V2nd - more Bohemian silliness

[Michael Bailey]

393 - He jittered the receiver, dialed information.  "Where can I get
three hundred bills," he said.  "No, the banks are closed....I am
against usury."  He quoted to the phone operator from Ezra Pound's
Cantos.

the sort of histrionic silliness that somebody has to be watching -
like in my set, members of whom in the first flush of psychedelic
silliness embarking on a kitchen adventure, phoned information and
asked how to make bagels.  Not something you'd do without an audience,
people who expect and encourage you to be silly...

but I suppose that is the point here, the tools of silliness grappling
ineffectively with questions of life and death, and money

"It was like playing one-up at a party, or Botticelli."
In the Man from UNCLE books, at least the early ones, Napoleon and
Ilya often played Botticelli.  I've never encountered the game in the
wild, just books...guess I was born too far into the Decadence, the
people I know, though all are somewhat learned, can't count on enough
overlaps to make the game playable?

but that's just a glancing reflection (a caustic?)

The point, and point there is, and not too badly done, is that in this
"camp" of found objects, this nest gathered up and containing some
really neat stuff, like the thousands of books (which peripheral
partygoers sit on the landings of the 7-stories leading to Godolphin's
lodgings, er, Raoul/Slab/Melvin's pad, and read, and make notes in)
they  - Slab and Esther, facing a tough decision - have gathered and
assimilated numerous wise sayings - from the fantastic wealth, the
library equivalent to that of a doge or an Earl (or the Duke of Earl)
but a few dozens of years past - to the point where their moral
expertise *by all the acknowledged leading lights* is wielded to no
avail...

there is no purchase, the blows don't land, even when Esther claws the
Cheese Danish paintings it only enhances the texture...

...and the toilet, apparently installed out in the open (I've been to
a pad where that was the case, and in fact spent some time there
delaying using it...) contravenes "the toilet privacy of their banks"
later mentioned in GR...

and anyway - which is something Dylan wrote about in Masters of War,
the fear to bring children into the world - all that literature and
art, all that scavenged wealth doesn't make their pad a home...

Similarly, page 391
[Rachel's trying to find Esther, Slab said he'll let her know if
Esther shows up]
"But Slab -"  [Rachel is presuming upon a mutual concern]
"Wha," said Slab.
Wha. Oh, well.  She hung up.

more code words, like MYSAH?  (make yourself at home)
somebody tosses out a "wha" you know you aren't going anywhere,
conversationally?




"Define 'Bozo'" - Jeff Bridges (in "Starman")