VLVL2 (1): Annotations (pp. 10-11)

[Burns, Erik]

Toby G Levy wrote:

>10.17 Zuniga.  I can't buy the operetic angle for the gensis of this
>name.  "Hector Zuniga" cries out for anagraming.  We can find the word
>"ethnic" in there, but what do we do with the rest of the letters
>(orzuga)?

I go back to something I mentioned earlier: Richard Farina. There are a lot
of reasons why this works (though I still think it's odd TRP would bring
back his friend as a G-Man with a heart. Or maybe not so weird.

I do remember that one of the mistakes I made on first reading _VL_ was to
obsess too much over the names, their meanings and their anagrammatic
possibilities. It seems in most cases they are either obviously jokey (say,
Van Meter) or evocative (like Zoyd, Prairie and Frenesi) rather than
rewarding of real deep wordplay.

think it was Brad Leithauser who made the point in a contemporary review
that there were a lot of silly names in _VL_, distracting and often
pointless.

etb