VLVL2 (9.5): "Watch the Paranoia, Please!"

[Terrance]

> 
> I would submit that beginning on page 158 with Takeshi's attempts to
> medicate away his despair with amphetamines, alcohol and barbituates,
> that one must take the next couple of pages, up through "Next day,
> feeling mysteriously better..." as only surreal at best.  For instance a
> person may have brushed by Takeshi while he was on the pay phone with
> Carmine and said "excuse me" which Takeshi translated as "Watch the
> Paranoia, please."  The kid on the airplane may or may not have been
> playing a video game called "Nookey" and Takeshi's ex-wife may or may not
> have been on the television in the motel room.

And the motel room may have been on TV in the burnt out remembrancer of
a stoned story teller's half conscious paranoid flashback into another
novel's tv episode.  Not sure what is meant by "surreal at best",
however, P employs all the postmodernist devices (see McHale's
Constructing Postmodernism) here, as he does in every story from V. to
M&D.