The Wreck of the Read. chap 3

[David Morris]

Your response to these characters says a lot about Gaddis' skill at
creating vibrant individuals in text.  And he does it very
cryptically, at least with these two.

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:18 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> As someone has just written about this chapter, Esther
> will not let Wyatt be...............................
>
> that is (one of) the extraordinary achievements  of this
> chapter, imho. The way Gaddis piles on and builds this
> perception--this whole atmosphere of emotional connection
> that goes too far, it seems, in Esther--what we might gloss
> as her narcissism.
>
> Gloss attempt: Narcissism, psychologically = all about me, the whole
> world as it impacts me, my sensibility. [see that perception in the
> Dylan movie, I'm Not There] IF one is so, what one loses is
>
> Reality?."Why do you smoke after?"
> "Reality", says Wyatt. Who is trying to deal with 'reality' outside himself.
>
> Why I liked this so, besides perhaps my own narcissism, is that I see it
> as a situation we all might know--I think I do anyway---in some form.
>
> Which I have talked about with some friends as the overspilling of (some)
>  emotions.
> Two people living together, don't even have to be husband & wife, often start
> having
> feelings/thoughts dependant on the other and which therefore start conditioning
> the reality they supposedly share. . Fill in your own examples, if you see it
> this way.
>
>
> Related from literature: When Kitty (In Anna K.) has her ardent, youthfully
> hopeful, fantasy-based
>
>  'being in loveness' with Vronsky rebuffed, Tolstoy knows her feelings cannot
> just easily end.
>
> He sends her off to live with an older woman friend of her family, a wise,
> energetic, charmingly
> charismatic woman who sets Kitty on a schedule of work and activity (to forget,
> of course) but
> with whom Tolstoy says she, Kitty, "falls in love".....not physically of course,
> not even erotically
>
> (except subterreanianly) but just as a way to show where her ardent spirits
> went...........
>