Flatiron: Auerbach & Chabon

[Fiona Shnapple]

Put these two together and you have an excellent read of the novel.
Though I disagree with the idea that Pynchon doesn't give his
characters, well, character though traditional characterization, he
certainly does, pull the plunger, spring them into the pinball alleys
of the city, work the double flippers, tilt the towers.

And, if P has returned to his Dynamo and Virgin,  well, we might want
to look into that V at the front of the book, the Flatiron. And,
taking this a bit further, into architecture, the public art of our
greatest city.

To this end, I've been doing a boatload of reading and will share what
I have discovered about the buildings in BE, the men who built them,
etc.

For now, in the characterization of Maxine and her "friends" and mates
here, we see her rolled into Chicago. AGTD Prairie Land the architects
from NYC Vs. those in Chicago, for the White City, that old West where
all the Gatsby People came from, including Nick, a tool man, a man who
made his fortune in hardware, not in software but who came East to
trade derivatives--became a bond man. Now, we meet Maxine's man, a
Chicago trader, in the Ceres where the traders drink under the mighty
statue of grains and cereals, but Chicago now, trading futures, it is
the pit where the US Treasury is traded, and all this derivatives that
benchmark, or trade at spreads off the UST, and he comes East. To the
Knife, to the NYFE, to the pits where we trade in blood and oil and
the pits are dominated not by westerners, or old money wasps, but by
Jewish men.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l