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J R |
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J R
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Scene 71 (580.22-610.10)
581.20] Dewey [...]most awkward writer in the God damned language, break
off in the middle of one of his clumsy God damned sentences don't even
notice it:
see 571.43; in his introduction, Dworkin writes baldly, "Dewey wrote
badly" (13). 581.26]
William James [...] what worked into a philosophy:
James's pragmatism is basically a philosophy of "what works." 581.27]
E L Thorndike [...] Animal Intelligence: 1911
book by Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949), American psychologist and
teacher, author also of The Measurement of Intelligence. 581.32]
F W Taylor: Frederick
Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), American efficiency engineer. 581.34]
Mary Baker Eddy:
(1821-1910), founder of Christian Science. 584.9]
Go lovely Rose: from
Edmund Waller's (1606-87) "Song: ‘Go Lovely Rose!'" (ODQ). 584.10]
Elena in Turgenev's On the Eve:
the serious young heroine of the Russian writer's third novel (1859),
with whom three men are in love. She settles for a patriotic Bulgarian,
and after his premature death carries on his revolutionary work. 584.14]
Gluck's underworld: see
235.2. 584.15]
beware women who blow on knots: see
486.23. 584.16]
perhaps it was right [...] kick me downstairs:
from Isaac Bickerstaffe's (1733-1808?) poem "An Expostulation" (ODQ).
584.17]
No book heroine [...] heart yearning:
see 486.18. 585.22]
Aristotle's kingdom [...] tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet:
(quotation completed at 594.18): distinguishing between living instruments
and lifeless (e.g., the pilot and his rudder), Aristotle writes in Politics:
"For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating
the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of
Haphaestus, which, says the poet, ‘of their own accord entered the assembly
of the Gods' [Homer's Iliad 18:376]; if, in like manner, the
shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to
guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves"
(book
1, chap. 4; trans. Benjamin Jowett). 588.2]
Diderot:
Denis Diderot (1713-84), French writer who attempted to encompass all
knowledge in his famous encyclopedia. 588.37]
Robert the Bruce:
Robert I, called "the Bruce" (his family name), king of Scotland from
1306 to 1329. 589.2]
seize the day:
from the last line of Horace's 11th ode, book 1; also the
title of a novella by Saul Bellow. 594.20]
shuttle would weave [...] to guide them:
see 585.22. 594.22]
how for art's sake Wilde had faced Leadville's bullies: see 288.45.
597.16]
jumping for joy in the womb Mary visiting Elisa:
see
Luke 1:40-44. 597.42]
Cruden's Concordance:
a standard Bible reference book, used by Gaddis in all of his novels.
604.11]
Pater's recipe for success in life:
"To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy,
is success in life" (The Renaissance, "Conclusion")(ODQ).
604.28]
mildewed chump think Crane call Wilde: Crane's
first biographer Thomas Beer records this observation from a letter
on the London literary scene in Stephen Crane: A Study in American
Letters (New York: Knopf, 1923), 327. 605.20]
laughing string [...] place of stone: see
131.3. 606.46]
Taine write your jacket blurb:
see 486.6. 607.7]
too late [...] fairies spent it:
see 488.2-4? 608.4] Bruckner's eighth symphony: in c minor (1887); the notes are from the scherzo. 609.6] Scarlatti, Bach … Nibelungen Ring: for the source of this extended passage, and WG’s later use of the same material, see the AA annotations at 15.14: http://www.williamgaddis.org/agape/aanotes.shtml
Scene 72 (610.10-631.37) 614.2]
neater sweeter maiden:
see 494.29. 614.45]
what the young man from Racine invented [...] to fit either sex: "There
was a young man from Racine / Who invented a fucking machine; / Concave
or convex, / It would fit either sex, / And was perfectly simple to
clean." 615.4]
Beefy face and grubby hand:
also from Kipling's "Mandalay":
"Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand, / An'
they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand? / Beefy face
an' grubby 'and— / Law! Wot do they understand? / I've got a neater,
sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!" 618.35]
Bob Jones U:
an ultra-conservative, anti-Catholic, quasi-racist school in South Carolina. 619.14]
Gluck's Orfeo [...] Che faro senza Euridice:
see 235.2; "What will I do without Eurydice?"
Orfeo sings in his famous aria in the fourth act. 619.41]
David Smith:
American sculptor (1906-64), one of the first to work in welded metals.
621.13]
Hart Crane there is a world dimensional for those untwisted [...] the
world dimen:
from the American poet's (1899-1932) "For the Marriage of Faustus and
Helen" (1923): "There is the world dimensional for / those untwisted
by the love of things / irreconcilable . . ." (ll. 16-18). 621.36]
Tolstoy [...] what I could do:
see 248.36. 622.23]
that great line of Pascal's about toothache: Blaise
Pascal's (1623-1662)
only mathematical work produced after retiring was
the essay on the cycloid, the
curve traced by a point on the circumference of a rolling circle, in
1658. He was suffering from sleeplessness and toothache when the idea occurred
to him, and to his surprise his teeth immediately ceased to ache. Regarding
this as a divine intimation to proceed with the problem, he worked incessantly
for eight days at it, and completed a tolerably full account of the geometry
of the cycloid,
solving the problem
of the area of any segment of the cycloid and the center of gravity
of any segment; he also solved the problems of the volume and surface
area of the solid of revolution formed by rotating the cycloid about
the x-axis. This and more about Pascal here 626.17]
Tolstoy play [...] the world will have to understand all by itself:
from
Redemption; assuming the protagonist Fedya is about to shoot
himself, the drunkard Ivan Petrovich enthusiastically proclaims: "You
will kill yourself that two people should pity you; and I—I shall kill
myself that the whole world should understand what it has lost. I won't
hesitate, or think about it! I seize it [snatches revolver]—now!
And all is over. But it is too soon yet. [Lays down revolver]
Nor shall I write anything; they must understand it themselves"—act
4, sc. 1; trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude. 627.3]
vea pasar los cadáveres de sus enemigos:
from the Spanish proverb "El que se sienta en la puerta de su casa vera
pasar el cadáver de su enemigo" (He who sits at the door of his house
will see his enemy's corpse carried by). 627.23]
Boswell Sisters doing Down on the Delta [...] Muddy water used to be
my playground: a
hit for the New Orleans singing trio, popular in the 1930s. 627.31]
Jack be quiet […] jump over the:
a popular Mother Goose rhyme. 629.40]
Broch [...] Schlafwandler: Herman Broch's (1886-1951) trilogy of novels
The Sleepwalkers (1931-32; Eng. trans. 1932). Critic Theodore
Ziolkowski writes: "According to Broch, sleepwalkers are people living
between vanishing and emerging ethical systems, just as the somnambulist
exists in a state between sleeping and waking. The trilogy portrays
three representative cases of ‘loneliness of the I' stemming from the
collapse of any sustaining system of values" ("In
Search of the Absolute Novel," New York Times Book Review,
3 November 1985, 14). See 724.35. 630.3] the Scungilli brothers: Possibly refers to the Flying Scungilli Brothers, a band which had a reunion tour in 2000. [VH] 630.4]
Infinite riches in a little room, Merchant of Venice:
actually, from Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta (ODQ).
631.11] he was on the threshold of great things [...] the overcast sky: a cluster of quotations from Heart of Darkness (see 408.13). Kurtz pleads, "I was on the threshold of great things" and in the same paragraph Marlow says of him, "He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces" (Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed. [1971], 67). Marlow feels "it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice" (65-66), and earlier, finding himself "lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which the time was not ripe," Marlow had said, "Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares" (63; cf. 69: "It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms"). The references to "the lofty drawing room her pale face floating toward you [...] give her something to live with" are from Marlow's interview with Kurtz's Intended on the final pages of the novella (see the earlier reference on J R 408). After learning of Kurtz's death, Marlow says, "I remain to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more" (71), and the novella ends with a reference to "an overcast sky" (79). Scene 73 (631.37-635.36) 634.12]
gentlemen of the press [...] Kipling [...] If: "If" is probably Kipling's best-known poem. The term "gentlemen of the
press" antedates Kipling—Disraeli used it in an 1853 speech—but in his
poem "The Press" Kipling shares Brisboy's disdain. 635.23] Kindertotenlieder: "Songs of the Dead Children" (1905), a song cycle by Gustave Mahler. Scene 74 (635.37-653.2) 643.24]
somebody Fisher dishcloth:
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925- ), German baritone. He sings the role
of Jesus on the 1970 Archiv Produktion recording of Bach's 21st cantata
that Bast and J R listen to later (see 654.36
below). 646.22] Greenspan: i.e., Grynszpan, but J R's pronunciation suggests Gaddis had in mind Allan Greenspan (1926- ), President Nixon's economic advisor (1968-74) during the period Gaddis was writing this novel. 647.32]
greasy eminence: from
"eminence grise," someone exercising unsuspected or unofficial power. 650.16]
music hath charms to soothe the savage dot dot dot:
from Congreve's play The Mourning Bride (ODQ). 650.19]
Harry Bosch:
cf. Hieronymus Bosch (1450?-1516), Dutch painter, whose Seven Deadly
Sins figures prominently in The Recognitions. Scene 75 (653.3-663.37) 654.17] some place orange at New Jersey: i.e., the city of Orange, NJ. 654.36]
ja ach ja ich bin verlor [...] nein du hassest mich:
from Bach's tragic 21st cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
(I have suffered greatly); section 8 is a dialogue between the soul
(soprano) and Jesus (bass):
658.4] To make you hear! to make you, to make you feel to try to ... cf. the Preface to Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus: [JS]
661.23]
signs you can't bring any fresh ones in the cemetery:
cf. Agnes Deigh's letter in The Recognitions: "It
is forbidden to enter the garden with flowers in the hand. That was
a sign in french at the gate of a french garden, you see, and read it
well and you will understand" (759). This notice posted at the entrance
to the public garden in Tarbes in southern France—to prevent people
from stealing the garden's flowers and then claiming to have brought
them—is the subject of an allegory that frames Jean Paulhan's Les
fleurs de Tarbes (1941); Maurice Blanchot's review of this critical
work led to an important debate in France on the status of literature.
663.1]
Billy Grahey: evangelist
Billy Graham (1918-
). transition (663.37-664.2) Scene
76 (664.3-669.37) 667.9]
Rain or hail fire or snow rift the hills and roll the: see 142.20.
667.14]
Trib [...] Burmesquik where they make the crooked: see 42.l6. 667.28]
Soothe the savage dot dot dot:
see 650.16. 667.28]
wed some savage woman she will:
see 280.39.
667.38] Handel's Jephtha: an oratorio (based on Judges 11), first performed at Covent Garden in 1752 667.39]
the soprano here was singing get away! from Jephthah's daughter
Iphis's air "Happy they! this vital breath with content I shall
resign" from Händel's ortatorio. [AZ] Scene 78 (670.19-674.25) 670.28]
ancient founts:
Tennyson's
"Locksley Hall," l. 188. 671.10]
the dreary moorland: "Locksley
Hall," l. 40. 673.42] The Red Mill by Victor Herbert: a 1906 light opera by the Irish-American conductor and composer (1859-1924). Given Vogel's sexual proclivities, Peter Wolfe suggests the selection is "Every Day Is Ladies' Day with Me." Scene 79 (674.26-687.22) Hospital Coen visits Bast (while Duncan interrupts him); Bast writes a piece for solo cello while Coen talks; Duncan given an enema, after which he deteriorates rapidly. 678.14]
There is increasing evidence [...] wrote Doctor James Carey:
from James Carey's The College Drug Scene (Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall, 1968), 178. {Identified by Scott Simmon in his dissertation
"The Ulysses Tradition," 159—but see if taken from a NYT article
or review of the book} 682.29] Corpus Juris: Corpus Juris Secundum, an encyclopedia of U.S. law, begun in 1936 and updated periodically. 683.39]
the Perdinalies: apparently a typo for the Pedernales,
a river and park area in Texas. 683.39]
hand you a world bank: a
reference to President Johnson's Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam
war, Robert McNamara (1916- ), as Gaddis's essay "The Rush for Second
Place" indicates (RSP 50-51). 684.23]
Mark Twain a politician's an ass everything's sat on except a man:
not by Twain but a two-line poem by e. e. cummings: "a politician is
an arse upon / which everyone has sat except a man" (in 1 x 1,
1944). 684.38]
Haymarket riots:
occurred in Chicago on 4 May 1886 as the result of a mass protest against
the killing of strikers by police. 685.42]
just wanted everybody to like him:
Lyndon B. Johnson: see "The Rush for Second Place," 35-36. 686.20]
eye of a needle:
from Matthew 19:24. 687.8] for Alise: Beethoven's "Für Elise," a bagatelle dating from 1808. Scene 80 (687.23-688.29) Hospital Bast feels better next day, but discovers Duncan died during the night. 687.36] just doing [...] you wouldn't be anybody: similar to a passage from Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies quoted in "The Rush for Second Place"; needs checking. Scene 81 (688.29-712.44) 690.13]
Berengaria: an
ocean liner of the Cunard Line; sold for scrap in 1938. 692.12]
what the pound's been through [...] some damn dead poet: Ezra Pound died 1 November 1972. This and
the reference to Kennecott's troubles on p. 214
place the novel in the fall of 1972. 694.9] motion picture called Dirty …: another reference to Gaddis’s screenplay: see 396.26. 698.9]
Bitterroot strike: an
1890 conflict between unionized miners and unscrupulous owners in Montana.
700.28]
Custer's last:
see 310.37. 700.42]
Mickeysuckies: i.e.,
the Mikasuki (or Miccosukee), a division of the Seminole tribe of Native
Americans. 702.39] Eisen ruling: a Supreme Court decision handed down in June 1974. Here's a short article on its significance that appeared in Time magazine (10 June 1974), perhaps Gaddis's source, under the title "Taking Mass from Class":
711.5] Coxey's Army: American businessman and politician Jacob Coxey (1854-1951) twice led groups of the unemployed, nicknamed Coxey's Army, to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate for legislation for funds to pay the unemployed for work on public improvements (1894 and 1914). 712.37] to throw
p v c's: premature
ventricular contractions, indicating heart problems. Scene 82 (712.45-719.15) Hospital, room 319 Beaton throws up in men's room; Bast offers to help, then meets with Coen in his room, who tells him his aunts have moved back to Indiana; Stella joins the conversation (714) and, when Coen steps out of the room, the cousins confront each other with the past. All three leave the hospital with Stella firmly in control. 716.15] her bosom shaken by a sudden storm of sighs: see 69.25. Scene 83 (719.15-726.40) 723.2]
Minuet in G:
see 498.39. 724.35]
Broch's Sleepwalkers, been on page thirty-five:
see 629.40. On page 35 of the standard English translation (by Willa
and Edwin Muir), the protagonist attends a performance of Gounod's Faust
and broods of the resemblance between brothers and sisters. |
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