CoL49 group reading ch6 (4) cherry picking

[Michael Bailey]

“Bortz’s subdivision, a riparian settlement in the style
of Fangoso Lagoons”

- Bortz has it pretty good, and he’s living inside a dream or bubble
similar to PI’s concept of the good life

- the division of labor with Grace resembles that for which Oedipa was
trying with Maas

- this section at the Bortz’s flows really well. Maybe because there’s so
much dialogue, and Bortz is mannerly, erudite, and secure in his personhood?


https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/bort#

a f <https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/flaw>lawed
diamond used only for industrial purposes, esp. in crushed
<https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/crush> form for
grinding <https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/grind> and
polishing
: sometimes called bortz (bɔrts


Also -

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195081374.001.0001/acref-9780195081374-e-6433#:~:text=1.,2.

German: nickname for a little fellow, from Low German dialect word meaning
‘buttocks’, ‘stump’. Compare Boortz.2. Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic):
habitational name from a place in Lithuania, called Bortsi in Russian....
...



Oedipa gets a momentary case of the vapors upon learning of Driblette’s
demise:

“They are stripping from me, she said subvocally—feeling like a fluttering
curtain in a very high window, moving up to then out over the abyss—they
are stripping away, one by one, my men. My shrink, pursued by Israelis, has
gone mad; my husband, on LSD, gropes like a child further and further into
the rooms and endless rooms of the elaborate candy house of himself and
away, hopelessly away, from what has passed, I was hoping forever, for
love; my one extra-marital fella has eloped with a depraved 15-year-old; my
best guide back to the Trystero has taken a Brody. Where am I?”


But with quiet aplomb, he brings her out of the unpleasant tailspin of the
reverie:
“I’m sorry,” Bortz had also said, watching her. Oedipa stayed with it.”

- “had also said” switching to the past perfect
- nice touch, that’s the perfect tense to use
- she’s off down a rabbit hole lamenting so many things
- then she realizes, hey, Bortz said something, what was that again, oh
yeah, we were talking about that paperback




“Without warning, by the shores of what Blobb called “the Lake of Piety,”
they were set upon by a score of black-cloaked riders”

- Lake of Piety? Isn’t that the same as the Lago Pietà?
- yes, yes it is
- bad Feng Shui there, evidently