Fwd: Re: The Kenosha Kid

[Andrew Dinn]

RICHARD ROMEO writes:

> Having just seen Citizen kane for the first time last night-could the 
> Kenosha Kid be some sort of Rosebud reference?  And someone in my office 
> just told me  that Mr. Welles wanted a different ending where Rosebud is 
> never explained-the actual ending being too pop psychology for him...just 
> a thought.

Welles was born in Kenosha Wisc. I don't know think anyone knows for
sure what Welles intended by Rosebud but I have heard a story that
`Rosebud' had a somewhat special significance for WR Hearst, on whom
Kane is partly modelled. Apparently, it was Hearst's pet name for his
girlfriend's private parts (excuse the object-oriented parlance). I'd
love to have been a fly on the wall when Hearst first saw the film.

> Also noticed how GR resembles CK in the descriptions of Slothrop and
> his desk and CK thru the newsreel-all the scattered elements which
> eventually make an appearance later in the book/film.

A (respectably Pynchon wise) friend relates that in one of his essays
he identified many of the narrative techniques in GR to techniques
used by Welles and his cameraman (Greg Tolmin?). I quote:

  Pynchon uses almost point-by-point `camera tricks' in his narrative
  that are taken from Welles' movies---especially in a scene (about a
  hundred pages in) in which Katje starts out at a window, wanders
  around being followed by a camera whose image is being fed into
  octopus Grigori's tank.

He never got back to me with the essay, claiming that his copy of GR
with all the scribbled marginalia was on loan to a bi-sexual librarian
at the University library, such incidental detail being the hallmark
of veracity I include it without further commentary (and if Steve
Berry is on the list he had better own up right now).


Andrew Dinn
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