Lotion (Re-View: In which Pencil looks for Mr. Pynchon)

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

"As the ball stand is to the golfer, the remains of a steak to the
carnivore, the crossing in an experimental maze to the Pavlovian,
so was the letter T. to young Pencil" - we all know this by heart. 

Has anyone noticed that what is often considered the writer's
masterpiece, _Tantivy's Neighbours_ -- this devastating, hugely
accurate magnum opus about the domestic chores of a retired and 
childless lower middle class couple living in the semi-detached 
suburbs of London before the war -- could also be called "T. for 2"?

Heikki  
 
On Tue, 7 May 1996 ckaratnytsky at nypl.org wrote:

>           Come to Nueva York, daddio, where the young adventurer Chrissie 
>      Pencil finds herself waaaaay downtown in half-deserted streets.  
>      Pencil wanders amid the looming towers of municipal bureaucracy and        
>      eventually stumbles into the Knitting Factory.  What was Pencil,
>      intrepid searcher, doing here, with nary a Pynchie in sight?  Would she    
>      know it if she saw one?  Do they carry badges, buttons, dog-eared copies
>      of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, wear ALLIGATOR PATROL armbands?  No time to worry    
>      about this, though, there was music to be listened to -- and something     
>      else.
>      
>           If you ask her, she'll admit she had been randomly scanning 
>      faces all evening, ostensibly looking for the Pynchies she never 
>      found, but, when Lotion began their set-up, Pencil peered into the 
>      crowd in earnest.  Was *he* there?  For it was V., I mean *T.* she 
>      hunted.  Enigmatic T., source of all mysteries -- was he hiding 
>      out, knowing she'd be looking?  Finding him:  what then?  Kvetch about 
>      her his our collective fate, our cosmic sadness?  That's what this was 
>      all about, wasn't it, this gig, this chase?  T's NOBODY'S FOOL liner
>      notes had suddenly acquired a light of their own, a world behind and
>      inside the band called Lotion.  She, Pencil, world traveler, had skipped   
>      down the yellow bricks that led right to the great and powerful Oz of
>      some demented Pynchie's dream.  Was it hers?
>           
>           "A-ah, that entropy sure is a bitch, innit, Mr. Pyn-chon?"
>           
>           "Rilly."
>           
>           Nah.  She tried not to think about the end to any search.  She 
>      was there to hear the music, the rest of that stuff was 
>      window-dressing.  Lotion came out shooting for arena stardom from the 
>      hip.  The crowd, tickled by the dense gee-tar groove, began to bounce. 
>      Short-haired girls in baby barrettes and tight tricot sweaters 
>      bounced alongside their nose-ringed boyfriends in bell-bottoms and 
>      Converse All-Stars.  Leather-jacketed hipsters and their high 
>      maintenance chicks bounced with, gah, what looked like the terminally 
>      cool staff of Esquire Magazine.  (Pencil had heard that one of the band 
>      members was once on the Esquire payroll.)  Pencil bounced, too.
>           
>           Born in 1960, Pencil was in time to be the Baby Boom's child.  
>      Raised nostalgialess, she was primed, presumably, to slurp the Tang 
>      from Lotion's magic retro Dixie Cup.  Yet, for some reason, anything
>      that dripped TV-land pop culturisms like so much melted Velveeta gave
>      her the willies.  Pencil, nobody's fool, would've called self-conscious    
>      kitsch what T. had described as "attentive nostalgia."  Yes, these guys
>      definitely knew more than she wished they did, but who was she to argue?   
>      Never having heard the music before and unable to understand to any        
>      great degree the lyrics to the songs, adventurous Pencil was content to
>      let the sound pour all over her, unguent, emollient, salve.  Lotion
>      played well in a late Beatles jam-y kind of way -- and one of the songs    
>      even nodded to this pedigree by morphing into the chorus of "Hey Jude."
>      T. called this "continuity."  It made Pencil smile and laugh.  Heck,
>      she's not *that* much of a purist.  She didn't cringe until the second
>      encore when the band covered a Hall and Oates weeper from the lost years
>      called "Baby Come Back."  Yeesh.  The music juiced, Pencil just wished     
>      they'd cut the crap.
>      
>           Later, she slipped into a sewer and didn't climb out till up up up 
>      in the magic air on Broadway she heard the bop at Birdland.  Pencil,
>      home, staring into the late blue glow of the windows in her apartment      
>      building, had forgotten all about T.  The television was on.  
>               
>           
>            
>           
> 
>