Recog ch 2 last word is "alchemy" in that chapter

[Mark Kohut]

Alice writes: in Gaddis, this sense that
communication is nerves in patterns on a screen impossible to mean;
the women do not so much come and go, but the words do, words that
refuse to say what the mean or what one needs to here to make meaning.

I might argue: Gaddis' words mean what they say, but his characters don't.
They mostly speak fraudulently................

Who and when not? 





A fine Introduction in the Penguin 20th Century Classic edition of JR
by Frederick R. Karl is worth a re-read here. Although he gushes silly
when calling Gaddis a "prophet" and a "hero of literature" (Carlyle's
phrase), and ties himself in knots as he describes JR ans TR as " a
guide to the 'real America' " and a paradox, an novel attempt to
unravel the cartoon version of who and what we Americans are, he
provides an excellent analysis of the use of what he calls the twin
metaphors operating in JR; these are, of course, counterfeiting and
invisibility; both, as Karl notes, as reminiscent of these themes and
metaphors in TR. Karl describes, as Tony Tanner, who ignores Gaddis
(NB one very significant note on Gaddis and Hawthorne p16), does in
his beautifully composed and brilliantly woven little study, _The
American Mystery_ (discussed here several times), language as metaphor
for America. Karl alludes to Mallarme's poem "A Throw of the Dice will
Never Abolish Chance" when describing the language of JR as the
presence of an absence, by now a worn out if not trite critical tool,
but in the tool box Karl, with great skill,handles Modernist concerns,
like Incompletion, Uncertainty, and centers lacking or not holding.

Good stuff to read.  There is in Gaddis, certainly, this sense that
communication is nerves in patterns on a screen impossible to mean;
the women do not so much come and go, but the words do, words that
refuse to say what the mean or what one needs to here to make meaning.

Karl ends his too brief and brilliant essay with an allusion to
Hawthorne: "As in Hawthorne's fiction, some shadow of evil lurks
everywhere, and America is a quite imperfect Eden. For that, even art,
even sacred visions, offer few solutions."

But but but but, what of the rosebush that springs from Heter's prison
door? The Scarlet Letter A Also stands for ART. And Ambiguity. And
America.


>Sheesh. . I believe this went the way of phrenology another pseudoscience.
>  You have to hand it to Gaddis for bringing it up.
>  These are just more ways in my view to exert some control over events. . .
> to eliminate chance. . .in the context of one of the themes. . .