You never did the Kenosha Kid?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

> But, alas, Slothrop's   reflexive attempt to hide amongst
> "The Indians" is doomed to failure.

Don't know that the Native American placenames theory holds as a 
total(ising) explanation. The PISCES interrogator begins by reminding 
Slothrop of the last session:

"You recall that we were talking last time about the Negroes, in 
Roxbury. Now we know that it's not all that comfortable for you, but do 
try, won't you." (62 -- The interrogator, patronising, could almost be 
talking directly to the white American reader there, eh?)

And the placenames and dancenames in Slothrop's conscious pre-injection 
riffs on the Kenosha Kid story and sentence are a mixture: Kenosha, 
Charleston, Philadelphia, Rochester, Joliet, Charlottesville, Forest 
Hills, Laredo (61-2 - Same with the placenames in the hallucinatory 
narrative that follows the injection, e.g. Red River Valley, Rancho 
Peligroso, Newton Upper Falls.)

Almost straight away in Slothrop's "confession" he starts to caught get 
up in the rhythm and swing music of the black nightclub, and to 
appropriate African-American vernacular. Sense I get is that he was 
just like all those other "[w]hite college boys", hanging out in the 
Roseland Ballroom, pleased with themselves for being "hip" enough to be 
at such a place, but young and arrogant and still with a strong sense 
of their racial "superiority" over the black musicians, bartenders and 
clientele. He's brought to a sudden realisation of his condescension 
and complicity in the racial inequalities of the society by the 
expression on a nearby woman's face, the harmonica in his pocket then 
become just "[a] jive accessory" (62-3):

"Follow? Red, the Negro shoeshine boy, waits by his dusty leather seat. 
The Negroes all over wasted Roxbury wait. [...]" (63)

best

> In the Slothropian "guided" dream following induction
> by Na+ Amytal, prn, Tyrone seems to be seeking refuge in the
> typical white american appropriation of native mystery andi nnocence,