VLVL Takeshi

[jbor]

>> I'd say that "leered genially" is an oxymoron, and that the full context of
>> the meeting between Prairie and Takeshi needs to be taken into account. I
>> don't agree that DL's comment is advice to Prairie to watch out for
>> Takeshi's sex dance, and I don't agree that her statement is related to the
>> narrator's jokey reference to the way Takeshi "glided" across the airport
>> lobby. (Of course, that assertion was merely a furphy, a bait.)
> 
> I agree. The problem is, we don't have much context. I understand your
> reading of it. 
> I think you are correct when you argue that DL is trying to build
> Takeshi up for Prairie. He's sort of the Wizard of Oz after the Toto has
> pulled the curtain back.
> But I don't think the text  permits anything conclusive. I think that
> the genial leering is consistent with Takeshi's genial leering with
> females generally. I can go along with the martial arts feet or the
> dancing feet. I think that the sexual jocularity is important. In the
> narrative, Takeshi is about to insert his card into the slot in the
> door, heedlessly.

Just before which he offers to "skip over the sex part here", and in
response to which both DL and Prairie continue kidding around. And then
Takeshi makes the whole card-in-the-slot description ridiculously erotic to
join in with the sit com-style humour and satiric, self-effacing tone which
DL engineered when they "were introduced" that morning.

I think that Takeshi's sexual jocularity is self-parodic, perhaps even
self-effacing, though it is thoroughgoing as you've pointed out. No-one
takes it seriously; I don't even think he does.

And I agree with you that Takeshi is a bit of a let-down like the Wizard.
He's certainly not the "hero" of the novel, the dog who has two days from
the epigraph. After all, Mucho Maas from _Lot49_ also gets a return gig.

But I'd be interested to hear what you do make of the description of the
plane ride and airport scene (158-161), the woman in the draped white gown
in particular, which was being discussed before this sidetrack.

best