TRTR(I.4) Manicentrism Continues

[Richard Ryan]

Compare Otto studying his hands with Jesse soaking in his own tattooed
body (p. 155):

"-That's pretty good, hunh?  What do you think of that, hunh? He
turned his head to one shoulder and them the other, admiring the
rippling art there.  Then he looked Otto over."

The uncanny combination of auto-, sado- and homo-eroticism -
emblematically presented to us when Jesse admires himself and then,
both predatory and dominating, "looks Otto over" - is one of the
themes of the chapter.

The fixation with and on hands would appear to be a mark of the
stilted, stymied intellectualism of Gaddis's lead characters; they're
so uncomfortable in their own bodies and with their own desires that
any kind of physical energy or urge gets manifested in some sort of
nervous wringing or flexing or examination of hands.

Surely Gaddis's critics have written extensively about this?

http://www.insite.com.br/rodrigo/images/escher/hands.html


On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Jed Kelestron <jedkelestron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hands are mentioned frequently in Chapter IV (23 times in 15 pages),
> and become a focus near the end as Otto studies his hands, first their
> backs, like a woman with fingers extended, then like a man, with
> fingers turned in upon the palm. He gets caught up in manual
> self-admiration causing hesitation in his plan to wrap his hand in
> bandages and place his arm in a sling to create a counterfeit injury
> to present to his friends upon return to NYC. All the usual images of
> polarity, self-reflection, and pretense.
>
>



-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
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