TRTR(I.4) Manicentrism Continues

[Mark Kohut]

When hands were alive with power....!
Wonderful find...



----- Original Message ----
From: cfabel <cfabel at sfasu.edu>
To: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>; Paul Mackin 
<mackin.paul at verizon.net>
Cc: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, May 10, 2011 4:39:35 PM
Subject: RE: TRTR(I.4) Manicentrism Continues


Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 4. 436 ff (trans. Way) (Greek epic C4th
A.D.) :
"Forthwith a bar of iron massy and long from the swift-speeding hand did
many essay to hurl; but not an Argive could prevail to cast that ponderous
mass. Aias alone sped it from his strong hand . . . and all men marvelled to
behold how far flew from his hand the bronze which scarce two men
hard-straining had uplifted from the ground. Even this Antaios' might was
wont to hurl erstwhile, ere the strong hands of Herakles o'ermastered him.
This, with much spoil beside, Herakles took, and kept it to make sport for
his invincible hand; but afterward gave it to valiant Peleus, who with him
had smitten fair-towered Ilios's burg renowned; and he to Achilles gave it."

...when Hercules was a mere baby Juno, jealous of Alcmena, sent two snakes
into the crib he shared with his mortal half-twin Iphicles. Hercules killed
them both with his bare hands, marking the beginning of his career as a
monster-killer.

Bacchylides, Fragment 13 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric
C5th B.C.) :
"See the neck-breaking hand that Perseus' descendant [Herakles] lays with
all manner of skill on the flesh-eating lion [the Nemeian Lion]; for the
gleaming man-mastering bronze refuses to pierce its unapproachable body: his
sword was bent back."


C. F. Abel
Chair
Department of Government
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas 75962
(936) 468-3903




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Richard Ryan
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 3:06 PM
To: Paul Mackin
Cc: Mark Kohut; pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: TRTR(I.4) Manicentrism Continues

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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