Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers Part II, Chapter 3 & 4


Part II, Chapter 3

It was a man, sure, that was hang’d up here;
A youth, as I remember: I cut him down.
If it should prove my son now after all –
Say you? say you? – Light!
- Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy


The prodigal son returns bearing a golden bull. He declares his intention to preach, but has a revelation that his loved ones do not know him. The more pressing question is does he know himself if he is Wyatt or the Reverend Gilbert Sullivan? In the end, he realizes you can’t go home again, so he buys a griffin egg and catches the night train back to the city.



Part II, Chapter 4

“I’ve had a good dream, gentlemen,” he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.
- Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov


Saint Esme has Otto’s number and tells him so. Stanley, Max, and Otto walk and talk and talk. Esme visits the waste land that is Wyatt and writes him an epistle. Otto hears that Esme tried to take the gas and when he visits her, he discovers that she exists in the third person now.


To avoid spoilers, please restrict your comments to Part II, Chapter 3 & 4 (and the earlier chapters)

Did I miss this in the notes or is Gilbert Sullivan a pun on the composers Gilbert & Sullivan?

And Esme's 3rd person talk totally depressed me.

Ellie wrote: "Did I miss this in the notes or is Gilbert Sullivan a pun on the composers Gilbert & Sullivan?

And Esme's 3rd person talk totally depressed me."

Probably... religion as musical...

It was definitely sad to see the lost and damaged Esme hurt by the even more lost and damaged Wyatt.

Any thoughts on Esme's epistle (aside from the last line with its hint of what's to come)? Is there more here than a crazy rant about painters?

And Jim, I do so love your summary summaries.

Check, chapter four. It's a long letter, it would be hard to miss even with intent to skim.

Make sense? I thought you were brilliant.

Mental illness has in other times & other cultures been seen as a sign of having been/being touched by the divine so Esmeralda may not be an either/or case, at least at first.

Moonbutterfly wrote: "I think Esme is 'connected' to Camilla or the worldly feminine spirit (couldn't think of a better word). This feeling started in part one when Esme was posing for Wyatt. I got the same feeling agai..."

Gaddis claimed to have written this book as an epic comedy, but Esme and Wyatt are far from comic characters. If anything, they are romantic, tragic figures, each wounded and scattered to such a degree it's hard to tell if they are able to seek any kind of healing or wholeness for themselves. They seem to be intimately aware of their troubles, but maybe unable to save themselves.

Esme seems to have a horrifying 'recognition' in chapter 4, that whatever fantasy of relationship and communion with Wyatt she had is illusory - or at least not any relationship that Wyatt could acknowledge or participate in. He hurt her much more than any of the men who used her as a sex toy. She loved Wyatt and once she recognized the futility in that love, she essentially died and went home to actually die (unsuccessfully). At that point, she referred to Esme only in the third person.

These two characters are way too broken to be comic figures. I do think you're on to something with connections to Camilla and/or feminine symbols. Despite his cynicism and mockery of his contemporary society, he has things to say about human relationships and is clearly willing to root around in the muck...

Moonbutterfly wrote: "Painter:
Wyatt, Male, Phoenix and Bull, Conscious, (re)Birth, Materialism, Window, Western Religion, Shallow, The Son.

Painting:
Esme, Female, Shadows and Dreams, Subconscious (Collective Unconscious), Death, Non-Materialism, Mirror, Eastern Religion, Depth, The Mother. ..."

I think putting Wyatt/Esme under the headings of painter/painted is an excellent insight. To your list of traits I would also add thinking/intuiting. As you said, Gaddis may not have intentionally had all these things in mind when he wrote the book, but that doesn't mean the archetypes weren't at work.

Jim wrote: "Gaddis claimed to have written this book as an epic comedy, but Esme and Wyatt are far from comic characters. ..."

I'd put the novel in the 'Candide' satirical tradition, which doesn't preclude devastating tragedy along with the humor. Wyatt and Esme strike me as the Hamlet and Ophelia among the Rosencrantz and Guildensterns (via Stoppard, that is).

I am way behind in the reading, but still looking forward to seeing people's comments on the later chapters. I've got a long flight coming up tomorrow, hopefully I can get a bit more caught-up.

It's an interesting comment, Whitney. I don't think you can argue that it's a satire, but reading a few years ago It felt as much realism as satire. And mordant which can mean sarcastic also means incisive, burning, corrosive. Some parts more than others, but it is interesting how much is based on some kind of fact and how much closer the 1700s were to the 1400s than we are today.

Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres – "In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."

While Swift's "A Modest Proposal..." is always over the top the more modern we are the less Candide seem comedic -- at least to me.

Of course after a century of genocides and the lack of any real political will to stop them, it's not as though we can talk. :-)

Jonathan wrote: "So, Janet is having sex with the (real, not golden) bull, right? When the lightning flashes Janet is "bent open beneath him [the bull]", then later it describes her skirt as torn and her hair matte..."

At least once, I would say.

This reader's guide suggests that "Janet, though, brooding on Matt. 24:24, finally decides Wyatt is a false Christ and, overturning her printing press, she runs to the carriage barn to offer herself to a bull (à la Pasiphaë).

Link: http://www.williamgaddis.org/recognit...

The Recognitions is filled with the insanity of religious belief from the sacred to the profane, from cover to cover.