VLVL2(3): Van Meter

[Dave Monroe]

   "Van Meter, back in those days sporting a profile
that mandated at least a stop-and-frisk, ran in
frowning: 'What's wrong with Scott? he just split out
the back.'" (VL, Ch. 3, p. 23)


As recently exhumed from the archives ...

Illuminatus Volume 1 "The Eye in the Pyramid" Robert
Shea & Robert Anton Wilson Sphere Books 1976

Page 125. Someone is reading notes about a world
conspiracy and reads:

"'D.E.A.T.H. Don't Ever Antagonize the Horn.' Does
Pynchon know?"

and a little later on page 131 a character called Van
Meter makes his one and only appearance in the novel
as a prison inmate with Harry Pierpont and John
Dillinger.

Seems to indicate that P read at least some RAW. Also
interesting in the light of the fact that RAW covers
the themes of various underground movements (Wobblies,
Weathermen etc.) in this particular book.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0307&msg=83458&sort=date


Homer V. Van Meter (1906 - 1934)

Homer Van Meter was the notorious gunman and right
hand man for John Dillinger.... 

http://www.vanmetre.com/Profiles/homer_van_meter_profile.htm


"a profile that mandated at least a stop-and-frisk"

Tall and thin, he was known as a comedian. Underneath
this exterior was a killer....

http://www.geocities.com/hydey6/page18.html

Nelson referred to the tall and lanky Van Meter as
"that scarecrow" ...

http://www.geocities.com/durobin2000/nelson33.html


Dillinger, John (1903-34)
368-69; American gangster specializing in bank
robberies; "As B/4" 436; killed at Biograph Theatre in
Chicago, 516; bloody shirt, 741

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/d.html

"Oversize photos of John Dillinger, alone or posed
with his mother" 368-69

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/mothers.html

History has become a mythology which can be shaped by
Pernicious Pops to serve their respective agendas. At
the end of the novel, Pig Bodine remains "one of the
few who can still see Slothrop" (740). He gives
Slothrop a bit of cloth stained with the blood of
another preterite hero, John Dillinger. Comic books of
the 1940's such as Crime Does Not Pay paint a picture
of Dillinger as a monster. Their motivation is self
evident. Dillinger "went out and socked Them right in
the toilet privacy of Their banks" (741). In order to
retain the public's belief in Their capitalist system,
the Rocket State must depict Dillinger as the
embodiment of evil, a Satan figure which every good
American citizen will revile. Rocketman, like
Dillinger, refused to be flushed down into their
"toilet privacy" along with the rest of the preterite
excrement, and so they must clean up the mess as best
they can.

http://www.middleenglish.org/spc/spcissues/19.3/stevens.htm

"Lyrical and fast-driving, this tale of Dillinger's
last days restores to us with brilliant fidelity a
long-unredeemed part of our true outlaw heritage."

http://www.jackkellybooks.com/mad_reviews.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_blurbs.html

If we accept the notion that using power against the
powerless is wrong, a clear enough set of corollaries
begins to emerge. We become able to distinguish, as
populations (thought not always their rulers) have
usually been able to do, between outlaws and
evil-doers, between outlawry and sin. Not much
analysis is needed, because it is something we can
sense in all its dead-serious immediacy. "But all they
are are bandits," the rulers whine indignantly,
"motivated only by greed." Sure. Except that, having
long known the difference between theft and
restoration, we understand the terms of the deal
whereby outlaws, as agents of the poor, being more
skilled and knowledgeable in the arts of karmic
readjustment, may charge no worse that an agent's fee,
small enough too be acceptable to their clients, ample
enough to cover the risks they have to take, and we
always end up loving these folks, we cheer for Rob
Roy, Jesse James, John Dillinger, at a level of
passion usually reserved for sports affiliation.

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_stone.html

And see as well ...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dillinger/sfeature/sf_crimespree.html

http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/dillinger/dillinger.htm

http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/outlaws/dillinger/8.html?sect=17

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