Paranoid Interference on Maxine's Antennas (Kurt Mondaugen revisited)

[Michael Bailey]

Ahwell ive got to admit i'm fond of zoyd and doc...
Anyway, bladder psychism parsing - maybe there is this surrounding
electrical field and it's really strong and variegated in cities because
not only are there a lot of appliances but also people's nervous systems
generate electriciry & magnetism, and there's induction and stuff when
people move through the flux lines, ley lines, conga lines, what have
you...anyway, the contents of the bladder being ions and salts suspended in
fluid - Bob's yr uncle, a veritable western union if one knows how to tap
the keys, or the kidneys, mutatis mutandis
On Dec 30, 2013 9:29 AM, "Fiona Shnapple" <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:

> She is so easily conned.
>
> When she is set in the positive parody of the tradition of the
> hardboiled fiction genre , a fiction that has its roots in romance,
> she seems cool, that is, tainted enough, cynical enough.
>
> Moreover, what she has lived through (dot com etc.) and where and when
> (NYC under Rudy) provides a traditional hardboiled setting of
> corruption, mob politics, banksters and the rest. Her business is
> located in a building that is described as temple of finance built at
> the end of the roaring 20s, just before the Great Crash and
> Depression. And this connects her to prior periods of corruption and
> crash (a sad cycle of market madness, real estate speculation, well
> documented in American Romance and in the inheritors of what James
> Wood call's Melville's Estate-- the taking of Matthew Maule's land to
> build, with the labor of Maule's children, Judge Pyncheon's House of
> Seven Gables). The little quip on the business name--the tails and
> nails but never jails is not merely a comment on the crooks of our
> current financial repression, but this little joke and others remind
> us that the novel is not simply a September 11 novel, or even a dotcom
> novel, but a novel about greater themes in America and also, about the
> state of our souls right now.
>
> In any even, Maxine seems a positive parody of the traditional (so I
> love her so much more than that idiot in IV)  but her judgements are
> confused by emotions, insecurities and paranoia that set her on and
> often over the borderline.
>
> Of course, in the tradition, her bender on the boat with the
> borderline crew is perfect, but then there is Reg. What can make of
> this dude? He, after all, brings this "job" to our heroine. With his
> camera, with his delicate flip of fingers, he gets Maxine in on this.
> Did I say he mentions the gun? He does. He flips her buttons with
> compliments she soooo desperately needs. Sure, she's out on a
> harboiled bender, needs to be vulnerable. But Reg ain't exactly a
> Femme Fatale, or a James Bond Babe. Once he gets a handshake on the
> deal, he says he feels like Erin Brockvich. How does that work? ANd
> speaking of work, Maxine is helping reg out here for free. The job, he
> says, is to find out who he's working for. Well, he knows who he's
> working for.  Why does Maxine take the job? In working for Reg, who
> works for Ice, she's working for Ice. For free. Can you say
> Crowdsourced?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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