BEg2 chapter 10 asynchronous addenda

[Mark Kohut]

MB: If they can deliver for free,
then it’s only a short step for Marvin not to accept tips, and only another
step for him to anticipate her needs, obviating any necessity for ordering!

The money flow. Mysterious. One thing it looks like simply is this: an
embedded theme
in BE, so far is, when one tries to follow the money one can't.

On Sat, Jan 1, 2022 at 1:33 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Kozmo.com
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com
>
> This article contains the logo and the fact that there was no delivery fee.
>
> How is there any money in that at all, then? Very mysterious.
>
>
> Marvin, the magical Trinidadian delivery man -
> “We’re everywhere, like Duane Reade.”
>
> Duane Reade being a ubiquitous drugstore chain in that time/space
>  (acquired by Walgreens in 2010)
>
> Marvin is an extrapolation of the irrationally exuberant vision of
> kozmo.com
> :
> If they can deliver for free,
> then it’s only a short step for Marvin not to accept tips, and only another
> step for him to anticipate her needs, obviating any necessity for ordering!
>
> For me, it’s a reminder of how very much easier technology is making a lot
> of things, and how much easier they stand to become, for which I can’t help
> but feel some gratitude. (Both to technology and its purveyors*, and to
> Pynchon for showing it)
>
> Since this is a work of fiction, a shimmer of magical realism - and used
> for good! to inform Maxine about Windust - is like a measure of Maraschino
> liqueur in a Papa Doble.
>
> The part of one’s mind which is reluctant to accept magical realism, but
> fine with wheels-within-wheels paranoidish explanations, might be happier
> with the notion that somebody, say - Ice? - is tracking Maxine’s progress &
> is paying Marvin to do this.
>
>
> * when I was a dishwasher at TGI Fridays in 1981, some of us were relaxing
> after work, & the cook mentioned the restaurant’s purveyors - a word I’ve
> often found to be, if not as hilarious as flying buttress, still quite
> amusing.
>
> I asked him if a purveyor was a perverted surveyor, and without blinking he
> replies yes, it’s a fellow who goes around with a plumb bob up his ass!
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>