TR Pt2 ch 1

[Michael Bailey]

edmoorester wrote:
> TR Pt 2 ch1 onward
>
> Thanks for the shoutout Michael Bailey!
>

yo!

> So first we have Otto's dad, Mr Pivner, who shoots up
> with insulin for his diabetes and reads the paper and sounds very lonely.
> Keeping him company is his radio which dishes out commercials
> sounding like some odd form of a Greek chorus but not a very helpful one.
> Mr Pivner invests a lot in science and reason and his work which give him a
> reason to live. He sees an abundance of time in his life.
>

now in the party chapter, we had the mistranslation of the name of the
painting "heart of a worker" or something like that

here, Pivner pere is obviously a member of that ruling class and I
think we see how he, too, is being underserved by capitalism.
You don't in socialist analysis get much sympathy for the alienation
among the capitalists - their compassion is reserved, and perhaps
rightly so, for people literally working their fingers to the bones.
Yet Mr Pivner is soul-ravaged and deserves a little sympathy too!


> Next we have book editor, Agnes Deigh, who has "completed" psychoanalysis
> but sounds very lonely as well. Also she just got word her brother died. She
> thinks some of Otto's play sounds very familiar (implied plagiarism).


now I have been trying to work out some Christian symbolist.  If she
is a Lamb of God, by publishing them she taketh away the sins of the
authors -- didn't there used to be something called benefit of clergy,
wherein if somebody could read and write they could be excused from
punishment even for murder - I guess because literacy was a rare and
valuable asset in those days?
But that's probably a side-track...


>
> Then we go to Esme's place where she sounds very lonely and she probably
> shoots up with heroin just before Chaby Sinesterra drops by. They have sex.
> Otto drops by later and takes Esme out to a restaurant he hates but Esme
> likes.
> While there Otto talks to a guy named Max who also comments on the lines in
> Otto's play being too familiar.
>

I don't anywhere get the sense that Otto has actually knowingly
plagiarized, do you?  His mind just isn't that original, probably.

....
> Otto takes off with Ed Feasley has been having a continual good time for
> years.
> Ed was so entertaining that in college when he didnt have any money he would
> entertain his friends by cutting his fists and showering blood all over the
> room.
>

boy does he ever sound like a toxic character!