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

[Fiona Shnapple]

Love that Zoyd. Larry was a dress rehearsal for Maxine.

On Monday, December 30, 2013, Michael Bailey wrote:

> 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<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', '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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