VLVL Takeshi

[jbor]

>>> 
>>> What do you mean by Takeshi's narration?
>>> 
>>> Are you saying that Takeshi takes over the narrative at  142.9
>>> "Meanwhile, Takeshi Fumimota ...
>> 
>> Yes. This is the point where he began adding his "color commentary", back
>> after he and Prairie were introduced at breakfast. The pluperfect tense on
>> 149.14-5 sets up a brief flashback to that introduction.
> 
> Is he adding color commentary or has he taken over the narrative?
> 
> It seems to me that he can't do both.

After he arrives at the retreat and is introduced to Prairie at breakfast he
adds in parts of the narrative which become mini-narratives in themselves.
When he's adding "color commentary" he does take over. And though I'd need
to analyse it more closely than I'm able or willing to do at present, I'd
suggest that the detached narrator, when it switches into that mode, gives
us a seamless composite of DL's and Takeshi's recounts. I think it's pretty
easy to pick out when Takeshi's the source of narrative agency, and when
it's DL. Of course, DL would know many of the details about Takeshi's life
history (and vice versa, for that matter.)

It's got nothing to do with the computer/s.

I'll rephrase the other question: why does Pynchon include a woman in a
draped white gown in the airport scene, whether or not it's Takeshi's
hallucination? Is it just a dead end, a meaningless allegorical apparition?
Or are *we* being addressed, being told to "[w]atch the paranoia" as well?
Is there a reflexive component to it?

best


> If DL is still giving the play by play and Takeshi is still adding in
> color commentary we have to assume that either Takeshi told DL this part
> of the story and that she is giving us her version of it or that  she
> got this part of the story from some place else. Maybe the Sisters
> maintain a file on Takeshi too. Remember that Ralph & Co. have all this
> on tape. 
> 
> When DL and Prairie arrive at the Sister's retreat Sister R inquires if
> there is, 
> 
> "any interest from law enforcement here?" bottom of page 108
> 
> DL is silent. But the narrative voice says, "DL's line should have been
> something like, Oh, you working for them now?" delivered emphatically.
> 
> Putting aside the relationship development function of this exchange we
> could take this to mean that Sister R is working for them now.
> 
> She has a big computer. It has a big file on Frenesi Gates. It also has
> a large file on DL. When Prairie falls asleep the computer takes over
> the  narrative and tells us DL's history. Ralph says he has a file on
> Brock and a file on DL. DL wonders where Ralph got the files and if
> Ralph is working for them.
> 
> 
> It seems top me that a lot of these stories and narratives start off as
> photographs, films, video tape, newspaper and magazine stories and so on
> and end up on a giant computer.
>