| Each year the facade grew until in 1940 Germany’s blitzkrieg sweep through the planes of Belgum around the Line and within weeks were marching towards the Arc de Triumph under the tree-shaded streets of the Champs-Élysées. The French had been doomed all along. The entire time they had been sitting in Hitler’s palm blind to the inevitability their own Military had secured, which I would imagine would be enough to make Johnny smile. Who would the smile be for though? At first glance from the context of the passage (footnote 211) it seems that Johnny might be smiling at the irony of his own life, when he remembers it’s the 4th of July and the birth of a nation which doesn’t give a shit about him but he didn’t remember his own birthday. The Maginot Line quote contradicts this in subtle way however. The irony of the Maginot line that he finds amusing is the irony of ignorance, which is why he can not be speaking about himself. It’s impossible to be simultaneously ignorant and aware of a situation. So although there is a blitzkrieg coming for him, there is no Maginot Line. Johnny goes out of his way to take down his defenses and he welcomes whatever dark truth he might find. Friends, drugs, work, sex; they all are removed in order to discover what’s waiting for him. Lude however forms a Line; he digs trenches of Ecstasy, he puts up guard towers of booze, and forms barricades of sex. He thought his defenses were strong, so did Johnny. Each month he did more and more defending his front with increasingly more zeal until he finally reached an apex of consumption where upon he painted Sunset Boulevard with the red and white contents of his head. For all the seeming insanity of Johnny’s life he is the only one not living behind a facade, and I would imagine this would also make him smile. |  |
