BE group read: CH 2

[Joseph Tracy]

I find the flashback to the caribbean cruise to be amusing and to give us more information about Maxine, to introduce Heidi, and a little about Reg.   I am not super drawn to the question of what Pynchon is doing with the cruise but woll try to put down some thoughts.
“AMBOPEDIA Frolix ’98,” a yearly gathering of the American Borderline Personality Disorder Association. Great fun, who would have dreamt of canceling? Unless . . . aahhh!   Maxine is mostly bored, only brief periods where she forgets Horst, goes manic. We never find out who , if anyone hired Reg to film Ambo. 

Pynchon has taken us  from Kugelblitz, described as "school as loony bin with homework" to "Hungarian tramp container vessel M/V Aristide Olt, sailing under a Marshallese flag of convenience.”  A literal ship of fools or at least borderlining on fool hood, but  apart from the very real real-estate tycoon Joel Weiner, pretty nice fools. Aristide Olt was Bela Lugosi’s Hungarian stage name.  Are we in the belly of  the vampire shopping for cut rate tropical tchotchkes in the land of carribbean dictators? I like what Mark was saying about stamp collecting as speculative investing, pursuit of monopoly control in the collector’s debris of late capitalism. One  wonders where the borderline is  for this all too common disorder, and when does one cross over it into full group insanity, waiting for our ship to come in between the floods and fires. War with China anyone? what are the best investment strategies for nuclear holocaust?  
   OK, sorry. I really need to lighten up, but this is where the text is taking my limited brain.I really don’t know where to go with this part of the chapter. We find out Maxine likes to be appreciated for her good looks and is not above the spontaneous sexual adventure. We learn that real estate predators are very competitive when it comes to both psychopathy and sociopathy.Always winners.Don’t think about the losers.


Returning to the office we get some details about how Maxi lost her license and that she did not exactly fight to keep her honor as a CFE anymore than she kept her innocence with Reg. Fortunately or not that was apparently forgettable, A mamajuana dream. We also  find out something more subtle about Maxine . In the tension between getting along with flawed humans and the fierce demands of truth she is for compromise and may even have a semi-hidden anarchist streak . Toward the end of the chapter she is looking at the CFE logo...
  What’s this? any minute the pages of this book, maybe allegorically The Law, are about to be set on fire by this burning torch, possibly the Light of Truth? Is somebody trying to say something, the Law in flames here, the terrible inflexible price of Truth . . . That’s it! Secret anarchist code messages!
 “Interesting thought, Maxine,” Reg trying to talk her down. “So you filed the appeal?” 
Actually, no—…

 So Maxine is comfortable deciding tough ethical and human decisions for herself. Who else I wonder? 
 I think that’s about it for me. We have til wednesday for ch 2. I hope others will take up the torch for the remainder of time.

Any volunteers for chapter 3 starting Thursday?   I know I promised a chapter calender today, but it’s late and I need to do the dishes and get back to my watercolor. Tomorrow. Thanks to Michael, Mark, The Davids, Keith, Neal, Rich, Seinfeld, Thomas Pynchon.  Looking for more to join in