BEg2 chapter 12 digging in again

[Mark Kohut]

Yes! : "Not an unusually long sentence for Pynchon, but partakes of that
listy
sense for which Slothrop’s desk gave many of us a taste."

"In broad daylight, however, at an average speed of one block per
hour, jammed with loud and toxic-smelling traffic, all in advanced
states of disrepair,"--------
This now registers to me as a social observation worthy of Sinclair Lewis
and, maybe, better'n
than good Tom Wolfe........NYC traffic is worker's traffic if one had to
label it, I dare to suggest.......loaded with cabs; loaded with people
who need to get to real places in vehicles to do something physical.
Trucks, workers who can't take buses or subways home..vast office workers
travel via public transportation.....the most elite do have cars w drivers
that take them, but the sliver of that is miniscule....

TRP can see.

On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 2:26 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> Going uptown, Maxine gets a weird slow ride with an anti-semitic
> cabbie who may be about to lose his license, she doesn’t like park
> ave.
>
>
> https://youtu.be/GcCNcgoyG_0
> Off topic perhaps…
>
>
> Park Avenue:
>
> “Built originally as a kind of genteel lid to cover up the train
> tracks running into Grand Central, what should it be, the
> Champs-Élysées”
>
> There’s a fascinating Wikipedia article on Park Avenue, and one on the
> Champs-Élysées.
>
> Maxine isn’t impressed!
>
>
> “In broad daylight, however, at an average speed of one block per
> hour, jammed with loud and toxic-smelling traffic, all in advanced
> states of disrepair, whose drivers suffer (or enjoy) a hostility level
> comparable to that of Maxine’s driver here—not to mention police
> barricades, Form Single Lane signs, jackhammer crews, backhoes and
> front-end loaders, cement mixers, asphalt spreaders, and battered dump
> trucks unmarked by any contractor’s name let alone phone number—it
> becomes an occasion for spiritual exercise, though maybe more of the
> Eastern type than anything connected with this radio station, now
> blasting some kind of Christian hip-hop.”
>
> Cash for clunkers - years in the future from 2001 - did noticeably
> remove a lot of jalopies from circulation.
>
> Not an unusually long sentence for Pynchon, but partakes of that listy
> sense for which Slothrop’s desk gave many of us a taste.
>
> Drivers suffer “or enjoy” their hostility level.
>
> Tom Wolfe talked about New York traffic in some essay or other, how
> every little micro aggression inflicted by one’s fellow commuters
> caused a little more adrenal hypertrophy, or something like that but
> more polished. And how the drivers came to expect and enjoy it.
>
> The commute becomes an extension of her Zen sitting, but with the
> cabdriver’s “evangelical” hostility the looming presence her sitting
> is set against, instead of Horst.
>
> This resonates nicely with an earlier reference to the single-person
> submarine she erects around herself when looking at real estate
> threatened by the same type of demolition and construction happening
> around the cab.
>
> “Dump trucks unmarked by contractor name or telephone number” is a
> little unsettling - it’s as if Chicago School propaganda of
> privatization had pushed away the idea of the city owning and
> maintaining the streets with city vehicles and valued public servants
> enjoying benefits and held to accountability in the name of a
> commonality of interest, in favor of a low-bid scramble.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>