VL-IV Chap 3 p 22

[Michael Bailey]

(don't worry I'm not going to impute priestly stuff line by line, but
I did want to get that bubbling on the back burner as a subtext)

Zoyd's in front of the "soundless Tube" with a lit joint reminiscing
about Hector

P22

1, 2 Sylvester and Tweety.  Hector being Sylvester, the cat who is
always foiled, Tweety the innocent bird who always escapes.

It reminds me of how the habitual truants in my high school related to
Mr Wiechec, the truant officer.  Myself ready to run or knuckle under
quickly, it was a revelation to see my friends fencing in a friendly
way with Mr Wiechec.  He was heavyset, and unlikely to be able to
catch anyone who was determined to escape.  Further, he was friendly,
and didn't really wish the kids harm, though his role (for some kids)
opened them to beatings at home and trouble at school.

Of course, Hector is also trying to get Zoyd to become an informer.
In sales terms, he offers a particular solution and keeps trying to
close.

5. "Not that he credited Zoyd with anything like moral integrity in
trying to resist him."  This is, after all, Zoyd's woolgathering
session --- so this is Zoyd's depiction of Hector's consciousness,
right?
So of course the implication is that Zoyd believes his refusal to narc
is a demonstration of moral integrity.
would Zoyd go to the police about a murder?

8-9. "a timidity, maybe a lack of imagination, about the correct scale
of any deal in life, drug or nondrug"
a) huh?  scale is an interesting choice...why would Hector single out "scale"?
b) is it that Hector (the Hector in Zoyd's conception) thinks that
turning in a dealer is NOT a big thing, whereas Zoyd apparently thinks
it IS a big thing?  Thus, scale?
c) but altenatively and conversely, "lack of imagination" implies -
for me - an inability to scale UP, ie, to conceptualize drug use as a
gateway to terrible crimes?
d) "either way, it's bad" as Dr Evil stated in Austin Powers II, The
Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
e) "drug or nondrug" - so, a basic difference in outlook, not just on
drug use/abuse, but on all manner of deals (such as the movie deal
Hector is working on?) -  but the distinction is not clearly
delineated - a certain buzzed fuzziness here (unless I'm missing
something in which case for gosh sakes please tell me) - but
"out-of-the-box" enough that it might mean something.

17-18 ff. "The house was so old that all of its termite clauses and
code violations had been waived....having been put up back during an
era of overdesign, it proved to be sturdier than it looked"
which I like to expand out to, the artistic, communal tradition Zoyd
has chosen to spend his life in is founded sturdily

28 "...Dutch door, whose open top half, that long-ago evening, had
come to frame Hector" - so, we get Hector seen in the manner of Elvis
on the Sullivan show...

30-31 "the darkening Pacific in pale-topped crawl below"
felt good to type that...also, pale-topped crawl could apply equally
well to a blond swimmer (doing the crawl, eg) as to the ocean
itself...