VLVL2(3): Hector's fall
jbor
jbor at bigpond.com
Sat Aug 16 18:59:25 CDT 2003
There are two aspects to this description of Hector's "fall". One is that he
had "fallen" from grace (metaphorically speaking) in respect of his job as a
federal cop, i.e. he had started to serve his own selfish interests during
his work hours. NB that each time he shows up in Zoyd's life it is with a
"new and more demented plan" (12.34), some scam which is *outside* those
specific tasks which are specified by his DEA job description, just like the
one he has hatched in trying to get Frenesi to make his anti-drug movie. The
point made in the snippet from the text below is that Hector's turn away
from serving the state to serving himself had been "concentrated and
graceful" at first -- part of the "long defiance" (26.2) Zoyd admires in him
-- but that as it proceeded over the years he had become "less professional"
in the way he went about it.
The second aspect, and it reiterates the point made about Hector's career at
25-6, relates to "these falling years" (29.21), where the "skills" of the
agent in the field had "depreciated", and where computers and bureaucrats
have become preeminent.
While it's detached narration, it's describing the way Hector perceived
himself. In other words, the narration is filtered through Hector's pov
(note the way Hector's idiosyncratic conversational tic of a Spanish
interjection followed by the English translation -- "*ay muere*, too bad" --
is incorporated into the narration). The paragraph switches to filtering
Zoyd's pov at 29.30, and this narrative strategy mirrors the earlier
paragraph at 24-5 which switches between the way Zoyd perceived the PI
situation and the way Hector perceived it.
Note also that Hector addresses Zoyd here as his "old *compinche*" (29.13),
i.e. "chum" or "crony".
best
on 17/8/03 4:03 AM, Mary Krimmel wrote:
> "... among the fallen, he [Hector] had fallen further than most, not in
> distance alone but also in the quality of descent having begun long ago
> concentrated and graceful as a sky diver..."
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