IV - chapter 19 - page 345- 347

[Bekah]

Continuing Chapter 19:

Page 345
Dentists screwing their receptionists?   - and Japonica Fenway - and  
others.

" (... fond memories of Dr. Eigenvalue’s “psychdontics” in “V.”).     
or Elasmo in Vineland -  etc. (this has been threaded and rethreaded)
http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/751883.html

**
"original cast albums of Broadway musicals"  -  Hair?  1968
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_(musical)
http://www.musicals101.com/1960bway3.htm
http://www.musicals101.com/1970bway1.htm

**
Doc sees a strange look in Fenway's eyes (is it lust for his own  
progeny,  or just pure-d bizerkness?) but  Fenway makes his offer of  
compensation for the return of the goods.

**********
page 346
Doc suggests non-monetary compensation which will be more difficult.    
Fenway tries to get his head around this idea as Doc talks about Coy  
and family.   The issue of the California Vigilants comes up and  
Fenway suggests it can be smoothed over as the CV's are basically  
simple "hooligans."
Doc refuses money and the negotiations slide into a round of bickering  
about politics.

Vigilants -
http://popartmachine.com/item/pop_art/LOC+1077457
and  see Joseph Terry's post back in Dec.  (but the link is no longer  
there)
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0912&msg=145912&sort=date
*

Fenway's point is that his people are old money and that they will be  
the powers-that-be as long as Doc's people can be bought off for a car  
or a blonde.  Doc's point is that ever since the first landlord  
stiffed someone for their security deposit Fenway's whole class the  
lost  the respect of the people.

**********
347

Fenway turns that "security deposit" comment into an accounting issue  
to determine "how much" Doc wants.    Doc responds with statements  
about the greediness of the rich resulting in the build-up of class  
hatred.  The banter degenerates into name-calling,  but it's really  
the ground-level basics of radical (left wing)  vs the reactionary  
(upper class) politics.


*
Fenway brings up Mickey's Channel View Estates project saying that it  
would be a blight on the environment as it would be for tenement scum  
who didn't know how to clean up after themselves.    Doc counters with  
a straightforward,  "Bull shit,  Crocker, it's about your property  
values."

And Fenway,   "It's about <italics> being in place <end  
italics)>."     Now,  repeat that slowly:     *** BEING IN PLACE ***

Why the italics - what is that signifying?  Or is Fenway emphasizing  
it with his voice?   (Again,  why?)   The idea of "being in place" is  
kind of Buddhist or Confucian in some respects.   But keeping or  
minding your place is also Victorian thinking.  And the concept of  
"numeric place value"  is accounting and capitalism again.

*
" (Fenway) glancing around the Visitor's Bar and its withdrawal into  
seemingly unbounded shadow."
Dark and expanding  interior spaces -   See page 21 -  "bigger inside  
than out"  - resonates with the some things in Mason & Dixon,  but  
wasn't the balloon in AtD like that, too?  (Maybe only in my head -  
the insides of which may be smaller than apparent at this point.)

It's also about "old money" going back,  back, into the mists of time.

*

Fenway again,  "We will never run out of you people. The supply is  
inexhaustible."
An echo of this, from page 192: "as long as American life was  
something to be escaped from, the cartel could always be sure of a  
bottomless pool of new customers."

And when Doc suggests  masses screaming at the gates of Portola Valley  
country club,  Fenway shrugs,  "Then we do what has to be done to keep  
them out.  We've been laid siege to by far worse and we're still  
here.   Aren't we?"
(Shades of Scarsdale Vibe at the meeting near Ludlow - AtD .)

That's ominous and makes it sound like the masses of today are wimps.   
Either that or Fenway is just a tad complacent.

In 1970 "revolution"  was in the air in some circles - "death to the  
fascist insect which preys on the lives of the people" and all that.   
"The war is self-perpetuating ...  therefore we must end the  
government,"  was the general thinking of the radicals (at least the  
ones I was associated with).   "You say you want a revolution..."      
Beatles - 1968

It wasn't so much about economics - although that was part of it - as  
it was about the draft.    I don't think the ideas were as feared by  
the "powers that be"  as they were  in the 1880s - 1930s (see AtD).

Bekah