GRGR(6): End of the advent service

[Gary Thompson]

Don't know who "you" is here--nothing to rule Jessica out, but it has to
be consistent with the long section on 134 which goes into 2nd person
("Come then. Leave your war awhile, paper or iron war, petrol or flesh,
come in with your love, your fear of losing, your exhaustion with it.")
and winds up "for a baby to come in tippin' those Toledos at 7 pounds 8
ounches thinkin' he's gonna redeem it, why, he oughta have his head
examined. . . . But on the way home tonight" and on to the passage
Jeremy mentions. To me this says the "him" has to be the baby, and
personally I'd argue for the generalized *you* which reaches through
Jessica and Roger to the reader or others potentially in this situation
(opposition to the reductionism of "the War"). 

I'm with J. on the last paragraph. It's a tone P strikes here and there
that makes me think of Kurt Weill for some reason--fully aware of the
doomed, imperfect quality of human existence and yet still reaching out
with energy and optimism. Gravity does pull us down eventually ("tippin'
those Toledos"), we do die alone unless we happen to have company, but
that balance is one of GR's delights for me (maybe why I grabbed this
section when it came up).

Gary Thompson



Jeremy Osner wrote:
> 
> So on page 135 at the bottom we get to the end of this madcap little
> ride we've been on ever since the black man started singing in German
> (which I have been reading again and again, with a very gradual increase
> in comprehension); and suddenly "back in the story", we read "But on the
> way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a bit." I think
> "you" is Jessica, "him" is Roger.
> 
> The point in time at which she wishes she'd held him a bit is the moment
> when she was herself, not "who the Caesars say" she is (136). But she is
> unable to move completely across that synapse -- she did *not* pick him
> up, hold him a bit. And so, the moment unseized, she must retreat into
> her "war-identity."
> 
> The last paragraph of episode 16 really strikes a chord in me; I know
> that feeling all-too-well.