Motorman's Glove...

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 22, 2009, at 8:19 AM, David Kipen wrote:

> I forget if I've ever seen this anywhere, but you know the passage  
> on -- help me, Google Books! -- page 741, where Pynchon refers to  
> "pockmark fags with breath smelling like the inside of a motorman's  
> glove"? The phrase is a loving swipe from The Big Sleep on -- ditto!  
> -- page 43, where Marlowe "woke up with a motorman's glove in my  
> mouth..."

755/756 in the Penguin. James Joyce meets Raymond Chandler in the  
corner dive and they both get drunk on blood . . . :

		"Here. Listen. I want you to have it. Understand? It's yours."
		Does he even hear any more? Can he see this cloth, this
	stain?
		"Look, I was there, in Chicago, when they ambushed him. I 	was there  
that night, right down the street from the Biograph, I
	heard the gunfire, everything. Shit, I was just a boot, I thought
	this was 	what liberty was all about, so I went running. Me and
	half Chicago. Out of the bars, the toilets, the alleys, dames
	holding 	their skirts up so they could run faster, Missus
	Krodobbly who's 	drinking her way through the Big Depression,
	waitin' till the sun shines thru, and whatta you know, there's half
	my graduating class from Great Lakes, in dress blues with the
	same bedspring marks as mine, and there's longtime hookers
	and pockmark fags with breath smelling like the inside of a
	motorman's glove, old ladies from Back of the Yards, subdebs
	just out the movies with the sweat still cold on their thighs, gate,
	everybody was there. They were taking off clothes, tearing
	checks out of checkbooks, ripping off pieces of each others'
	newspaper, just so they could soak up some of John Dillinger's
	blood. We went crazy. The Agents didn't stop us. Just stood with
	smoke still curling out of their muzzles while the people all went
	down on that blood in the street. Maybe I went along without
	thinking. But there was something else. Something I must've
	needed ... if you can hear me ... that's why I'm giving this to you.
	O.K.? That's Dillinger's blood there. Still warm when I got to it.
	They wouldn't want you thinking he was anything but a
	'common criminal'—but Their head's so far up Their ass—he
	still did what he did. He went out socked Them right in the toilet
	privacy of Their banks.Who cares what he was thinking about,
	long as it didn't get in the way? A—and it doesn't even matter
	why we're doing this, either. Rocky? Yeah, what we need isn't
	right reasons, but just that grace. The physical grace to keep it
	working. Courage, brains, sure, O.K., but without that grace?
	forget it. Do you—please, are you listening? This thing here
	works. Really does. It worked for me, but I'm out of the Dumbo
	stage now, I can fly without it. But you. Rocky. You .... "