TR chance/accidents ch 4 re: Otto is a bonehead

[edmoorester at gmail.com]

Mark Kohut wrote:

> "the hospitalized perpetuation of accident"

> "unswerving punctuality of chance"

> Coincidence?

Wow! Great catch Mark! I had to chuckle looking at the phrasing
of Gaddis above. . .it reminded me of Wyatt awkwardly critiquing
Esther's writing

p82 "Well Esther, the um, and double adjectives, cruel, red anger;
hard thin lips; dark secret pain. . ."

I realize "perpetuation" and "punctuality" are not adjectives
but I still like recalling that

Just to review some past stuff that strikes me more now

(TR p103) reminded me of Adam and Eve and the apple

"Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge
that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only
one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others,
or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and
the world, where only money is currency, and under dead
trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchanges
forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender."

. . .also it recalls TS Eliot . . .for some reason I recall
the quote about television being the only medium where everyone
can laugh at joke at same time and still feel lonely

I found a lovely primer too on Eliot from tv tropes btw
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWasteLand

Being the unoriginal derivative scheming bastard I am
I found this discussion group discussing TR from 2004
and plan to pilfer some of their ideas

http://gaddis-drinking-club.blogspot.com/2004/12/notes-from-banana-plantation.html

"Otto is a source of relief--comic and otherwise--for me in this book,
functioning as he does as a sort of silly, slapstick-y figure
(and Gaddis manque)."

. . . . . . . .

"I think if we start looking for Gaddis in the characters
we will find him a number of places, not just Otto or
Wyatt or Ellery or (more clearly later) Stanley."

To me the mirror is just another way Gaddis has
of bring ing up representation and fakery. Otto is always
looking at himself represented in the mirror as he tries to
be someone else, a Wyatt, then a dashing adventurer/writer."

ed
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