Zoyd still, but Back to the past: IV

[alice wellintown]

Mark Kohut wrote

> "Doc says, he can hire some dude to
> dig the waves for him over in Hawaii."
>
> It is an expressed joking fantasy about what he could do with 'a nickel from every client' who etc., common in our world, middle and otherwise...........


Yes, of course it is.

> And notice what he would do----not surf himself, not live in an endless
> summer but 'give it" to someone else.....by 'hiring them to surf! yes, IV is about work, fer sure.


Wayne Booth complains that the problem with reading Modern and now
Postmodern fiction is that the critic with the most ironic reading
always wins. I didn't miss the irony. I didn't read it straight.


Doc, and I'll say the same of Zoyd, does not represent the implied
author's norms. Both are infected by the environment they reside in.
They are not exceptional. So, here, as elsewhere in the text, Doc is
subjected to the author's satire. A parodic figure, Doc is not the
author and does not present the author's norms. His narrative is
unreliable. The irony here:  We know, but Doc doesn't know that his
apparently casual language usage here is infected with the cliche'
riddled speech of the period which is so obviously saturated with
TV-talk and pyramid scheme real estate business talk. These shop talk
expressions and jargons, and they mostly move like a huge wave across
the USA from California East, saturate this novel. Rememeber Doc was
once a vampire &  vulture in the credit scam business. And, while, as
a dynamic character, he changes, even changes professions, becomes a
doctor of a much cooler and kinder trade, he is still Larry. And Larry
can't help but say things like, I'll hire ....a Mexican to lick my
wife's pussy.