VLVL2 (14) A provincial whizz kid called early, 274-280

[Paul Nightingale]

The opening sentence of the chapter's second phase ("brass choirs on the
sound track", 274) reminds us that Brock's self-history is one of
performance, one that happily anticipates ("he would become") success, "as
he had dreamed, the careful product of older men", which group of mentors
probably doesn't include a time-serving, (in)subordinate partner like
Roscoe.

Brock is fated to be successful because worthy, or so he thinks. Yet the
phrase "whiz kid" is carefully qualified by "provincial": he'll remain an
outsider in Washington, denied access to "that level" where "the same
people, the Real Ones, remained year in and year out, keeping what was
desirable flowing their way" (276). If Brock's self-image, and the destiny
he feels he deserves, is heavily dependent on a view of an open (ie
meritocratic) society, then his performance must retreat into denial of the
fact that others see him as no more than a hired thug. Brock-the-neophyte's
personalised version of the American Dream.

The possibility that others might see him as a thug gives way to the second
reference in this chapter to Lombroso. The first (272-273) served two
functions, to locate both Brock the intellectual and Frenesi "the unforeseen
sixth". The second reference (276) allows Brock to insist that, when he sees
himself in a mirror, he sees "Lombrosian evidence of a career plausibly
honest enough ..." etc. That is to say, he doesn't find there any evidence
of criminality. What he finds is an absence. His narcissism extends to his
"body image, Brock in those days being known as something of a
recreation-area Don Juan". A page earlier the narrative has informed us:
"Women found him intensely appealing for reasons they later could or would
not specify" (275). On these pages we can see, then, a relationship is
forged between Brock's self-image (his 'I') as a thinker, a "devotee" of
Lombroso's work, and his public image (or 'Me') as "Don Juan", "as a
sought-after raconteur and bon vivant" etc, all of which can be apparently
justified and explained by recourse to the master's writing.

Yet his public persona will undermine a career based on it (279-280). His
obsession with "some third-generation lefty" is both amusing
("entertainment" for those keeping him under surveillance, if not Movie of
the Week) and a character flaw: the hardon "creating pleats in the front of
the pale federal trousers" (273) exposes him on a wider stage than the
rainswept assembly ground where he meets Frenesi. He is tolerated,
interrogated but also pimped for: not least because his indiscretions
confirm his (lowly, from the POV of "the Real Ones") status within the
bureau(cracy). Put another way, when he denies Frenesi, he sacrifices the
'I' for the 'Me'.

Not least, the fascination with Lombroso echoes/perverts 24fps-rhetoric
about "the power of close-ups to reveal and devastate" (195); Brock's
narcissism is far removed from the laudable notion that those in power
should be exposed to popular scrutiny (eg the "close-up of a farm employer's
face that said everything its subject was trying not to", 199). By the end
of this phase (280) Brock tells "the old, unhappy tale ... of romance versus
career"; yet this too is self-serving, given that his career thus far has
been a romance. And not for the first time in this novel, at a key moment, a
character temporises.