BEg2 chapter 1 3rd pass - Vyrva!

[Joseph Tracy]

Vyrva- last name McElmo  The McElmo is metioned a few times in ATD and was a region along McElmo Creek going from Colorado into Utah. It is the site of t ancient dwellings and remaining petroglyphs of the Anasazi. "he same ancient, disquieting pictures engraved on its walls as back in the McElmo, spelling out a story whose pitiless truth couldn't be admitted officially.”  

First exposure to Maxine’s secretary, Daytona. She is in a marriage break up. She has an edge but can, we find later, be sharply funny and an astute observer.Her quick mind lives up to her name. This process of catching someone in a bad moment and then finding out there is more to them is as important in fiction as finding out someone who seems real nice is doing something nasty. A reminder to hold off on the hair trigger reaction.

I found the office scene more interesting than Michael. First glance into what Maxine does for a living, answering weird calls about the  theft of industrial secrets from Krispy Kreme, the comic paranoia that it’s a “sting” operation involving connection between Krispy Kreme and the FBI. She is dealing with some losers like Dizzy Cubitts  for whom she feels a certain sympathy."The problem being Dizzy’s charm, at least a just-off-the-turntable naïveté that Maxine can’t quite believe is fake. For the ordinary fraudster, family disruption, public shame, some time in the joint are enough to get them to seek legal if not honest employment. But even among the low-stakes hustlers she is doomed to deal with, Dizzy’s learning curve is permanently flatlined.”  We find out she knows the laws and while not morally judgmental, does have boundaries and originally thought of calling her business Tail’Em, Nail’Em, and Jail’Em.
Business and morality are unconnected for a lot of people, criminality being just a higher stakes form of a game with winners and losers. Tax avoidance, false inventories, cheap kn ”Late Capitalism”.

We later find out Maxi was a govt paid  Certified Fraud Examiner and while her  new business is strong,  we get the feeling in this first chapter that she kinda misses the larger, more challenging cases. A nice lead-in to the next chapter. 





> On Nov 5, 2021, at 11:12 PM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> —-—
> Handy link for the pynchonwiki BE page, suitable for bookmarking:
> https://bleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
> ———
> 
> 
> The mix we are adding Vyrva to:
> 
> Maxine walks her 2 sons to school and from there she “continues her
> commute” by walking to her fraud investigation office, where she starts her
> working day with phone messages and a call until Reg arrives without an
> appointment.
> 
> It’s kinda meh, kinda bland without Vyrva.
> 
> Lacks verve!
> 
> Vyrva - there’s an Anton Vyrva who’s a painter from Belarus. Darn near
> photorealist, seems to me.
> 
> https://www.saatchiart.com/vyrva
> 
> 
> Per forebears.io, Vyrva is the
> 
> 495,028th Most Common
> surname in the World
> 
> Most common in Ukraine
> 
> 
> 
> 1% first name found once in Russia
> 99% surname found at least 95 times in at least 8 countries (per
> namespedia.com)
> 
> Vyrva is a Ukrainian village with about 185 inhabitants. Also, Vyrva is a
> stream there (small river) or to stretch a point but little, a “rill.”
> 
> Thanks, gomapper.com & mapcarta.com !
> 
> So there “rilly” is a Vyrva…to segue into her Valley persona…and evoke a
> bit of Vineland.
> 
> 
> Vyrva sez, “Maxi, hi?”
> Which you could see as annoying tic that accesses and then disappoints
> non-Valley speakers’ expectation of a question.
> 
> Or could it be the beginning of a cultural influence from tonal languages,
> what with all the migration into California of speakers thereof?
> 
> 
> Cross-cultural East and West Coast influences certainly figure in Vyrva and
> Maxine’s friendship.
> 
> Which, to hazard a guess, probably began with a recognition like the one
> between Zoyd and van Meter in Vineland, where he looks into the next car
> over and sees himself.
> 
> Slight age difference, but kindred spirits.
> 
> “This morning Maxine notes a change from the normal weekday throwtogether,
> what Barbie used to call an Executive Lunch Suit instead of denim overalls,
> for one thing, hair up instead of in the usual blond braids, and the
> plastic monarch butterfly earrings replaced by what, diamond studs,
> zircons? Some appointment later in the day, business matters no doubt, job
> hunting, maybe another financing expedition?”
> 
> Nice Iceland Spar double image with 3 points of comparison, and a surmise
> about Vyrva’s plans.
> 
> Vyrva was graduated from Pomona - isn’t that a Pynchon hotbed?
> 
> Her husband, “Justin and a friend from Stanford have a little start-up that
> somehow managed to glide through the dotcom disaster last year, though not
> with what you’d call irrational exuberance. ”
> 
> (Greenspan, 1996)
> 
> Vyrva and Justin live in a brownstone on Riverside Drive, wowing Maxine on
> her first visit.
> 
> “Magnificent residence,” she pretended to kvell, “maybe I’m in the wrong
> business?”
>   “Talk to Bill Gates here,” Vyrva nonchalant, “I’m just hangin out,
> waitin for my stock options to vest? Right, honey?”
> 
> Kvell - Yiddish for “to be extraordinarily proud; rejoice” - in this case,
> vicariously.
> 
> 
> She wishes Vyrva well a little more meaningfully  than usual, suspecting
> games afoot deeper than Vyrva’s usual, “California sunshine, snorkel-deep
> waters, most of the time anyway.”
> 
> And watches Vyrva’s West Coast acknowledgement of the insight, “noting a
> slow California double take”
> prove her right.
> 
> 
> Per nameslook.com, the numerology of the name Vyrva is 7.
> 
> Also, I was going to hit send, but then the image of Vyrva with “California
> plates on [her] butt,” breaking the ice between her and Maxine, who’d been
> serving her herbal tea rather than the coffee Maxine herself was drinking.
> 
> So we know there are “klatches” whether kaffee- or tee- between them.
> Vyrva’s offhand reference to her butt is maybe tantamount to using “du” in
> German.
> 
> California car license plates in 2001 were white with blue letters:
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/222047440735
> 
> 
> 
> Completely irrelevant:
> 
> Not nearly as cool, imho, as the blue and yellow one Cheech and Chong’s
> Impala sported in Up in Smoke:
> 
> https://www.bluescentric.com/p-1929-cheech-and-chongs-up-in-smoke-muf-dvr-license-plate.aspx
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l