IVIV (8): The Chinese Voice in the Middle of the Night

[Dave Monroe]

"'We got a weird phone call at the motel last night, someboy on the
other end starts screaming, at first I figure it's Chinese, I can't
understand a word....'" (IV, Ch. 8, p. 116)


"a weird phone call"

Cf. ...

It took her till the middle of Huntley and Brinkley to remember that
last year at three or so one morning there had come this long-distance
call, from where she would never know (unless now he'd left a diary)
by a voice beginning in heavy Slavic tones as second secretary at the
Transylvanian Consulate, looking for an escaped bat; modulated to
comic-Negro, then on into hostile Pachuco dialect, full of chingas and
maricones; then a Gestapo officer asking her in shrieks did she have
relatives in Germany and finally his Lamont Cranston voice, the one
he'd talked in all the way down to Mazatlan. "Pierce, please," she'd
managed to get in, "I thought we had——" "But Margo," earnestly, "I've
just come from Commissioner Weston, and that old man in the fun house
was murdered by the same blowgun that killed Professor Quackenbush,"
or something. "For God's sake," she said. Mucho had rolled over and
was looking at her. "Why don't you hang up on him," Mucho suggested,
sensibly. "I heard that," Pierce said. "I think it's time Wendell Maas
had a little visit from The Shadow." Silence, positive and thorough,
fell. So it was the last of his voices she ever heard. Lamont
Cranston. That phone line could have pointed any direction, been any
length ...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8569911/Thomas-Pynchon-The-Crying-of-Lot-49


"I like to use Frank Chambers"

http://www.librarything.com/character/Frank+Chambers
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0017175/

Cora Smith

Also from the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. This is another
detective favorite of Pynchon from James M. Cain (1892-1977), the
other being Double Indemnity. Cora, a femme fatale figure, is tired of
her life, married to an older man she doesn't love and working in a
diner that she wishes she could own and improve. She meets a young
drifter, Frank Chambers, and they very soon begin a passionate affair
and eventually scheme to murder Cora's husband in order to start a new
life together without Cora losing the diner.

The 1946 movie version starred John Garfield, making this one of the
more oblique of Pynchon's numerous references to Garfield in this
book.

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_8#Page_116


"Later, though, around three A.M."

Very late night, the seventh day of the narrative, Monday, March 30, 1970.

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_8#Page_116


"'You're being paranoid'"

Cf., e.g., ...

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Paranoia/Connectedness


"paranoia was a tool of the trade, it pointed you in directions you
might not have seen to go"

E.g., ...

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to
worry about answers." (GR, Pt. II, p. 251)

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=P#proverbs


"messages from beyond"

Cf. ...

"the other side" (GR, Pt. I, p. 153) et al. ...

“He’d been brooding about this great collective dream that everybody
was being encouraged to stay tripping around in. Only now and then
would you get an unplanned glimpse at the other side.” (IV, Ch. ?, p.
?)

Not to mention ...

"The Ice Caps Are Melting" by Tiny Tim (This Tiny Tim song is actually
called "The Other Side")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DEoOdcYKbc

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Songs_mentioned_in_Inherent_Vice


"unkind motivation"

Vs. "kind" motivation?  I.e., ...

Kind - marijuana
Kind bud - marijuana term for good pot

http://www.marijuanadictionary.com/k-marijuana/marijuana.html