SSTetc ch 36 names check // attitude change?

[Michael Bailey]

Who appears in chapter 36?

Bruno - a lot

Woodrow Wilson - passim, that he considered Fiume as a site for League of Nations HQ; his mention by historical novelist Pynchon, like all the mentions of historical personages, conjures probably as much connotation and associations as one could imagine - maybe even more than that. One drop of Woodrow Wilson in the milkshake that is ch 36 - or, maybe it's more like a loaf of rye bread...bringing his name into it like a caraway seed, like other historical names elsewhere, adding an unmistakable savor when one chances to bite into one.

Daphne - so she got flown into town by that gyrocopter woman

D'Annunzio - caraway seed (or, perhaps, something less savory)

Hicks - well, yeah...

Terike - biker woman

Ace - biker man

Vladboys - dangerous bikers

Porfirio del Vasto - he's some kind of wacky duellist, Hicks interacted with him on the ship Stupendica

Lady Forsythia Bladesmith - obvs fict, right?

Apollo Granforte - caraway seed; a real-life opera baritone singer 1886-1975

Scarpia - character in the opera Tosca

Zoltan van Kiss - apport/asport guy here to converse with Hicks & Ace about baseball?!

Praediger - his indulgence in cocaine shown in spectacular, comic-opera fashion

Stuffy Keegan - he and U-13 possible recipients of purloined cocaine?

Hitler - caraway seed (wormwood sprig?); newsreel image of the dictator fussing with his hair

Hop Wingdale - he's from one of the middle chapters - or is he the clarinet klezmer guy?


Okay, wait, so Bruno - he owns the villa where apparently everybody including Praediger is partying heartily.

I love this description: "...early departures from the all-night jollification, the reluctant, the fugitive and piratical, and later, emerging somehow untouched into the yet unbroken day, bickering in whispers, looking around for their shoes, even a few drowsy advertisements for love at first sight." — It's a grammatically lovely sentence.

Also, it continues the vagueness so prevalent in ch 36: Ace and Bruno are walking away from the villa, which normally might take a couple minutes, and yet the 3 groups of people they walk through would be spaced hours apart: "the reluctant" who one imagines  came with a bolder friend & leave quite early; "the fugitive and piratical" who stayed until they caught sight of their pursuers (the fugitive) or until they found something worth stealing (the piratical) - but then those happy few, the "drowsy advertisements for love at first sight" barefoot, they must've been quite a bit later, having already canoodled & formed a bond -

 And I mean, Bruno, it's his villa.  He's, I guess, fleeing Praediger, who will eventually sober up and twig to his chance to apprehend the AC of C?

Ace ends up driving him to the Hotel Bonavia - but it takes quite a while to get from the villa to the parking place of Ace's "combination." (bike + sidecar, from context)

I can only think that Ace and Bruno's convo in the parking lot is one of those long, intricate ones I've sometimes witnessed or even participated in...and indeed, Ace who just a little earlier was threatening to behead Bruno over 200 quid for the latter's part in the loss of Ace's lost Harley...
...settles for telling Bruno he'll be billed ... maybe Ace feels a surfeit of schadenfreude after turns down Bruno's job offer, and Bruno's who-knows-how-serious offer of his daughter's hand in marriage - it's like Bruno is rapidly coming down in the world and grasping at straws.