Benny Beat Parody

[Terrance]

TRP satirizes the extreme and Benny Profane's imagination is
focused on the extreme. He yo-yos back and forth between the
strange and the miraculous, the intimate and the inanimate,
the living and the dead, the sexual and the deadly, just as
surely as he yo-yos in his travels geographically. 



http://www.nycsubway.org/maps/track/34-42.gif


Some of the characters have to deal with uncertainty and
randomness outside of themselves. Benny  Profane must deal
with it inside himself. Although he may change location and
occasionally come up with an insight, his passivity and his
refusal to commit himself prevent his having any
deliberately espoused standards for behavior. His mechanical
heart is an emblem of his passivity and is thus a link to
the inanimate.
Down in the sewers, he is disoriented. His schlemihlhood is
a way to rationalize what he fears is his own inanimation
and his own  inability to cope with people, with the social
life of humans. Though Profane is consumed by various
desires, he is unable to assert himself humanly except on
rare occasions when he is able to show some tenderness.
Paola's distress early in the book "endowed Profane with all
manner of healing and sympathetic talents he didn't really
possess." Although he is willing to help Paola to a certain
extent, he cannot commit himself and thus will not give more
than an uncertain promise that he will call her. It's not
easy being a schlemiel and that makes it hard to be Paola or
anyone else with Benny.  

 Call me, Ben.	Please.	Maybe.

Right,  he told her, maybe.
 
Wait till Fina gets a hold of his mechanical heart.