BEg2 chapter 12 digging in again

[Joseph Tracy]

So New Yorkers, can I ask after the passage about the unmarked construction vehicles/activities - Zat real? Do you notice such ? Does anyone?  I have the sense a lot of this is direct observation by P, but not things I would notice in my infrequent visits.   

> On 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.
> --
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