BEER Ch. 6, 57-61: Reg reports in

[Monte Davis]

It was Reg Despard who brought hashslingrz and Gabriel Ice to Maxine's
attention (p.10). By p. 41, having looked at hashslingrz's disbursements,
she was "wondering what Reg has gotten himself into and, worse, what he's
dragging her uncomfortably toward." Oh, so Reg's an active agent and she's a
passive victim? I don't think so. "Paranoids are not paranoids (Proverb 5)
because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking
idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations." (GR 292)

 

At lines 21-22 of p. 57, we get a jump cut without guard rail or signage:
from Reg telling Maxine (in the narrative "now," presumably in her office)
that his IT investigator Eric Outfield "only likes to meet face-to-face on
the subway" to some earlier moment of such a meeting. We stay on their
Brooklyn-bound train for two pages, and snap back to Reg & Maxine "without
warning, of course" just below the middle of p. 59. These transitions aren't
unique to Pynchon, but he has trained us (or me, at any rate) to take them
at speed. Might they puzzle or annoy some otherwise skillful readers.. maybe
one cause of "I just can't read Pynchon" syndrome?

 

58: Eric's co-workers may or may not notice his deepening anxiety because
"so many of these spend their hours down in the mainframe room snorting
Halon out of the fire extinguishers.." Halon
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halomethane#Fire_extinguishing>  gas is a
fire-suppressant gas used for high-value environments that would be damaged
by a water sprinkler system. While  "it can cause giddiness and mildly
impaired perception," it's deployed from elaborate built-in systems rather
than handy pressure tanks like CO2 , so AFAIK this particular mindless
pleasure is Pynchon's invention. I would not put it past him to be cognizant
of Halon's relationship to CFCs (Freon et al, ozone hole) and methane (a
more potent but less long-lived greenhouse gas than CO2). Mindless pleasures
from anti-fire stuff that can also sunburn or slow-bake the planet? Why
would our old Berlin _purpurstoff_ pusher TRP think about that? 



Outfield finds hashslingrz's cyber-security both intimidating and oddly
seductive. It could be "an entrance exam. if Eric's good enough, maybe
they'll let him in." Black-hat hacker attacker becomes white-hat defender, a
recruiting mode not unfamiliar to IT consultancies, DoD, NSA et al. At DEF
CON <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEF_CON>  it's been happening for years.
On the other hand, there's that lightly-touched-on corporate buzz about a
disappeared employee. Eric's misgivings pass through to Reg, and thence to
Maxine.

 

59: "Actually it's a coastal thing you're hearing": Reg might be dropping
the case to follow the children of his former marriage to Seattle (an IT
industry node along with Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley). Maxine,
quasi-divorced but as far as we know free of custody frictions with Horst,
acknowledges only a bit grudgingly: "Not the sort of thing you can just let
go, I guess."

 

"ol' Pointy-Hair gets the girls back" -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy-haired_Boss. Before there was Steve
Carell in The Office, there was PHB <http://www.dilbert.com/2013-10-21/> .
and before him, a long tradition of ridicule and subversion among the
preterite.

 

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