Augie March: Ch 14 to 19

[jennie fitz]

This section should be called "The Thea Chronicles"
They have some pretty wild adventures - weeks of sex in the hotel
room; driving south and roadside camping and training the eagle;
living it up in Mexico and eventually destroying their relationship.

Augie is having deeper discussions with himself and I'm finding
them harder to follow. There's this passage, after the big fight over
Stella: "Because nobody anyhow can show what he us without a sense of
exposure and shame, and can't care while preoccupied with this but
must appear better and stronger than anyone else, mad! And meantime
feels no real strength in himself, cheats and gets cheated, relies on
cheating but believes abnormally in the strength of the strong. All
this time nothing genuine is allowed to appear and nobody knows what's
real. And that's disfigured, degenerate, dark mankind - mere
humanity." (401)

I get the end of this passage, but am not quite sure of the
beginning and middle. Is it about false confidences? Does he wish
everyone around him to be transparent at all times?

Then he goes on to talk about the necessity of putting up a front;
leaders are the ones who do this most successfully. "There's one image
that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose it's claim to
being genuine with more force than others, or one voice enlarged to
thunder is heard above the others." (402)

What's going to happen in the next 100 pages? I think he'll go
back to Chicago, maybe look up Stella. I'm sure he'll have more
musings about the meaning of life; or at least the meaning of his
life. I like all the references to the caged kinkajou - I think it is
a metaphor for Augie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkajou

Did anyone else notice the connection to Angle of Repose? In Mexico,
Augie sees a performance of Michoacan Indians (373) and Michoacan was
where Susan was happiest in Angle of Repose. Interesting!