V-2nd - Chapter 8 - what is this Rusty Spoon place?

[Michael Bailey]

"It is probably a nice place, that Rusty Spoon.  But out of my class."


we don't actually have scenes set in the Rusty Spoon, most of the
time.  Most of the references to the Rusty Spoon are in the form of,
like, somebody just went there, or, Pig lives there, or: at the Rusty
Spoon they think thus and so.

It seems the only times we are reading a scene actually set IN the
Rusty Spoon is in Section 4 where Stencil and Mondaugen sit down in
"one of the secluded side rooms"; and later where Stencil, alone,
"undrunk" in the Rusty Spoon finds, ahem...

the clear resemblance between that scene and Foppl's party that I've
been trying to downplay!  Luckily, that's not in Chapter 8, so I can't
be held responsible.

Anyway, given the familiar conceit, and possibly here intended
connection, linking drinking-places and churches (confession,
communion, ladies named Beatrice, songs about saints going marching
in...) it seems like maybe the Rusty Spoon represents something.

Countertextually, superimposing the "ecclesiastical history read" on
the action, maybe what it represents is the Manhattan outpost of the
transnational communion - tongues of fire leap out from the drinkers'
heads the night that Egypt and Israel start their ceasefire; and Pig
and Charisma are sent out in the world (specifically, Roony and
Mafia's apartment) to evangelize; and the bodacious party is as a
result of this Pentecost...

but according to the song, it's both a "sick bar" and "the only place for me"




-- 
- "After all, Salaam and Shalom are only slight different spellings of
 a word that means the same thing in Arabic and Hebrew.
Which translated into English means peace be upon you." - Norman Spinrad