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

[Markekohut]

P's jump cuts, like tonal switches in classic dramatic comedy, imply the non-linear in a way most 
tragedies or even tragicomedies do not.   

Relevant to BE very overtly, is Northrop Frye's saying that comedy invokes the Mythos of Spring. 

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 26, 2013, at 7:35 PM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> 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 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 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… and before him, a long tradition of ridicule and subversion among the preterite.
>  
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