Loren Passerine

[Dave Monroe]

"Farfetched"?  Here, "beyond all reason"?  Never.
Certainly not for me, at any rate.  Very good.  If
only I'd known ...

--- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> A rather farfetched association might occur to
> Pynchon or other radio listeners of the 40s. Famous
> tabacco auctioneer L.A. "Speed" Riggs was used
> in a commerial for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Using
> his marvelous (passerine-like?) vocal apparatus he
> would cry a tabacco auction and it would always end
> with "sold to American" meaning that the lot of
> tobacco had been bought by the American Tabacco
> Company maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes.  Get it?
> A LUCKY crying. No? Well, I said it was farfetched.

And if nothing else, you've at long last cleared up a
longstanding mystery for me, i.e., why all cartoon
auctions seem to end with "Sold [to] American."  This
is invaluable in and of itself ...
 
> Another thing, the fact that Passerine is the
> greatest auctioneer in the WEST would distinguish
> him from the famous Speed Riggs who operated only in
> the EAST (U.S.) where tabacco is grown

But I forgot to ask as well, what might it mean for
Pierce Inverarity's "legacy," which may or may not be
"America," to end up on auction?  In general, what
about those "excluded middles," which, depsite it
being "bad shit" to do so, Oedipa (and/or our humble
narrator) seems nonetheless to exclude as the novel
draws to an end ...

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