Atdtda37: Reunion of outlaws, 1057-1059 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

The previous section stalls Lew's investigation in order to fill in details
about Lake and Deuce; Lake's dreaming is repetitive, but so is her
experience of being woken by Deuce's return 'from what he never speaks
about' (1056). The new section, then, provides forward momentum in the form
of Lew's journey to Carefree Court. Evidently he hopes for new knowledge but
the experience also depends on repetition and, here, difference: the 'old LA
hand' has expectations that are here frustrated by 'a gathering impossible
at first to read' (1057).

Lew again joins a group that fails to react to his presence: 'nobody
noticed'. Cf his earlier arrival at the picnic on 1048. Cf also the way he
is positioned when meeting Dally on 900, always the outsider: on 692 he
'stumbled down to the breakfast salon to find that everyone had left town'.
Here, he is positioned as an investigator, but ambiguously so with 'faces
[he] recognise[s] from mug shots, faces that might also have recognised him
from tickets long cold ...' etc (1057). 

In the former case ('mug shots') it might be wondered which is the original
and which the image to be compared to the original (cf the 'felonies
imagined or planned but seldom committed'). In the latter case ('faces that
might also have recognised him') Lew might be said to aspire to anonymity,
evading the gaze of others if and when their gaze is turned on him.

If Lew is somehow apart or other, so is Jardine's father, named only after
he has been introduced as 'an elderly gent' located '[i]n the centre of the
turbulence' and possibly 'somewhere else, lending his image to the
gathering' (1058). Lew appears as an observer, overhearing a conversation
that has been going for a while ('Virgil was saying'); and he remains
unacknowledged by those who claim to be able to deconstruct conspiracy.


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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l