Sewer Contract

[Terrance]

Clearly Benny got paid for hunting Alligators. He has a job,
he's a volunteer, he gets paid to kill Alligators and rats.
He settles in with Fina and family, but the job won't last
and he knows and so does Fina. Fina gets him an interview at
Outlandish Records. He puts on Mr Mandoza's suit, "circa
mid-'30s, double breasted..." Mr. Mandoza is unemployed.
Under the Street, while on the subway, "he decided that we
suffer from great temporal homesicknesses for the decade we
were born in." When Benny gets arrives at Outlandish, a
messenger tells him, forget the job and listen to the wind.
He listens to the wind, he sees the wind, he decides that
the suit cannot "conceal this curious depression which
showed up in no stock market or year-end reports." He heads
out into the wind. 

Depression time for Benny is not unreal or not any less real
than 1955-56.  Benny chases an Alligator to Father Fairing's
Parish, into Depression time. 

Benny gets paid, yes, but there is enough ambiguity to
suggest that he does not. I don't have the time to give
every example of Time, the various clock and calendars, but
a lot of Benny Time is 11, 12, and 1, those three hours
during the day or night. 

Chapter 8 opens on April 15th, Tax day. 

In Chapter 6 we learned that according to Geronimo's nimble
calculations, since Friday was one-fifth of the week,
onFridays they worked for Uncle Sam and not for Zeitsuss. 
This is a commonplace, we work for the Man on Fridays--all
the money goes to taxes, 20% or one day out of a five day
work week.  

"The beauty of Geronimo's scheme was that it didn't have to
be Friday but could be any day--or days--in the week
depressing enough to make you feel it would be a breach of
loyalty if the time were dedicated to good old Zeitsuss."
V.143

How do you read this? 

And the weird calendar? Sun, moon, night? Same page.

The reasons I think Benny is not getting paid in Depression
time are several, but the most importatn one has to do with
the contract, the covenant he signs, where he gives the
Alligators Death and they give him employment. This contract
is a signed contract. V151 It's not about Pride, which, as
the bums say, is worth less then a beer bottle deposit, it's
about Death and Employment. 

I have to give equal validity to both Depression time
(dreams, film, texts, music, moon influence, horniness, the
mother's tug--Rachel, the father push--Fina, to drug
epistemologies in GR's terms) or else the novel is but a
subversive satire mostly about constructing order as we read
the world projected inside our skulls--Plato's cave and all
that subjective postmodern tourism. V., and GR, to me
anyway, are Modern American novels. 

PS Dave, That Holton essay corrects Plater's Postmodern
reading of history. 

"Every revolution has also been a betrayed revolution."
Marcuse
 





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