IVIV8: A long time in politics

[Paul Nightingale]

Ch8 concludes the first week of the narrative. The text offers transitions
from day to day--eg 12 (one to two), 34 (two to three), 89 (four to five),
98 (five to six) and then 117 (seven to eight). Such references are explicit
and tease the reader with the illusion of realism when we can name and date
the days in question. Elsewhere we might infer the transition from three to
four (50) and, in the current chapter, from six to seven (111-113), although
the dating on those pages is less explicit. The apparent reference to
"division semifinals" at the beginning of 8.2 (113) gives us a Monday
following the opening reference to "every Tuesday or Cheap Pizza Nite" (12),
so it all seems to add up, if only retrospectively in the case of 50 and
111-113, but just as quickly fails to. Later on this dating will become,
well, foggier still; for now we can look closer at the first week. Not
least, given the leisurely pace, we might be wondering a bit more about the
narrative as Chandleresque noir.

Doc, we are told repeatedly, is permanently stoned (or would be if he were a
'real person'). This might or might not impair his ability to read the
action a la Marlowe, and thereby render his perceptions unreliable. However,
of greater interest is the relationship between statements in the text, ie
the narrative's juxtaposition of the act of smoking/tripping to dating.

Consider the first explicit reference in the text to his being, or about to
be, stoned. Day one ends with Doc "roll[ing] a number" (12). Down the page
he "may or may not have fallen asleep" and then "really did fall asleep"; if
he does fall asleep the first time, what does that do to the subsequent
"really"?

Apparently waking at the start of day two he goes for breakfast to be told
of Bigfoot's visit the previous evening (12-13). Never clarified--although
the exchange on 32-34, ie the end of day two, is suggestive--this reference
offers the possibility of an alternative narrative, what might have happened
if Shasta hadn't turned up to kick-start the PI narrative. When Flaco
mentions Bigfoot we might be curious. Doc, it seems, isn't. Flaco: "...
which would be today, right?" Doc: "Not if I can help it."

Subsequently, day three begins with Doc in his office, again "roll[ing] a
number" (34). We might criticise the writer and say he needs a good editor;
or, indeed, we might wonder why the repetition. (In the section I'm
discussing here, this is the one reference to smoking/tripping that follows
the announcement of a new day rather than preceding it. No doubt that will
invalidate everything I've written.)

If we do infer the transition from three to four on 50, we have no smoking
but driving as "like having hallucinations without going to all the trouble
of acquiring and then taking a particular drug". Later, normal service is
resumed when day four ends with Doc "prepared to be knocked on his ass"
(85), before "the parrots on his shirt had now begun to stir and flap ..."
etc (88). Day five ends with Doc "[lighting] a joint" (95) and "overthinking
[him]self into brainfreeze" (96), before "face-stuffing activities ...,
forgetting if they'd ordered anything else, bringing Magda back over, then
forgetting what they wanted her for" (97). Day six ends with Doc tripping
(108-110).

On 111 we infer the transition to day seven because Doc seems to have
recovered from his exploits at the end of the previous chapter. The Q-&-A
exchange with Aunt Reet takes us back to the first evening (ie 6-8) and
offers pastiche of the PI genre, a modernist interlude that, briefly,
invokes rational inquiry. Ch7 ends with: "It makes no sense" (110). And then
Ch8 begins with Doc making sense, performing as a PI. However, and not for
the first time, he fails to act upon information received. On 113 we find
him watching TV, a moment that, far from being a distraction, holds out the
promise of a narrative in which dating grants us access to the Real. The
text has invoked history on occasion; but this is the first time we have a
dated event to play with.

Unfortunately the basketball game belongs to a different time-zone, TV
bringing together past and future in a permanent present (as noted way back
in VLVL, TV's present tense is one way in which that medium differs from
film). Hence, if we accept that this isn't yet more sloppiness on the
author's part, "division semifinals" offers confirmation of the narrative
dating and, simultaneously, through the use of anachronism, undermines it.
The name-change, anachronistic or not, is an undoing/rewriting of personal
history; it recalls Doc's own self-transformation on 106 to become Xqq.
Hence, down the page on 113 we have the doomed attempt to suppress all and
any evidence of smoking following the intrusion of family. Personal history,
as another form of dating, locates Doc-as-Larry (not to mention
Lew-as-Kareem) in a parallel universe. A page back, on 112, Aunt Reet tells
Doc to call his mother: "You didn't call for a week and a half", ie before
the novel begins. Doc claims he has been working, which of course he has,
kind of; and compares himself to his brother Gilroy, "the one with the life,
operations manager for whatever".

Later, the transition from day seven to day eight is the first explicit
reference (on 117: "Next morning ...") that isn't accompanied by an equally
explicit reference to smoking/tripping. Instead it follows the exchange with
Leo and, for Doc, "messages from beyond".