Inamorato Anonymous

[John Bailey]

>From: "Samuel Moyer" <smoyer at satx.rr.com>
>
>Or... forgive me for living in a TV/movie culture... but that long bar
>silence,  I see the picture... the man looks over his shoulder before
>telling Oedipa what she wants to know, sees them moving in on him... It's
>too late... a moment later he's being hauled out the back way - dead... and
>someone places the receiver back on hook.
>

Mr Moyer, your paranoia is becoming a problem. Please remain where you are 
and someone wwill be around shortly to deal with the issue.

Seriously, I don't think that you're out of line conjuring up movie images 
here, as there are just so darn many in TP's books, and often explicitly so. 
Whatever this particular scene means, it's definitely got all of the 
trademark paranoia-inducing qualities of yer classic film noir.

Of course, it's not clear whether Mr. Inamorato there is a victim or a 
perpetrator of the insidious conspiracy to confuse Oedipa but that ambiguity 
is part of the thrill. If she could nail down who was on her side and who 
wasn't, well, there'd be that excluded middle and we all know...

I've also been thinking how the sequence of disappearing men in Oedipa's 
life echoes the very similar situation faced by Slothrop in GR, especially 
around the end of the casino section, where the sense of his being placed in 
a big controlled environment manipulated by unseen forces is highly 
reminiscent of the whole of Lot 49. It gets taken quite a bit further in GR, 
but I wouldn't be surprised if TP had more to say after finishing COL49 and 
this was part of his (possible) dissatisfaction with the thing. Or are the 
unexplained disappearances more of a function of paranoia, and so it's 
natural that they are included (ie. Oedipa sees people as 'disappearing' 
when really it's not so strange?)

john

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