VLVL (6) Working for the Man

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 8:15 AM
Subject: VLVL (6) Working for the Man


> It might be worthwhile considering the list Pynchon compiles of those
> "independent contractors" who, like both Frenesi and Zoyd, have been on
the
> government payroll since the end of the '60s or so:
>
>     There were Long Bihn Jail alumni, old grand-jury semipros,
>     collectors of loans and ladies on strings who'd been persuaded
>     to help entrap soon-to-be ex-customers, snitches with photographic
>     memories, virgins to the act of murder, check bouncers, coke
>     snorters and ass grabbers, each with more than ample reason to
>     seek the shadow of the federal wing, and some, with luck, able to
>     reach its embrace and shelter. (87.5)
>
> "Long Binh Jail" evokes both the Vietnam War and LBJ, and perhaps "RC" or
> Blood.

"Long Binh Jail" evokes more that they've been into jail several times or
for a long time: "long been" -- jail veterans.

> Frenesi is more or less one of those "ladies on strings", a "snitch"
> with a "photographic" specialty, if not memory.

"ladies on strings" -- Frenesi wasn't exactly a callgirl.

> And, "virgins to the act of
> murder" is an echo of Zoyd's protestation of innocence back in Ch. 1

"virgins to the act of murder" -- Zoyd hasn't tried to kill someone. He's no
snitch.

> (and he
> is, as we've seen, a "check bouncer", which is the category immediately
> following).

Well, he hasn't been forced to do the annual jump by Brock Vond for check
bouncing.

>
> I wonder what the implied author's attitude to this motley collection of
> thugs and thieves might be?
>
> best

It's said there:
"(...) each with more than ample reason to seek the shadow of the federal
wing, and some, with luck, able to reach its embrace and shelter."

All those people on the list have been forced to change sides like Flash and
Frenesi to avoid long-term imprisonment or, as Flash assumes in Frenesi's
case, even being shot (69.6-10). They're poor victims used by criminal
federal agents in a corrupt system which is in the dock here:

"(...) against targets so powerless compared  to those who were setting up
that some other motive, less luminous than that of the national interest,
must have been at work." (72.27-29)

Otto