#Kwicky quiver full#

JM, for example, is also listed in the inspection record of the elevator Lila Mae departed just half an hour ago, and EH, she’s learned over time, has a thing for worn guide shoes, something no one ever looks at except the real stickler types. She recognizes the initials from the inspection records of other elevators in other buildings but has never met the people they belong to. When she gets fifteen years back in the record there are no more faces to put to the initials. But it happens eventually.Īll the inspectors who have visited 125 Walker in the past have been Empiricists. It’s a slow process and watching it is like waiting for a new hour. He says he overheats easily and on the hottest days of the summer his remaining hair slides away from how he’s combed it, the strands easing into nautilus whorls. Rebellious among the bureaucratic rows of the Pit, Big Billy’s oak desk juts out into the aisle so he can seat his bulk directly beneath one of the ceiling fans. While his comments are never specific, it is clear to everyone just what and who Big Billy is referring to in his croaking, muddy voice. On many occasions Lila Mae has returned to the Pit from an errand only to hear Big Billy Porter regaling the boys about the glory days of the Guild, before. Big Billy Porter is one of the Old Dogs, and proud of it. Martin Gruber chews with his mouth open and likes to juggle his glass eye. So far she doesn’t particularly like the men who have preceded her at 125 Walker. Most of the inspectors from the last decade or so are still with the Guild and are easy to identify: LMT, MG, BP, JW. The game gets harder the farther back she goes. She opens her leather field binder and props it on her chest. There is always the game at moments like this to distract her. The front door of the building is too scarred and gouged to look at, and the street behind her is improbably empty, as if the city had been evacuated and she’s the only one who didn’t hear about it. She doesn’t know what to do with her eyes. May the god of second novels smile as broadly on him as did the god of firsts. Eschewing mere cleverness, resisting showoff word play, he somehow manages to strike a tone that's always funny, always fierce, and always entirely respectful of his characters and their world.

Most impressive of all is the integrity of Whitehead's prose. The social and economic implications are huge and the denouement is elegantly philosophical. If she is able to find and reveal his plan for the Black Box, the perfect, next-generation elevator, the city as it now exists will instantly be obsolescent. Lila Mae's quest reveals the existence of heretofore lost writings by James Fulton, father of Intuitionism, a giant of vertical thought, whose fate is mysteriously entwined with her own.

#Kwicky quiver full#

We the readers are taken hostage as Lila Mae strives to exonerate herself in this urgent adventure full of government spies, underworld hit men, and seductive double agents. Whitehead evokes a world so utterly involving to its own denizens that outside reality does not impinge on its perfect solipsism.