TRTR - Chapter VI several passages that caught my eye // not a bird after all!

[Michael Bailey]

but first - somewhere back in chapter one or two, amid what I can only
call an awesome array of historical references, Gaddis makes mention
of the fact (which I haven't checked, yet, that is) that the dance
"flamenco" is named after the Flemish soldiers who invaded Spain.  I
guess it was in chapter 3 where Esther and Wyatt are at the saloon and
she thinks he looks like a dancer.

Likes him like that.  I always thought flamenco meant flamingo!  But
it seems that any reference to the flamingo is apocryphal.  We are
maybe supposed to think of the rapid-fire (no pun intended) movements
of the invading soldiers

(the word bistro comes from the Russian for "hurry", eh wot?  so one
might imagine that soldiers do all that drilling and so forth and run
at a higher speed than civilians and make their demands and civilians
(their speed controlled by a "governor" so to speak) run less
urgently, and less destructively use detournement and convert
bistro-hurryup to bistro "get thee to a beanery"

and possibly of Protestant Flem-land invading Catholic Spain?  and
maybe I feel a slight discomfort that he has concerning both
religions, and maybe the urgency and rush-rush and protestant work
ethic russian people who aren't in such a hurry

so they invent the flamenco dance to express and dissipate this energy
harmlessly, look I can move that fast AND not be all killing people
and taking their things and you can watch me do it...

so if that applies to Wyatt, Esther likes that flamenco aspect, he
takes the brazen martial energy of the world and subsumes it into his
own controlled energetic dance

I think there is a version where there's a bunch of involvement with a
partner also, but that's apparently not something Esther and Wyatt can
get cooking (did you ever see that movie Strictly Ballroom, with
Johnny Depp and the legendary "single applauder at the back of the
room makes believers of the crowd" thingie - I love that ...  but
Wyatt is more like that girl's dad, who threw the wife in the air and
went off into an extended solo that went on and on and on )

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page 204 - mustache hairs in separate and ragged prominence


205 "You have just heard the oria" I can just hear that guy say that

206 - "none of the passengers resented the driver's incursion into
their own phantastical domains: watching his weaving back, they
appeared to respect his right to perform in allegory, to redeem, as
best his numb imagination would permit him, the absurdity of reality"
which of course relates (for me, how about you?) to the polite reading
crowd's attendance to the machinations of this wonderful writer as we
take the bus ride of The Recognitions

207 he doesn't even glance at the short story!  what kind of a writer
is he, anyway?

208 "that poor young man hit that girl" - sheesh what a misapplication
of pity, I would think.  I mean whatever anguish the dude is feeling
you don't hit girls... ('cause if they hit you back that will hurt
bad, and if they don't, that will hurt worse.  Or so I've heard.)

209 couple dancing in Baganda in Central Africa "to encourage the
plantain trees"
how far did the "surrender" of Esme to Chaby go?

209 so this Chaby is the sinister Sinisterra, isn't he?

210  young Mr Pivner having made a conquest, he thought, is surprised
to find the conquered (like the bistro and flamenco-ers) doesn't take
the incursion in the same spirit he's offered it, but converts it to a
step in a dance of her own that involves not only her but Chaby and
Anselm and Lord knows how many more...