, since he is 55 or 56 why is he referred to in this section as "Young
Stencil..."


** I am starting to notice a number of machine shop metaphors:

p.50  "...the working part of his tool bit to the production machinist, so
was the letter V. to young Stencil." (tool bits are hard metal used to cut
other metals on a lathe)

p.48 "All night the February wind would come barreling down the wide keyway
of Third Avenue, moving right over them all: the shavings, cutting oil,
sludge of New York's lathe."   A keyway is a dovetail shaped slot that
machine parts move back and forth in something shaped thus  /___\ .  The
shavings are the metal chips cut by the lathe.

I know in GR there's a reference to a cocaine users nose being as smooth as a
jo-block.  That's a highly flat precision gaging surface, prized for its
extreme smoothness, used in machine shops for an accurate measuring surface.
 Anyone notice  any I've missed?  Of course, TRP would have picked up this
knowledge in his engineering studies but has it a deeper meaning?  I'll keep
my nose to the grindstone to find out.


Ron Churgin