TRTR(I.4) Manicentrism Continues

[Paul Mackin]

An authentic economist needs two hands. On the one hand we might prefer 
THIS scenario but on the other hand we might want to consider THAT.

A divided consciousness.


p

On 5/10/2011 10:16 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> good stuff..I am, because of this, reminded of one of the more
> famous stories in Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, called, I believe,
> Hands, all about a repressed man wringing them...suppressed/repressed
> homosexuality in small town Ohio then...so suppressed/repressed he may
> have been celibate---or almost so and found out and fled?....Don't quite
> remember and we can all look it up but, yes, this reading of the nervous return
> of some kind of repressed vitality in hands.....
>
> seems spot on to me.............
>
>
>
> 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.
>>
>>
>
>