TSI: The Hotel Gesthemane

Mutualcode at aol.com Mutualcode at aol.com
Mon Mar 10 21:35:21 CST 2003


Some of the descriptions of McAfee reminded me of Jesus
in Gesthemane- the profuse sweating, taking the fall for
Etienne and Grover, the self doubts, etc. But I don't think 
Jesus would have remeniisced about turning an entire swimming 
pool into wine (or champaigne in this case), even metaphorically-
too wasteful.

One question that lingers in my brain, however, is what happened
to Hogan, a- and that bottle of booze he ran away with, like the 
dish with the spoon? Did he fall off the wagon? Did he throw it 
in the garbage? If he had given it back to Beto, would the police 
still have gotten involved? I can fantasize an extra scene in the 
elevator, between Beto and Hogan, where Hogan begs Beto not 
to rat on McAfee- or even in desparation threatens Beto that he 
will tell anyone who will listen how Beto tried to get him drunk 
and molest him- unless Beto promises to tell the clerk that 
McAfee just changed his mind, and decided to stay dry- 

"Who are they going to believe, Beto, the white doctor's son, 
or, the town rum-dum? Now take this booze and give it back to 
the clerk and keep your mouth shut, or you'll be wishing you'd
stayed in Mexico and faced the music."

But no, I guess that's just some wishful thinking- some kind 
of "Hotel California" type of clause in effect here- kind of an
inevitability about the whole thing. Still, can't help wondering 
about what became of Hogan. Maybe he went and founded a
new sect- Agnostics Anonymous.

respectfully

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030310/71b1993e/attachment.html>


More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list