SLPAD - 41 -

[Michael Bailey]

I’m ready to like Levine, but he’s not eminently likeable.

If you’re gonna smoke, flicking ashes in your helmet liner is
understandable, putting butts out in it is borderline, and dumping them on
the floor is boorish. In my humble opinion.

The only thing worse is putting them out on a melon rind - that’s
schrecklich!

Or wait, the only thing worse than that is putting them in a half full soda
can & leaving it out.


But anyway, he does have some humor -

“He squeezed the orderly’s head* as he went out. ‘What’s shaking?’ Capucci
said. Levine squinted into the bright heavy air outside.
               ‘Oh, the Pentagon, again,’ he said. ‘Just won’t let me
alone.’”

(Probably affectionately? Or at least a little less than fight-pickingly?)

Delusional self-exaltation is funny, when done consciously. Also, since
Pentagon is a major source of orders, it’s marginally a true statement.

Wearing the helmet liner - probably not regulation turnout - he trudges to
the orderly room.

- in a meta sense, a place incompatible with the disorderly character
traits he’s been exhibiting -


Braced unnecessarily for more persiflage with Dugan, who’s busy typing, he
leans on the first sergeant’s desk railing & casually greets him with, “Hi,
Sarge.”

(One thinks of the reverse-punctilio of Hawkeye Pierce in M.A.S.H., but
Levine’s about as much like Hawkeye as Dugan is like Radar O’Reilly)

The idea of his isolation is encapsulated in his walk thru the company area
- he’s not in the group lining up for early chow, he’s not one of the
office workers, and he’s not in the (tiny spoiler) meeting.

The whole group mentality mindset seems to be lost on him, or he’s
deliberately rebelling against it.