TRTR(I.4) Manicentrism Continues

[Richard Ryan]

The third hand always conceals the most interesting possibilities,
falling, extended it invariably is, outside the merely binary.  RR

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>



-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
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