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

[Paul Mackin]

On 12/28/2011 1:50 AM, 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
>
I concur with everybody else,  but to answer the specific question, what 
is the grammatical function of "new blades,"  the answer is that it is 
what is known as an absolute construction.  It is a verbal phrase (verb 
understood) that is subordinate to the clause that follows but is 
separated from it (absolute) in that it does not modify a specific word 
in that clause.

The Latin precedent, if one were needed, would be the ablative absolute.

Also, the use of commas is inconsistent, unbalanced.

P