V2nd, C3

[Michael Bailey]

ok backing up...
their 2 faces are angry - page 62 - "Two red faces burned angry at
each other across the table."
But are they angry at each other?

Apparently not, they are both angry at old Bongo-the-Shafter, becaaaauuuuse:

(63) "The old one in tweed - Porpentine - was the maquereau."
that's like, wingman or procurer or something...hmmm, so he must have
some kind of an in if he even putatively thinks he can get Fat Mr
Nameless-at-this-point some face time, some horizontal time with the
"tourist daughter of a tourist father"  Or else he's a mackerel...
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maquereau

(63) "The two he watched..."
He being Aieul

(63) "...were anarchists, plotting to assassinate Sir Alastair Wren, a
powerful member of the English Parliament"  Hmmm, so Aieul is, aha,
imagining various possibilities.

(63) "The peer's wife - Victoria - was meanwhile being blackmailed by
Bongo-Shaftsbury, who knew of her own secret anarchist sympathies"

(63) "The two were music-hall entertainers, seeking jobs in a grand
vaudeville being produced by Bongo-Shaftsbury, who was in town seeking
funds from the foolish knight Wren."
This is the one I like, even if it is just old Aieul's imagination.
All the world's a stage.
I like "foolish knight Wren" also, just something about that phrase...
"Bongo-Shaftsbury's avenue of approach would be through the glamorous
actress Victoria, Wren's mistress, posing as his wife to satisfy the
English fetish of respectability.  Fat and Tweed would enter their
consulate tonight arm-in-arm, singing a jovial song, shuffling,
rolling their eyes...."

Puccini's Manon Lescaut ("Manon the Scout" - well probably not)
http://www.thomaspynchon.com/v/extra/manon.html
  Pazzo son! = "I am insane!"
Guardate, come io piango ed imploro = "Look at me. How I weep and implore"
Come io chiedo pieta! = "How I plead for pity!"

but the main thing for me, is that these fat guys, if they weren't
stuck in the middle of the Big Game, are capable of song, and Aieul's
cool tale could as well be true; that Aieul, a civilian, serving,
watching and waiting, is the true hero of this passage...turning
swords to plowshares if only in his mind - "as a man thinketh"

of course it's not his only speculation, but that Pynchon gives us
that...yeah baby...
>



-- 
Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
- Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")