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

[Bekah]

Take out the phrase -  "three times against the grain to remove any remotest breath of a mustache,"   and you have: 

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

I might put "and" between "blades"  and "he"   ...   "Mucho shaved his upper lip every morning three times with ... new blades *and* he drew blood invariably but kept at it." 

Bekah

On Dec 27, 2011, at 10:50 PM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> 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