Delillo on decline: "Where the hell is Hoover by the way?"

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

Or so Delillo has Frank Sinatra ask Toot's Shor and Jackie
Gleason in the prologue to Underworld- "The Triumph of Death."
[UW 25.1]

I can't think of a better done trope for the decline of
America than this piece, also known as "Pafko at the Wall." Delillo
has near perfect pitch; a perfect ear for the American idiom. His ear
is like a camera.

Hoover eventually returns. Before he does, he is the minus one.
Earlier, he was called the “number one G-man.” The others: Schor, 
Sinatra, Gleason represent other values. The author is there in 
spirit, but he has zero'd himself out of the equation. The four 
of them, plus the author, represent Euler's famous equation:

    And it was Euler who discovered the most beautiful
    formula in all of mathematics:  e^(pi)i + 1 = zero, a
    mysterious and ineffable expression connecting the 
    five most important numbers in the universe.[0,1,i,e,pi]

[A Tour of the Calculus, David Berlinski, Vintage Books, 1997, p.91]

Note- the equation can also be written without the zero: e^(pi)i = -1,
which is my point about the author- there, but not. Note, as well,
Hoover enjoys an aisle seat.

If you're curious, Frank is e, Jackie is i (the common man),
Toots- the jew- is "pi," balancing  linear diameter against eternally
returning circumference. I've worked it all out. Contact me off 
line for the full-blown delusion- if anyone is interested. It's not an 
"engine the size of continent," just a metaphor, and maybe I'll 
accomodate  you. Here's some circumstantial evidence for “The
Chairman of the Board” representing, e: 

    Logarithms taught in high school-- the Briggs logarithms--
    take matters to the base 10. In computer science, where
    binary bits are basic, the requisite base is 2; but in
    mathematics the base of all bases is the transcendental
    number e = 2.71828... It is a number of strange Sicilian
    dignity. [A Tour of the Calculus, p.83].

You may recall, as well, that the derivative of e is e.
It is "self-derivative." All of which may ring hollow to some. You
have to be a Sinatra fan, I guess:

    And he nods his head and says, “My shoes” [UW 46.17]

Great ear, Don.

But my quirky interpretation of the four clowns in the field
boxes at the Polo Grounds has nothing to do with why the
chapter is the perfect trope for the loss of American
hegemony, in this case, atomic hegemony. The whole chapter
works in that regard, not least of which is the fallout of waste
softly falling on the spectators, recalling the snow in Joyce's
The Dead, and including a magazine representation of Brueghel’s
The Triumph of Death:

http://www.mcu.es/prado/villanueva/7_eng.html 

What once went up.... ("Gottfried. Are you there, liebchin?")

STOP THE WAR!

regards