my scrub jays

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

Sorry to dwell on the first sentence of VL, but I just got hold
of Ross Macdonald's The Underground Man, and things seem to be
getting intertextual. The novel begins as follows:

"A rattle of leaves woke me some time before dawn. A hot wind was
breathing in at the bedroom window. I got up and closed the window.
And lay in bed listening to the wind.
  After a while it died down, and I got up and opened the window
again. Cool air, smelling of fresh ocean and slightly used West Los
Angeles, poured into the apartment. I went back to bed and slept
until I was wakened in the morning by my scrub jays.
  I called them mine. There were five or six of them taking turns
at dive-bombing the window sill, then retreating to the magnolia
tree next door.
  I went into the kitchen and opened a can of peanuts and threw a
handful out of the window. The jays swooped down into the yard of
the apartment building. I put on some clothes and went down the
outside stairs with the rest of the can of peanuts." (TUM, p. 5,
Fontana/Collins pbk, 1971)

Lew Archer, more of an early bird in his opening morning than Zoyd
is in his, seems to get along with his jays. Jay-feeding will even
connect him to a central character. Whereas in a Pynchon novel,
the motif of initial aerial threat tends to be more Gothic...


Heikki