VL--IV Nightclub in the sky, part 2

[Mark Kohut]

p.63 Gretchen, the 'make-believe' cocktail waitress. Since we know this whole gig is a kind of musical theater, TRP keeps 
repeating the phoniness for effect, it seems. 

Gretchen is Faust's inamorata. She and Zoyd aren't them.
Remind's of  the Dante Beatrice(s) used in V. 

"And then there was the sky"----when TRP brings in the sky, he brings in some of his most major concerns/themes, it is fair to say. (He is not unique with this, of course) Man's relation to the cosmos--the spiritual, the religious, the metaphysical---, one might say-- used so majestically by him. Cf. how many novels begin against the sky, so to speak. GR begins with it screaming. And Against the Day begins against it and ends famously into it with grace. 
 (M & D and Vineland begin against the sky as well. And V. with, maybe, a buried use of genius).