VLVL2 (3) A Finesi Romance #1

[gumbo at fuse.net]

T:

> There is no reason what so ever to connect this five-spot to a fatal
> glass of beer in a WC Field's movie. Moreover, Fatal doesn't mean first.
> We are told that it wasn't the Last, but we are not told that it was the
> first. What is fatal about it? 
> 
> 
> "That fatal five-spot was not the Last-Purchase-Of-Information
> disbursement in the neighborhood.


If it was the twenty-fourth PI transaction or the hundred and third, it would have been just like all the others. For the payment to be "decisively important; fateful" (Random House Unabridged, sense 4), it had to be the first, setting the occupants of the beach house off on a course of action from which no return to their former state of innocence was possible. So I believe "fatal" in this usage does mean first.

Moreover the usage is identical to the one in "The Fatal Glass of Beer," which is explicitly (and satirically) about how the *first* drink of alcohol condemns the drinker to a life of trouble and an early death. You can argue that there's no connection if you want to, but considering how steeped in pop culture references this novel is, how closely the sense of the Vineland text matches the sense of the film title, and how similar the scene is in tone to the film, I'm persuaded that there is.

Don