VLVL2 (9): "gigantic animal footprint"

[Tim Strzechowski]

"About a week after Brock Vond's arrival, Takeshi was standing at the edge of a gigantic animal footprint which only the day before had been a laboratory.  From an insurance point of view, the place was totaled, though free of fatalities, the event having occurred precisely during an evacuation drill.  Strange!"

A delightful pair of sentences, these are.  The "gigantic animal footprint" of course suggests the size of Tokyo's own home-grown Godzilla:

http://www.stomptokyo.com/godzillatemple/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0197521/

(and do note that in the debut film of Godzilla, there was an actor named Takashi [sic].)

http://neuro-mancer.mgh.harvard.edu/brainchat/pix/grabbag/godzilla.jpg

(truth be told, I'm sort of a Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster man myself ...)

And prior to the publication of VL, wasn't there a rumor that Pynchon's next novel was to be "based" on a Godzillesque motif of Japanese monster flicks?

The "gigantic animal footprint" likewise echoes the references made heretofore in the novel to "Bigfoot" -- quite literally here (cf. p. 7, "You and me Zoyd, we're like Bigfoot.")

Additionally, the possibility of insurance scam feeds into the conspiracy theory regarding BV, and the final word "Strange!" reveals our omniscent narrative point-of-view, again demonstrating a certain slippery quality to the pov that we've discussed earlier in the read.



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