FOCUS: Foreshadowing the Future “Dance” Between Benno & Eric Packer
BuckyW Original Series: "Take a Walk on the Wild Side: 47th St. NYC Photo Diary and Novel TourHere are some brief quotes from the novel at 5th Avenue that introduce us to the connection and disconnect between Eric and Benno, foreshadowing their meeting-what one reporter at a Q&A called “their dance”– at end of the story. We meet Benno here through his first diary entry. Eric spies who we are led to believe is Benno at an ATM machine.
Eric looks at someone “familiar to him” and doesn’t really feel any connection; he doesn’t connect with the little man, or people in general. Benno sounds like someone who’s struggled in his life.
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| Official production still [Photo credit: Caitlin Cronenberg] |
Eric and Benno also have a different connection to money and technology, their thoughts about ATMs illustrate this. Benno still wants to be connected to his money, Eric’s connection is less, and not emotional. It’s real to Benno, he wants to see it.
First quote is Eric looking at the man at the ATM, and then his thoughts on ATMs:
“Eric didn’t care whether this was someone he’d once known. There were many people he’d once known. Some were dead, others in forced retirement, spending quiet time alone in their toilets or walking in the woods with their three-legged dogs.”
“He was thinking about automated teller machines. The term was aged and burdened by its own historical memory. It worked at cross-purposes, unable to escape the inference of fuddled human personnel and jerky moving parts. The term was part of the process that the device was meant to replace. It as anti-futuristic, so cumbrous and mechanical that even the acronym seem dated.”
Contrast to Benno’s connection to people and more-rooted-in-the real technology:
“Allow me to speak for myself. I had a job and a family. I struggled to love and provide. How many of you know the true and bitter force of that simple word provide?”
“I still have my bank that I visit systematically to look at the last literal dollars remaining in my account. I do this for the ongoing psychology of it, to know I have money in an institution. And because cash machines have a charisma that still speaks to me.”
During ‘Cosmopolis’ promotion, I believe it was David Cronenberg who commented on how Benno liked the work he did with Eric, but Eric moved too fast for him, left him behind.
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| Official production still [Photo credit: Caitlin Cronenberg] |
Our next look into the mind of Benno Levin happens after we hear about someone named “Nancy Babich.”
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