IVIV: Trust

[Bekah]

I think "Trust" is part of the good guys/bad guys mix here.   It's one  
more instance of the Pynchonian theme of lines and borderlines -  
"Single up all the lines.' "    Where is that line, anyway?     Well,   
often there are no lines or borders and when the lines are there  
somewhere,  maybe  they're often crossed.    Maybe even Doc is one  
toke over the line sometimes.   Sunsets are a lack of lines.    
Vegetarians are sometimes not.  Trustworthy people are not always the  
ones to trust?

Bekah


On Sep 15, 2009, at 2:58 AM, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:

>
> Can I just skip back a page or two to this passage on p. 70:
>
> "Doc watched her getting in line. What kind of DDA game was
> she running on him now? He wished he could believe her more,
> but the business was unforgiving, and life in psychedelic-sixties
> L.A. offered more cautionary arguments than you could wave
> a joint at against too much trust, and the seventies were
> looking no more promising."
>
> It seems to me that the notion of 'trust' emerges as a crucial
> theme in IV. On the one hand, we have characters in the novel
> saying things like "I figure a guy can't ever be too paranoid"
> (149), but on the other hand we have characters like Doc, who
> consciously decides to try his hand at some trust, despite
> all the cautionary arguments against it.
>
> On p. 342, Crocker Fenway lectures Doc (who is nervous that
> he'll get wasted when he hands back the heroin Bigfoot put
> in his trunk):
>
> "Luckily for you, that's a sanction they prefer to exercise
> only against their own. Given the sorts of business they engage
> in, without absolute trust in one's associates all may too
> swiftly revert to anarchy. Outsiders like yourself tend to
> get the benefit of the doubt, and you in turn may trust their
> word without any hesitation."
>
> 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. Otherwise things may
> degenerate all too easily into all-encompassing suspicion
> and paranoia.
>
> 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.
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