IVIV (13) scene one question

[Mark Kohut]

I'm aligned. 

--- On Sun, 11/8/09, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV (13) scene one question
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Sunday, November 8, 2009, 6:51 PM
> Mark quoted:
> 
> "a fury Doc understood would provide the balance he needed
> to coast
> through this"
> 
> I was equally thrown by Doc's need to "coast through
> this"...
> 
> So the balance is required but that balance isn't the
> ultimate goal -
> that'd be a need to "coast through" the situation. Is
> keeping cool,
> keeping things smooth, really a great motive for murder?
> Doc could've
> cuffed Puck without administering the heroin.
> 
> Wanting things to play out coolly during a violent
> confrontation is a
> bit more Dirty Harry than I like.
> 
> Then there's justifying your actions by comparing yourself
> to a
> tradition of cartoon characters...
> 
> Which could very well be ironic in this scene. Except
> cartoon
> characters are treated with some degree of respect in P's
> novels, and
> of course his own characters have been often noted as
> excessively
> cartoonish.
> 
> Maybe Doc's self-justification makes moral sense in the
> world of IV,
> but IV's just a cartoony fiction itself so we shouldn't go
> furiously
> killing baddies and use it as our ethical defence.
> 
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 3:06 AM, Robin Landseadel
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> > On Nov 8, 2009, at 7:44 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >
> >> Could knocking Puck out have been enough to escape
> from, as often is
> >> enough in other noirs---yet, I think that other
> P.I.s often get too violent
> >> in escaping is another genre staple, anyone?,
> anyone?
> >
> > Doc left air in the syringe. Puck was killed. Adrian
> winds up dead from the
> > wounds inflicted by Doc's gun. Doc is a Badass, the
> language used just prior
> > to Doc stomping on Puck makes that abundantly clear:
> >
> >        It took a lot of squirming and muscle
> strain and semi-
> >        headstands to get even one of the shims to
> fall out of his pocket,
> >         but finally Doc worked himself out of the
> cuffs, creaked up off
> >        the bed, and had a look atound. There
> wasn't much to see. The
> >        door was designed not to open from the
> inside, and there was
> >        nothing to force it with. He pulled the
> folding chair under the
> >        overhead light fixture, stood on it, and
> unscrewed the bulb.
> >        Everything went very dark. By the time he
> managed to get back
> >        down off the chair, he was in the middle of
> some kind of
> >        flashback, possibly from that elephant dope
> they'd given him.
> >        He saw old familiar images, like spirit
> guides sent to help him
> >        out, Dagwood and Mr. Dithers, Bugs and
> Yosemite Sam,
> >        Popeye and Bluto, rotating violently inside
> intensely saturated
> >        green and magenta clouds of dust, and he
> understood for a
> >        second and a half that he belonged to a
> single and ancient
> >        martial tradition in which resisting
> authority, subduing hired
> >        guns, defending your old lady's honor all
> amounted to the same
> >        thing.
> >
> >
> 
>