Continuing the Wreckage

[Paul Mackin]

On 4/12/2011 10:41 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Can't locate the page in some hurriedness at the moment
> but I made this note to post.......................
>
> when Wyatt is being taken care of in his sickness there
> are a couple good and kind nurses which gives him his
>
> first knowledge of "indifferent love"........known as
>
> Agape in those thological circles we are all inhabiting which is
> also  the title, when repeated, of Gaddis' last work....

I read his title as uh GAH pay  uh GAYP  (Love with your mouth open) 
(but not oral sex or anything like that)

Is this correct? (didn't actually read the book)

Anyway, Freud was suspicious of non-instinctual  love.  A dangerous 
practice--loving thy enemy.

In the old days (here I go again) you used to hear good women say they 
didn't want to be paid for their kindnesses to needy people.  Their 
reward would be in heaven. Maybe this is why home care is so poorly paid.

Physical (sexual) love administered in conditions of serious life 
threatening sickness is not all that uncommon in literature.

Of course there was Jane Russell in "The Outlaw."  But just recently it 
happened in Carlos Fuentes'  novel "Destiny and Desire."  The nurse 
tending the young orphan hero of the novel had been very professional up 
to that point. And later the single instance of departure therefrom was 
not mentioned.  The patient got well and blossomed but the novel didn't 
improve much.  Finally gave up on it.

P.




> and I would bet from the way he repeats that it is an ongoing theme
> until and thru then................
>
>
> And I'll bet this is autobiographical from a time in his youth
> when Gaddis had such nursing care for something?
>