Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers page 95 – 224:

blind jones and the ice-cream sculpture

III. CABLE

reflex therapy, or what bruder didn’t say

IV. AN AMERICAN HERO, OR THE LAST DAYS OF DUKE, MARY, AND ME


Julia ponders the bennies and the jets. Duke did this, Duke did that; then Duke did this, then Duke did that; and after that, Duke did this, and after this, Duke did that, and cetera…

Something I've noticed in this second batch of chapters. In the "framing" chapters, David Brooke deletes letters or words from the following chapter which match the sequential letters at the top of each page.

This is most obvious in reflex therapy, or what bruder didn't say, which has page letters t-z, and in which David "carefully removes t, u, v, w, x, y, and z (one of each)".

In the previous framing section, with page letters n-s, "David deletes 'no' ... From another page he deletes 'S.P.Q.R'". This accounts for the pages N, O, P, Q, R, and S.

An odd little puzzle that I'll be keeping an eye out for.

This quote on page 166 is bugging me:

"Giorgio examined his nails, not, as men do, fingers in against the palms, but rather in the manner of women, the whole long irregular oval of the back of the hand beautiful and banked."

Wikipedia claims this is a reference to an almost identical line in The Recognitions. This quote is annoyingly familiar to me, even though I haven't read The Recognitions. So who did Gaddis steal it from?

Sosen wrote: "This quote on page 166 is bugging me:

"Giorgio examined his nails, not, as men do, fingers in against the palms, but rather in the manner of women, the whole long irregular oval of the back of the..."

The only place I've found that quote is on the wikipedia page, which I'm guessing is the one you're referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Smuggl...

I read The Recognitions three years ago, but I can't say I recall the passage or where Gaddis might have sourced it.

Jim wrote: "Sosen wrote: "This quote on page 166 is bugging me:"

I encountered a similar sentence twice in the same scene of JR (Scene 22, General Roll plant, around pg 155):

she looked up at the clock, down at her watch, studied her nails the length or her hand and then turned them in on her palm and studied them that way

...followed shortly after by

she studied her nails turned in on her palm and then studied them the length of her hand

Maybe Gaddis has a thing for women examining their nails?