BEg2 ch 18 quick summary, private noses

[Neal Fultz]

Also the line about Azrael is interesting because Pynchon goes out of his
way to explain the joke: no, not the smurfs.

But maybe that's some misdirection.

smurf has another meaning in banking, where you structure large
transactions into many smaller ones to launder money. So maybe Lester *was*
a smurf, or his company was. And Maxine's dream logic is putting some
pieces together.

So does that make Ice Gargamel, or Papa Smurf? Is Maxine Smurfette (cf
Donnie Darko)?

So the train of thought is more circular,  lester ~ fraud ~ smurf ~ azrael
~ (angel of) death ~ lester (dead).

I'll also add iirc that Azrael is a different biblical character than Death
of the Four Horsemen although I'm not sure it's significant here.


On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 5:02 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Thanks Neal for posting this. Tells the core story. Already the last day
> according to schedule for ch 18.
>
>  One of the most appealing things about Maxine is her compassion for
> everyone, especially those who just want a life wrth having,  and her
> reaction to Lester T’s death is like an emotional upping of the ante. This
> quote is odd and credible, "Insanely she begins to blame herself. Because
> she found Ice’s tunnel. Ran away from whatever was approaching. It’s Ice
> getting even, coming after her now.”
> Her dark dream about LT has come true and it brings her to the issue of
> her own failure of courage. It seems P is packing that turning point with
> meaning. It stirs personal issues for me and the feeling that there are
> often fears behind the fears we thought we dealt with. When she sees Lester
> with the blonde is it her psyche trying to pull him back into the land of
> the living? Is the blonde bombshell significant.  Suddenly this is a murder
> mystery and she cares and is grasping for meaning in what she knows to be
> an already very complicated narrative.
>   I wonder if P’s purpose is to bring 9-11 and every act of organized,
> carefully plotted violence into a closer emotional range. But to also show
> how hard to resolve any crime and know what is true and real. The
> specificity of a person who is cared for summons our sense that there
> should be justice, that the guilty party or parties should reap what they
> sowed, since this life that could as easily have been our life has been
> taken for someone’s convenience, or ego or geostrategic move.
>   If Lester’s life is forgettable, what about ours? And how easily notions
> of justice become misdirected revenge. Maxine does not even know what she
> witnessed earlier or how to order what she has experienced, feels pummeled
> by Shawn's questions. Who has not experienced something like that. How
> clear and real a picture of what happened can emerge? Will a private nose
> clarify things?
>
> Another dream, another underworld. Once again Maxine is in the depths of a
> dream at a real place looking down under the waters of the Deseret pool and
> ?Lester? is there in a suit and he is saying “Azrael". Her first response
> is to think of the Smurf Gargamel’s cat, but Lester/not Lester’s face says
> no and she realizes it is the name of the Angel of Death of Judaism and
> Islam. Both religions have relevance, both people play roles in her
> investigation and in the larger focus of the book. Once again her mind
> turns to the corridor in Montauk and Ice also named after an angel,
> Gabriel. The world Angel translates literally as messenger, but what is the
> message? Is this about the death that is coming( 9-11) or is this about a
> choice between fearlessness and fear, truth and death, annunciation or
> dissolution.
>
> The movement from smurf cats to angels of annunciation and death is
> interesting.  Are we surrounded by commercial cartoon myths but too distant
> from the undelying mythic language to understand the writing on the wall?
>
> > On Feb 8, 2022, at 1:44 AM, Neal Fultz <nfultz at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > * Maxine hears on the radio that Lester Traipse has been found dead
> > (apparent suicide?)
> > * But then she spots him going down to the subway. Or was it a lookalike?
> > * She discusses this with her therapist, Shawn
> > * But her session runs long, cuts into the session of Conkling
> Speedwell, a
> > professional nose
> > * And they get lunch, and discuss perfumes, freelancing, and nasal
> forensics
> > * She and Conkling go to the Deseret to investigate Lester's death in the
> > below-pool viewing rooms
> > * Lester was murdered with a ballistic knife (KGB?)
> > * Conkling gets a scent, takes an air sample, and they head back to his
> to
> > compare with his personal collection
> >   * and he matches it to the 9:30 Club in DC
> > * Later, Maxine dreams of the crime scene beneath the pool. Lester's
> corpse
> > says "Azrael"
> >
> >
> > ---
> >
> > "Sam Valiant, Private Nose" (1961) -
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJn-5xoSw34
> >
> > “Every Crime Has Its Peculiar Odor”: Detection, Deodorization, and
> > Intoxication" -
> > https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/9781479805372-002/pdf
> >
> > The most recent incarnation of the deodorizing detective is the eponymous
> >> protagonist of The Sniffer (2013–)—a popular Ukrainian television series
> >> directed by Artyom Litvinenko and internationally distributed by Amazon
> >> Prime and Netflix
> >
> >
> > 9:30 club - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9:30_Club
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>
>