BEER -- chapters 10 and 23 (possible spoilers) -- PROMIS 1.5

[Thomas Eckhardt]

It gets complicated here. Note that Windust, torturer and murderer in 
the services of Empire for all we know, sets himself apart from his 
colleagues by being in the dirty business for strictly ideological reasons:

"To be motivated only by raw ideology--besides greed, what else could it 
be--made him weird, almost dangerous." (BE, 109)

Can this be related to the fact that he always scrounges money off 
Maxine? To his choice of shoes?

Also, Maxine two or three times in the course of the novel wonders about 
how Windust has become the person he is. For the first time, see the 
paragraph beginning near the bottom of page 109. Later she will imagine 
that Windust has been reared from childhood by the Cold War National 
Security State:

"The avatar stares at her, steady, unremorseful, all a deliberate front, 
granted, but whoever 'they' are, she needs to believe they are far worse 
than anything Windust became later on, working for them. They found his 
careless gift of boy's cruelty and developed it, deployed and used it, 
by tiny increments, till one day he was a professional sadist with a 
GS-1800-series job and no regrets." (BE 407)

(A GS-1800 job seems to be a government job in the investigation field.)

I have to add that it is not Windust whom Maxine meets in Deep Archer 
here but somebody else. Windust is already dead. (for this, see BE 411, 
where we also find: "He was never in this for the money.") Also of 
interest: Maxine "needs to believe."

In any case, Windust is not in the loop on the PROMIS business. And he 
also doesn't know anything about whatever conspiracy might lurk in the 
shadows of BE: "The assessment here on Windust is that he's a highly 
educated asset, but doesn't know everything." (BE, 394)

Thomas



Am 11.12.2013 04:55, schrieb Joseph Tracy:
> Really good work.  The whole thing sets up a really weird tension. Maxine gets this from  hard rightist, hands-bloody Windust. Asks her Israeli brother in law about it, another kind of conservative; is following trail connecting Ice to US intelligence and possible software and bandwidth coup, with secret connections to Islamic banks. Ice has hired Avi.  She loves lefty parents who are divided on Windust and Avi.  Also is renewing friendship with March( on Washington).
>
> Who's a girl to trust?  All of these conflicting and overlapping loyalties bearing no small resemblance to  US and international politics.
> On Dec 10, 2013, at 3:52 PM, Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
>
>> If you have come this far with my PROMIS/BE series, you really need to read this:
>>
>> http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/new-afp-system-developed-in-israel-20130809-2rnth.html
>>
>> Thomas
>>
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>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>

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