SLPAD - 76a

[Michael Bailey]

Nook says I’m on page 42 of 153, 27% into the book

How did I get up to 76 already?




Same page as the “like to see young people get together” quote:


“Fine,” Picnic said, “I like to see young people get together. It’s real
exciting.”

            Levine looked at him, dead serious. “No,” he said. “No, I think
‘sheer momentum’ is
               better.”


            He went over to Rizzo’s truck and swiped a pack of cigarettes
and a De Nobili cigar
               from Rizzo, who was sleeping. As he was leaving the sergeant
opened one eye. “Why
               it’s good old reliable Nathan,” he said. “Go to sleep,
Rizzo,” Levine said. He started
               walking, hands in his pockets, whistling, heading in the
general direction of the
               bar he had been in the night before. There were no stars and
the air felt like rain.




The De Nobili cigars figure in _V._, don’t they? And I think they make an
appearance in _Inherent Vice_.


“Good old reliable Nathan,” is a Broadway reference, from “Guys and Dolls”
(1200 performances starting in 1950; committed to film in 1955)


Nicer sobriquet than “Lardass,” that’s for sure.

Similarities beyond the name?

 -  one could build a rickety structure of Nathan Levine determinedly
propagating a subversive meme within the Army the way Nathan Detroit
perseveres with the floating crap game subverting workaday law-abiding New
York; and putting off commitment to marriage* (though not to a named
specific person) the way Nathan Detroit delays marriage to Adelaide.

Probably that rhizome is not juicy enough to do more with than note in
passing -

 hmm…also it’s a reminder of popular culture -

& (maybe squinting & leaning into it)
“ When some lazy slob gets a good steady job
And he smells from Vitalis and Barbasol
Call it dumb, call it clever, ah, but you can't give odds forever,
That's the guy's only doing it for some doll, some doll, some doll,
The guy's only doing it for some doll”


Levine going out and doing some useful work, getting cleaned up, etc -
Who’s he doing it for?


* or perhaps to the Army, though that seems more like a running joke