VLVL Takeshi

[Terrance]

> 
> 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.

Is the narrative from 115 to 128  narrated by DL? 
Has the computer  taken over the narrative at the middle of page 115
after Prairie falls asleep? Or, does that brief  comment at the bottom
of page 128-- "It was a couple of weeks after their arrival, with
Prairie
by now an old hand in the computer room as well as the kitchen."-- 
suggest that Prairie got the story of DL's life from the computer over
so many weeks or from DL
directly? 

Don't you think it's rather odd that the Sister's have a  file on
Frenesi Gates? 

Back at VL.8 Buster warns Zoyd to stick to his MO or routine, because
any change might backfire. Buster tells Zoyd not to mess with the
State's computer if he wants those government checks to keep coming.
VL8.3 



At VL.27   Zoyd is having lunch with Hector, Zoyd wonders why Hector is
being so unnaturally amiable,  "Man could crush him with just a short
tap dance over the
computer keys---why was Hector being so unnaturally amiable?" 

We learn that Frenesi's file has been destroyed. And,  her government
checks won't keep coming. In fact, she can't cash the one that was hand
delivered by a U.S. Marshal. The U.S. Marshals are the oldest law agency
in the USA and, as Hector reminds Zoyd (VL.27) Frenesi, Mob snitches,
Zoyd, are all on their DOJ budget line. 

Reagan's "Revolutionary Budget cutting" is wiping people out one file at
a time. 

VL.85-89  That's what is happening to Frenesi. She is no longer exempt. 

At page page 90 Frenesi has a moment of undeniable clairvoyance: 

She understood that the Reaganomic ax blades were swinging everywhere,
that she and Flash were no longer exempt, might easily be abandoned
already to the upper world and unfinished business in it that might now
resume ... as if they'd been kept safe in some time-feee zone all these
years but now,  at the unreadable whim of **something** in power, must
reenter the clockwork of cause and effect. Someplace there would be a
real ax, or something just as painful, Jasonic, bade-to-meat final---but
at the distance she, Flash and Justin had by now been brought to, it
would be done with keys on alphanumeric keyboards that stood for
weightless, invisible chains of electronic  presence or absence. If
patterns of ones and zeros were "like" patterns of human lives and
deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a
computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of
creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?  It
would have to be up one level at least--an angel, a minor god, something
in a UFO. It would take eight human lives and deaths just to form one
character in this being's name --- it's complete dossier might take up a
considerable piece of the history of the world. We are digits in God's
computer, she not so much thought as hummed to herself to a sort of
standard gospel tune, And the only thing we're good for, to be dead or
to be living, is the only thing He sees. What we cry, what we contend
for, in our world of toil and blood, it all lies beneath the notice of
the hacker we call God.  

Frenesi's check is worthless. The government computer, the computer than
never sleeps, never takes a vacation, never takes a 15 minute break,
never stops working, stopped payment on it. 

Death don't have no mercy in this land. 
 
At V.112 Sister R tells Prairie that they have a good-size file in their
computer on Frenesi. 

Why do they have it? 

Why does Ralph have one on DL? 

Why does the computer take over the narrative? 

TBC 

 



> 
> 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.
> >