VL-IV: Moving right along... Chapter 9 - Back at it

[Amy E. Vorro]

(Sorry I dropped off the face of the earth this week - as I've explained to a few very sweet list folk, my work-week blindsided me. Anyway, I'm back with full apologies. Anyway, there are better things to think about... so onward!)

I picked my photographer pal's brain about Fresson-process and here's what he said:

"The process is obscure, very few technical info is released by the owners. In that respect it's kind of like what Kodak did w/Kodachrome (a very sharp color slide film) where they would not sell the chemicals or formula used to process it...even to local Kodak printers...so everyone on earth who used it had to send it to Rochester NY for it to be done. I do know that it's a carbon based dye transfer type of process as opposed to a silver based (traditional) positive negative process. Without getting all formulaic about things, that's it."

(Aha - it's obscurity and closely guarded.)

To dwell on DL's Plymouth for a minute - I haven't read Crying of Lot 49 in at least three years, but I seem to remember a scene with a woman having an, ahem, intimate moment with her car's stick shift.

Here's a recipe for Mussels Posillipo: http://www.italianchef.com/posillipo.html

After she's kidnapped, DL meets another slave (a boy dressed as a girl) named Lobelia, which was too weird not to run through Google. Turns out it's a plant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobelia
Apparently it's very similar to good old nicotine.

I'm always enthralled/alarmed by the short, but potent scene of the slave auction scene (pg. 135-137) - there's a timeless, dark vacuum feel to it, much like a casino, but more sinister. I am relieved that Pynchon takes a moment to hint at the more typical slave's experience - the Thai girl who upon leaving the stage is immediately shackled and isolated. DL's experience, of course, is atypical (hell, she lives out an adolescent prom fantasy in the course of the evening); it seems right that he took a moment to acknowledge the exception from the ugly rule.

In that same passage, most of the way down page 136, I came across a line that I haven't quite worked out. Regarding the scene of the auction: "Older gentlement with fingertip  deficiencies could be noted circulating in the crowd, attentive as geishas, although to other signals." I'm probably missing something fairly obvious, any ideas? It feels sinister....

OK, I'm doing some re-reading, so there's more to come in a bit.

Amy

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail® goes where you go. On a PC, on the Web, on your phone. 
http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/learnmore/versatility.aspx#mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_WL_HM_versatility_121208