IVIV: Trust

[John Carvill]

2009/9/15 Tore Rye Andersen
>
>
> It seems to me that the notion of 'trust' emerges as a crucial
> theme in IV.

Yep. Good call.

>
> Crocker is of course one of the bad guys of IV, but what he
> says here isn't entirely a crock of shit. In fact, his assertion
> that without trust all may too swiftly revert to anarchy is
> very similar to one of the central themes in Melville's
> The Confidence-Man. That novel also seems to tell us that
> without a minimum of trust, it'll all fall apart. Expect
> to be cheated, but don't not trust.

Keep cool, but care.

> Otherwise things may
> degenerate all too easily into all-encompassing suspicion
> and paranoia.
>

Almost as if a little grain of trust is necessary, to keep the
essential oil of paranoia from thickening into an intolerable gloop.

> At any rate, Doc takes Crocker's lesson to heart, and when
> Denis asks him why on earth he believes Crocker's promise
> that the crooks won't hurt anybody, he says:
>
> "What, I should only trust good people? man, good people
> get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody
> evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense. I mean
> I wouldn't give odds either way." (349)
>
> I trust y'all have an opinion on this.

Maybe like 'honour among thieves'? Which would fit well with Mickey's
transormation from Pynchonian land-grabbing uber-villain into, what,
something more hippy-ish?