shaved his upper lip every morning three times with, three times against the grain

[Dave Monroe]

themiurge
Junior Member


Hi everybody. While reading a Pynchon novel (The Crying of Lot 49) I
stumbled upon the following sentence about Mucho, one of the
characters:

Mucho shaved his upper lip every morning three times with, three times
against the grain to remove any remotest breath of a moustache, new
blades he drew blood invariably but kept at it.

I get the meaning, but the whole sentence is quite unreadable (what
are, grammatically speaking, those new blades?). It feels wrong. Well,
it is wrong... at least by any standard known to me. Could with be
referred both to the grain and to new blades? This is the only
explanation I could come up with, besides a typo which is highly
unlikely (what with Pynchon being Pynchon). I mean:

Mucho shaved his upper lip every morning three times with, three times
against the grain to remove any remotest breath of a moustache.

is pretty much clear and doesn't require any explanation.

Mucho shaved his upper lip every morning three times with new blades;
he drew blood invariably but kept at it.

is clear as well, and sounds like something written by a schoolboy .
The two sentences put together give the meaning I believe the author
was trying to convey. What do you think?

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2321945&p=11658038