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

[Joseph Tracy]

entralled/alarmed is the perfect mix of words and seems to precisely  
configure the writer's intent.  This is really pretty horrible stuff  
that P invites us into with a wink and nod. Girls/women are being  
sold as sex slaves. DL yields to her own prostitution and it is hard  
to see a difference between her seduction/abuse/ deployment as agent  
by Wayvone and Frenesi's  with Vond.  What is the function of the  
humorous tone here? Why doesn't Prairie ask hard  questions of DL?    
Is P trying to show how art ( his own comic cleverness included) can  
disguise horror.  The tone in the Frenesi/Vond trysts is not comic  
but the parallels are intentional. Maybe the comparison to a high  
school prom is also pretty pointed. Thoughts?

Is DL Frenesi's alternate universe self? What is the critical  
difference?


On Feb 3, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Amy E. Vorro wrote:
>
>> After she's kidnapped, DL meets another slave (a boy dressed as a  
>> girl)
>
> wait, where's that? oh, page 135...never noticed that before...
>
>> I'm always enthralled/alarmed by the short, but potent scene of  
>> the slave auction scene
>
> so the people who kidnapped her, did they even know who she was? Maybe
> they just saw her working out...
> It wasn't directly Ralph's people, because he had to buy her (unless
> he set the whole thing up to, I dunno, make it seem like more
> fllattering?  That's weird, but it's also weird to think of a
> white-slave racket taking young women from Columbus to Japan, and of
> Ralph maybe getting their catalog in the mail and recognizing her.)
>
> p 136 - the telecast of the Central League baseball game traditionally
> cut off at 856 pm?  Is that something they do?  Or is that just
> something they did to start the auction? (also, in the middle of a
> double play - the novel is full of double plays in one form or
> another)  I understand the ethos of baseball is quite different in
> Japan...
> John Bailey, did you watch any baseball over there?
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> --
> "Frenesi's eyes, even on the aging ECO stock, took over the frame, a
> defiance of blue unfadable."