V-2nd: He got there by

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

"He got there by the way of the Arcade, ..." (Picador 9)
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/08/whats-name-norfolks-selden-arcade

I wouldn't be surprised if someone (Dave? Dave!) must've at some point
in the list history related this sentence to Benjamin's Arcades project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project
(I recall having written of the flâneur etc. only in connection w/ GR -
the ever-so-boring-GR-loving Heikki.)

The arcades of Paris accentuate the fact that the environment where the
Baudelaurean/Benjaminesque flâneur strolls is inseparably an interior
and an exterior.
http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/flaneur.html
The flâneur is a free-wheeling, at once lazy and eager, spectator who
spots small, breathing meanings (porous interiorities) amidst the crowd
of arcadelike urbanity.

In V., the flâneur is divided into two: the exteriorized Benny with his
empty streets and the "entirely inward" (Picaror 55) directed Stencil.
Desolate exteriors with no meanings and airtight interiors with paranoid
meanings.

So it may not be so surprising that Benny "rounds the corner" and the
"East Main [is] on him" (Picador 10).


By making a turn at this corner, he performs, of course, a V.



Heikki