Re: IVIV (15) 269/274—7000 Romaine revisited

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 23, 2009, at 6:04 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> So I looked at the map and I don't see the pointer pointing to  
> Romaine at all, Sweetzer points to the north and west , and S Labrea  
> on the diagonal  to the east. Also that seems real obscure.
>
>  However from the corner of Sweeetzer and Santa Monica Blvd  heading  
> toward Fairfax you would after 4 large blocks and a turn toward  
> Melrose come to the HH address on Romaine  but that is 19  or 23  
> blocks if you count every street and either way you overshoot  
> Fairfax. On the other hand the short blocks are only 2 lots wide so  
> Pynchon could be talking about the longer blocks between major  
> streets. It does seem like Pynchon is pointing to a real place, and  
> you couldn't find a likelier candidate.

Just to clarify, the two streets I'm focusing on are Santa Monica  
Blvd., starting from Sweetzer [West Hollywood City Hall] ending at the  
corner of Santa Monica and LaBrea. The other street is LaBrea, which  
eventually turns into South LaBrea, the location of "Waste-A-Perp."  
You could think of them as the "X" and "Y" axes that terminate at the  
corner of Santa Monica and La Brea. In this scene Doc is asking  
Bigfoot who's behind all this Golden Fang business and Bigfoot, always  
in a mode of "Plausible Deniability"—11th commandment business—lays  
out the co-ordinates for Doc without ever explicitly stating that  
Adrian Prussia and Puck Beaverton are Hughes operatives:

	"It gets even worse," Bigfoot said in a slowly stifled way, as if
	trying in vain to call to Doc out of years of history forbidden to
	civilians. "Prussia has been prime suspect in ... let's say a
	number of homicides-and each time, upon intervention from the
	highest levels, he's walked."

	''And you're saying what? 'Ain't it awful'?"

	''I'm saying there's a reason for everything, Doc, and before you
	get too indignant you might want to look at why Internal Affairs
	should even be duked into this in the first place, let alone be the
	office that's sitting on the story."

If this isn't an indication of CIA activities then it's an indication  
of some "Power on Earth" that trumps the CIA. As of 1970 in L.A., that  
would most likely be the Hughes crew.

	"Figure it out. Use what's left of your brain. The trouble with you
	people is you never know when somebody's doing you a favor.
	You think whatever it is, you're entitled because you're cute or
	something."

I don't think Inherent Vice is "about" Howard Hughes—Pynchon is never  
so obvious and while paranoid conspiracy theories run rampant  
throughout all his books, his books aren't about those conspiracies.  
But Howard Hughes is to Inherent Vice as Dr. Wernher von Braun is to  
Gravity's Rainbow.