SOUNDTRACK: LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN-“Für Elise”
I didn’t know a lot of the music mentioned in this book, but like most people, I know and enjoy “Für Elise.” It’s an interesting choice of music to end such a crazy chaotic story, although I suppose there are some less than peaceful moments ion the song too. It’s a shame Bast never gets to play it.
I find the most engaging moments to be when the lone high note comes before the reintroduction of the initial melody. The middle, minor key section that sounds kind of menacing is also neat–a big switch from the delicate opening.
Why not take 3 minutes and enjoy it now:
[READ: Week of August 20, 2012] JR Week 10
The end is here. After endlessly interrupted conversations, the book has actually hit a period.
As the last week ended, Bast was being dropped off at the hospital by Coen. And the bulk of the end of the book takes place in the hospital. There are many similarities between this book and a big 60s/70s comedy romp, and here is another one–all the characters seems to pile into one location for a big finale. (Technically the finale happens at Bast’s house, but you get the idea).
Bast is delirious as they wheel him to his room. The nurses know that Coen is also checking up on Norman (the bullet is near his eye and his condition is unchanged), so now he has two people to ask about. And the nurse? Why it’s Miss Waddams from the school! Oh how she hated that school and she is full of very funny stories about what she saw there.
So Bast has double pneumonia and is in an oxygen tent. He’s on an IV and is uncommunicative for a few days. Coen keeps calling up but no dice.
After a few days, Bast gets a roommate. We aren’t told who he is right away, but he’s a horny old man, flirting with Nurse “Waddle.” After a few pages it becomes clear that this is Mister Duncan the wallpaper man (who thought you were gonna fix him up with her). In addition to being comic relief, Duncan winds up providing a lot of information about the story, because he asks for newspapers, and the newspapers update us on so many things. Duncan believes the papers will cheer up Bast since they are full of other people’s misery. Like:
- We learn that Mr Teets is a cross dresser. His wife caught him dressing up and pretending to be his sister. And that he is being sought in connection with a subpoena.
- The 4th grader trapped in the sculpture has been there for 5 days and is being looked after by art and insurance circles. And a group called MAMA wants an injunction against “willful destruction of a unique metaphor on man’s relation to the universe.”
- They’re turning the Major’s bomb shelter into a public convenience (Since it was costing so much in sewage treatment anyhow). And there’s a snarky comment about Long Island: “the water table is so high the whole island’s turning into a leaching field.”
- Doctor Vogel is in front of a Senate Subcommittee discussing the last remaining problems of Frigicom with the hilarious joke that “the shards comprising Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony proved more difficult to handle than had been anticipated…ascribing damage mainly to the strident quality of the musical work’s opening bars…”(673).
- Here’s a politician who pushed a girl out an office window he says she told him she could fly [uh oh, is Rhoda okay?].
- There’s inventory trouble at Triangle paper–sixteen thousand rolls of novelty toilet paper (revealed several pages later: “on the hole business is very good” (681)) have gone to the wrong place.
- Some “wetbacks” have gotten a new Cadillac for $5 and a yacht for $10. (Is that’s Glancy’s Cadillac? [see below, no it is not]).
- There’s more about the successful decriminalization of marijuana (except for growing it, giving it to friends, transporting it or smoking it in public) This keeps it safe for Seagram Distillers national Tobacco Company .
Duncan says he’s been trying to get out of the wallpaper business for 14 years. And he provides a surprising antidote to the attitude of JR: “people thinking winning’s what it’s all about just ask those son of a bitches who ran that war ran the whole country into the ground while they were at it ” (673). He also repeats throughout the scene that these are the same son of a bitches that got him out of wallpaper (so you’d think he’d be grateful).
This scene is also the culmination of the urination/defecation craze in the book. Duncan is constantly asking Coen for his bed pan (some urine spills on Coen’s sleeve). Duncan is also given an enema later and has an accident.
Bast wakes up and asks for 50 pencils so he can continue writing his music. He is given a crayon. Coen still doesn’t know where his aunts are, although he inquired about them returning to Indiana. Duncan asks Coen if he can sue the city because a prostitute charged him $5, he offered her $10 and when she said she’d go up and get change he followed (he’s no fool, unlike Bast Eigen [man, there’s too many names]) and he fell down the stairs. Coen says he can’t sue the city for that.
Coen tells Bast that Sophie Angel’s paraffin test has cleared her and that Coen feels the bullet wound was self-inflicted because he was afraid of a public takeover of the company. The five percent (that was Gibbs) had been delivered to Skinner which he used to set up a publishing enterprise. (Upon hearing the name “Skinner,” Duncan repeats lines from the limerick from last week). And I believe that the two secretaries who worked for Mr Angel (recall the dirty pictures) are now working for Mr Skinner’s new company (wait for it) Skinnerflix “what do you think they make, shoelaces?” Turns out the 5% shares that Gibbs gave up were worth $120,000 (when he received it is was likely worth $7,000). [That’s why he was hit with the large tax expense last week and there’s a lien on his account].
After a few insulting comments to Coen about hiring a Jew lawyer, Duncan reveals how he got out of the wallpaper business–he ran up some huge bills and didn’t pay them.
The Duncan is taken out for X-rays. Coen sighs with relief and proceeds to explain the numbers of General Roll (most of which we know), but he reminds us that if Mr Angel dies, Stella will get controlling share of the company. But then Coen reveals that he is aware of an Edward Bast who is involved in all kinds of activities (that the right hand might be ignorant of). There’s even a picture (unfortunately obscured by feathers) and he wonders what that bast is up to. Also, General Roll has divested from Nathan Wise, and Wise has written off its vast inventory (since the pill came around).
Coen also mentions a lawsuit with JMI Industries (Jubilee Musical Instrument Company–holy hell I forgot all about that punch hole technology issue. Coen is just about to ask Bast the most important question when… he can’t take Duncan anymore and he leaves. Then Duncan finds out that his insurance is only good if he goes into a nursing home [a wonderfully weird tie in to the JR Corp’s policies].
But Duncan is actually nice to Bast: you can’t call yourself a failure if you’ve never done anything. Duncan also has another one of those lines from the book that is either eerily prescient or just shows how little has changed: “run the whole country into the ground get thirty or forty thousand boys killed but they’ll let you pretend it’s not a war as long as you don’t raise taxes to pay for it, son of a bitches who still think winning’s what it’s all about” (683).
Duncan also provides a nice summary of the ideas of the book: “if you want to make a million you don’t have to understand money what you have to understand is people’s fears about money” (683).
More newspaper items:
- The Dow has hit 453
- The wife of a wealthy East Coast publishing executive who disappeared from her Scarsdale home was discovered in Iowa working as a waitress in order to help her husband out financially. She believed they had no money, but the man is making six figures and said her contribution was “cigar money” [Is that someone from earlier? I don’t recognize it].
- Stressing the vital necessity of expanded capital formation unimpeded by government restraints, Senator Broos’ impassioned plea for a restoration of faith on the part of the common man in the free enterprise system as the cornerstone of those son of a bitches who still think winning’s what it’s all about….it’s all free enterprise all they howl about’s government restraints interference double taxation, all free enterprise till they wreck the whole thing they’re the first ones up there with a tin cup whining for the government to bail them out with a loan guarantee so they can do it all over again (684).
- The 4th grader has been in the sculpture now for the eighth straight day. Duncan: “It can’t be, what day is it Waddles?” (685).
- A hilarious update on the diCephalis’ “Dad.” “An elderly drifter who has made his home with a local family in recent years was found in critical condition here today being nursed by two small children, who have been administering a mixture of maple syrup and plaster of Paris to him following what appears to have been a fall some days ago. In the unexplained absence of both parents, stories pieced together from neighbors and authorities at the nearby school where both had taught until recently indicate that each of them believed their elderly guest to be the other’s father” (685).
Duncan keeps saying that Bast is a good listener which is a good way to make people like you. He took a Dale Carnegie course and learned you cant even trust anyone, not even yourself!
The nurse turns the light off for the night and Duncan starts acting very strange indeed, repeating many of the things that happened in the last couple of days. Then he starts talking about a beautiful piano melody his daughter played called “for Alise’s something,” there was delicatessen named Alise’s then….
When Bast wakes up in the morning, he is bright and chipper and is ready to play “für Elise” for Duncan. He also has the revelation that he was always afraid that he had to write this music but maybe he doesn’t have to! And yet in s surprising twist, Duncan died during the night. And we hear the Nurse say: “they left me an expiration in 319.”
The nurses start talking about room 319 and the pre-op in 311 and the scene abruptly shifts to Governor Cates in 311 (whom the staff and soon just about everyone is pronouncing Katz, which makes him Jewish of course]. He is in to get his Ray-X heart replaced. He is as demanding and obnoxious as ever and wants two phones installed in the room. Zona is with him and she is causing her own ruckus. And of course Beaton comes with them, helping out Cates and being Zona’s errand monkey.
Cates is waiting for a call from the Senator’s staff member about Teletravel. The parent company’s head of personnel [poor Mr diCephalis] is scheduled to take part in a preliminary evaluation of its operational capabilities by sending a person from Texas to Maine. Cates says it sounds like the same stunt that Frigicom pulled, starting off with something complicated instead of say a car horn. Evidently Vogel peed on Beaton’s leg when they met in Texas.
Cates has some thoughts on technology (really!). “Think how preposterous television sounded a few years ago now you can’t get away from the damn thing ever seen color television? One bawling idiot after another on the screen, seed his bawling picture a thousand miles in color like that probably no reason you can’t just go ahead and send the idiot himself is there?” (690). [For reference Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was written in 1964 and Willy Wonka came out in 1971].
Further, Cates says, “Used to be the right people traveled and all the idiots stayed put…now the right people stay put all you see’s the idiot and errand boys being flown around like bundles” (690).
Then Cates speaks of the law giving 18-year olds control of themselves. He speaks of Boody marrying Bast “he’s a black isn’t he?” [this mistake came from the dark photocopy hundred of pages ago]. No other damn reason anybody black or white want to marry Boody but these two hundred thousand shares” (691).
Some more updates: Delaserea is still in jail. She was released but when she hears that Zona wanted her for more work she changed her plea to guilty. [HA].
Then Handler was looking for a tax loss so he backed a play by a group called Angels East that was so bad it would fold overnight, but it has opened and is sold out [The Producers came out in 1968].
Beaton tries to explain the Duncan/Duncan mix up over at JR Corp:
–during their acquisition of Triangle Paper they took advantage of a bad debt situation involving an entirely different Duncan and Company, an Ohio wallpaper manufacturer, to mislead the…
–Other damn way around I’d understand it take the wallpaper any day (692).
But Beaton explains that they did this whole Duncan inventory so as to start putting this new internal advertising in books, especially textbooks. And children’s encyclopedias. Figures on those encyclopedias show: “initial outlay a third of a million, two hundred sixty thousand on promotion sixty thousand in production and yes and six hundred sixty dollars went in research writing and editorial costs yes no wonder” (693).
And then there’s the magazine She. The cover model looks like Emily/Amy “if she were some broken down two dollar…”
And the Dow is down to 280. [Incidentally, the Dow did hit a ten year low of 577 in 1975].
Then there’s word of Gall: he just published a Western called The Blood in the Red White and Blue which had already been published elsewhere with the title Guns of God under different pseudonyms.
Skinner by the way had collateral from General Roll, and Cates knows someone else snatched up 20% in an estate tax that’s what they were after the whole time. “Why the devil you think Stamper picked up JMI in that Dallas Mortgage deal think he needed a million used jukeboxes?” (694). Cates says General Roll is probably split ten ways and that they’re all gonna cut each others throats to get the majority. [Say what you will about Cates, he is very knowledgeable].
Mrs Stamper is going to file for divorce after six months. Mr Stamper and Crawley and their fool movie with the National parks. And make sure that there no more judicial reviews of this environmental nonsense that Stamper’s people put together before they pick up Alsaka’s subsidiary,
Then Beaton reads some information about the JR Corp.
Cates says he heard down at the bank that the accounting at JR is crazy:
–head of the company himself two places off with the damn decimal half the time SEC have him on fraud?
–No sir I understand they were unable to establish evidence of intentional wrongdoing since the errors were as frequently to the company’s own disadvantage as not (697).
And the accountant seems to have been retained because he was the brother in law of the head of their public relations firm.
They get the phone hooked up and Monty calls. Cates asks if Monty has his desk cleaned out yet. While he’s talking on the phone he wants Beaton to keep reading about JR Corp–Rather than straight liquidating bankruptcy they will seek an arrangement under Chapter 11–they can continue in possession and operate the business…the company’s securities were delisted…. Operations of the Wonder Brewery are proceeding as normal.
Monty: Cates told Blaufinger to just annex Malwi, avoid the trouble….Wait, the people of Malwi were decimated? Blaufinger said they didn’t have any weapons…. have to drag in labor from Angola…. If Monty’s resignation is tomorrow can he stamp all of the brewery/cobalt information classified…. Handed down a mining decision that invalidates every claim–Beaton says that Cates himself asked him to initiate the action… can Monty leave a memo that reverses his position on that?… The Brooks brothers were arrested and all claims wiped out…the Bureau of Land Management is suing Alsaka… Crawley is in trouble for those bellies, needs $28 million in bail…. Davidoff won Advertising Man of the Year…. tries to get the subpoena on his boss in the Nobili hearing… Wouldn’t even show up to defend this erratic management charge [that explains the “erotic business”… IRS says his social security number is the one that comes with wallets… as for the mill takeover, the place is a ghost town, the whole mill went “up on some cracker’s used car” and moved to Georgia… Hong Kong sweaters… How did Crawley let Bast exercise his options before it matured?… Get Bast and JR banned from running any publicly owned company…”Can’t bring criminal charges by God Monty push this too far get every damn fool who ever lost a nickel in the market writing his damn congressman….push congress too far like walking in a damn hencoop at night wake them all up, start cackling about criminal provisions pass damn laws before they know it” (703).
Then Cates asks about Emily. She’s got her son back “maybe Cutler can talk some sense into her now that they’re settled”. Cates says if there’s no signature from her (as Freddie’s guardian) she’ll have the other trustees by the short hair give her leverage to control both foundations” (704).
Any word on Freddie? Mrs Cutler is placing ads in the papers for him. [So while she was away, Amy got married to Cutler. Online sources say Cutler was a salesman, although I don’t remember him at all, although I see I wrote about him in Week 6].
Nobili is pretty much kaput all they have left is a green aspirin…. Whiteback was taken out of the bank, got a job with the FCC….
Monty hangs up, and Cates asks about selling off that tobacco outfit–it was deleted upon representation by the attorney for Mrs Schramm. Majority issue of Ritz Tobacco had not been conveyed when they got Triangle Paper. They had good buzz from their new brands Ace and Mary Jane.
As for Teletravel, Colonel Moyst is at the designated receiving area in Maine. There was a successful send off in Texas but severe difficulty reconstituting him in Maine. Cates: “couldn’t just string a line to Arkansas?” (705).
A little more detail of the Haight University/naming controversy: he wanted the university renamed to honor his achievements in the arts in return for a collection of his own paintings which he presented with extremely high evaluations for tax purposes–supported by letters from a correspondence school comparing his brilliance to Norman Rockwell (which apparently every student received).
Of course the new law changed his tax situation, he can now deduct only the cost of his materials. This freaks out Zona (who, I imagine doing a spit take), but Beaton reassures her that as a collector she can deduct the full market value of the paintings.
Cates wants to know if Emily is involved with all of this JR business, since she’s on the cover of She. But they straighten it out–it’s not Emily, “it’s the wife of the parent company’s personnel manager the man who’s just been lost in, who’s taking part in the Teletravel trial” (707). Mrs diCepahlis’ photo shoot appears to be re-creations from the Kama Sutra. They want to know if “that drunk” is out of thee picture with Emily. He is and Cutler has talked some sense into her. Zona says that Cutler wouldn’t get into her pants without an engraved invitation and that Emily is still a ninny.
Zona talks about Schepperman again and wants him found now. Beaton says that if he died, she gets everything that he’s worth. Cates says he wants the money that they gave to Schepperman for that large painting put in escrow, but Zona says if he does that she’ll put him (Cates) in escrow. Zona goes after Cates–calling him a Raggedy Andy with a tin heart. She’ll sue him for impersonating Mr Katz hes been losing body parts for 80 years and Handler’s been dismantling him ever since.
Then Cates talks to Broos, gives him a haranguing about Monty getting drummed out of office by the left wing press, and we learn:
- the smelting operation declared a surplus
- the Malwi people were decimated Dé’s people walked in and found them armed to the teeth. “Dé’s bunch panic cut them down like flies go to clean up find all they had’s toys, pistols carbeen submachine guns rocket launchers every damn weapon you can think of plastic toys” [clearly the Ray-X supplies].
- And Milliken had his law firm retained by this Alsaka outfit…”Still sore the way they blew the corner off his state didn’t lose any damn constituents did he? (709).
After some thought s on JR shipping we get back to the “stunt that peachy little wop just pulled probably expects to run for president” (710).
Then Cates gets succinct again:
Most of the damn trouble in the world’s made by damn fools with nothing to do have to give them something to do to keep them off the damn streets and I’m by God sick and tired of hearing them bite the damn hand that feeds them hear me… Only damn reason they think something’s worth doing’s they get paid to do it
Then Mr Leva calls. He is furious because the new management had told Erebus to fire him sir. Cates whispers that he was the one who fired him (wasting too much money on films).
The story on Grynszpan: he may have been the éminence grise behind the company’s meteroic expansion…. he developed the Grynzspan theory of common foci and was engaged in a major work on the mechanization of the arts, he apparently worked his way through Harvard selling encyclopedias, and when his will…
–Will was that? mean he’s dead damn it?
–He’s reported to ave died suddenly in the Yucatan of Leuk… (711).
During this whole thing Zona is crying out for water.
Cates asks Beaton to get the JMI stock out “whoever’s sitting on that JMI stock still give this shirttail outfit one hell of a fight on appeal too damn much at stake here for any slipups” (712).
The current assets of both foundations have been frozen under an injunction by Mrs Emily Cutler. Emily is in a meeting with the trustees and if no dividend is declared, her failure to have signed over these last powers of attorney will give her the additional votes of both her brother and her son [Seems like Amy Joubert has been up to something]. Cates starts shouting that she declares it, but they drag him away from his room.
And then the scene shifts to Bast where we learn that he is leaving the hospital today. They have given him dead Mr Duncan’s suit. They say Duncan would have wanted him to have it, he liked Bast a lot and always readng to him.
Coen has come by, and Stella is coming down to see him. But first, he has found Bast’s aunts! They’re in a nursing home in Indiana. And indeed, that was Bast’s old house relocated–it was condemned and auctioned off, but only in a paper in Albany. The sole bid came from Mister Cibo. His $1 bid was submitted on behalf of Father Haight to serve as the church’s teen center. The woman who was behind getting the James Bast location preserved was a trustee of the Philharmonic and agreed to have it preserved only if James would come out of self-imposed exile.
A janitor asks what to do with the music Bast wrote and he says to throw it away–Bast repeats that he realized that creating music was something he thought he had to so–“I never had to, it was just something I’d never questioned before I thought it was all I was here for and he, everybody thought that they thought I was doing something worth doing he did too but he, nothing’s wroth doing he told me nothing’s worth doing till you’ve done it” (715).
The nurses come in to tell Stella that Norman’s condition hasn’t changed and they can’t even do surgery because it’s too dangerous. They want to know if Stella will consent to donate his organs.
Stella gets mad at Edward but he retaliates, he knows she was there in his house, she’s the one who broke in and destroyed everything. She admits it and also admits that she knew he was looking at her in the bushes all those years ago. He says she destroyed Jack, too.
He knows that Stella always hated Edward’s mother “you hated my mother for what she did to your father” Stella admits that as well, “When she left my father and wanted James to marry her and he wouldn’t because he was afraid for his work.” And she recounts a fortune teller in Tannersville. She told the fortune teller everything about the Bast brothers and Edward’s mother Nellie, and she noticed the short finger [does this mean it was Nellie?]. Nellie later killed herself and they all blamed Stella. And James told everyone he married Nellie to avoid any scandal.
Coen jumps in to talk about the JMI suit: “whoever emerges with a controlling interest in General Roll must expect a rather fierce confrontation from them on appeal.” And Mr Crawley lost Bast’s aunts a ton of money trying to make more and more commission from his trades. Bast is now worried about his $400 check and then he starts to worry about his scores in the garbage and asks for them back. But hospital policy says he can’t have them back.
And the orderlies are in a hurry to clean out this room because Zona is getting the room next and she wants it just so. But Bast is in a hurry to leave [one of the nurses says he’ll miss the Christmas tree].
Stella says she’s coming with Bast to see Jack. And Stella gets down to business, she says that her husband’s interest and her father’s estate gives her majority for any decisions in the company. And she wanst word on the lawsuit as soon as it happens.
When Edward asks Stella if she knew his father was coming back she says she suggested it to them.
They arrive uptown. Stella waits in the car and tells Edward to say nothing about her to Jack..
As he heads up paramedics come down the stairs with a woman on a stretcher. My vife mister [sic]…
When Edward gets upstairs, Eigen is there on the phone. He is fighting with his wife about visitation (echoes of Gibbs). He tells his wife that Mrs Schramm is a perfectly nice woman.
In the apartment is a man and a Chinese girl who came in from Hong Kong with sweaters (she can’t speak English). Immigration is sending someone over and there have been federal marshals and IRS agents, Eigen can’t take any of his valuable papers. Eigen says that JR has been calling for him too. Eigen lists all the people trying to reach him–placement agencies, civil liberties union, a drunk general, Indian legal aid, television shows, civil beautification committee (for the toilet paper painted water tower), Crawley (who is affronted that Bast kept his slides of the zebras).
Finally, Eigen asks Bast if he can take Freddie To Amy–he saw the ad that Amy placed in the paper. Freddie has been fine–although he thought the flickering lamp was a signal from his mother. And he was a little upset when he found the drowned cat. And he fired a gun at the radio when they broke off the Minuet in G for an aspirin commercial, but otherwise he’s fine.
Bast tries to ask about Mister Gibbs but a prostitute comes by “Is Mister Grinspan ere? General Motor ave buy im a …” (722). Eigen says he’s dead and Bast wonders what happened to him. Britannica has been after him, Con Edison found the bypass–they want him for fraud.
Then Eigen takes a call from Beamish and he speaks of suing Gall and Walldecker too. Turns out Gall sent Eigen’s play to Angels West for money and stock. They sold it to Angels East for even more. And Angels East and West are both Walldecker. Eigen is trying to get his attorneys to start suing people…for defamation, punitive damages. He also wants to sue Ray’s band Graveyard because of their new name “Baby Jeeter and the Three Wide Men.” [HA!]. Eigen explains it’s not registered in his name, it’s his son’s idea, but he’s 4 years old.
Turns out General Roll was worth so much because they kept putting their earnings back in the company. Gibbs gave it away but he still got hit with the long term capital gains taxes, which were around $28,000.
They get back to Schramm, Beamish says that Schramm got a letter from Arlington and Mrs Schramm is upset about that [I guess he’s not allowed to be buried there]. But she is delighted at the recovery the tobacco stock made.
And the back room, oh the back room–everything crashed through the ceiling. Bast thinks he sees Gibbs in the room, but Eigen says that it’s an artist working on a portrait he’s been trying to finish for years.
Bast tries to tell Eigen that there’s a woman waiting for Gibbs, but he gets interrupted. We also learn that Gibbs will be fine. It was that penicillin he took for his throat that sent his white blood cells though the roof! He doesn’t have leukemia. But when Amy called, he pretended to be a black entertainer instead.
Then Eigen talks about Schepperman in the back room and his marvelous new painting that has plaster all over it now. Bast asks if Eigen can cash his $400 check. Eigen gives him Amy’s address so he can bring Freddie there. Before he goes, Bast wants his papers (scores with lavender crayon marking) Eigen says it looks like “a lot of chickentracks” [nice call back] (725).
Bast sums up: “until a performer hears what I hear and can make other people hear what he hears it’s just trash isn’t it Mister Eigen, it’s just trash like everything in this place everything you and Mister Gibbs and Mr Schramm all of you saw here it’s just trash!” (725).
On the final page, immigration calls for the woman. Then there’s a tape of JR saying “finally got you boy I mean holy shit where did you…” (726).
Then there’s Dumor Delivery who has come to pick up Eigen’s things. He asks if he can take some of the matches that are all over the floor. Eigen says to take a thousand. And his last word “Why can’t people just shut up and do what they’re paid for” (726).
But the very last word in the book goes to JR on the tape: “So I mean I got this neat idea, hey, you listening? Hey? You listening?” (726).
$$$$$
I’m going to do a final thoughts post next week for this book, but I did want to throw in a fee initial final thoughts.
This book was clearly not going to end neatly–how could it? But I did like the way he tied up many of the threads. There are certainly a few things I would have liked more resolution on, but I’m going to read what other people say first to see what I missed in the chaos of the end.
I enjoyed this book quite a lot. I laughed out aloud a bunch of times. And despite the fact that it is basically a condemnation of our society, I thought he did it very well–using absurdity to point out absurdity. The book does feel like a puzzle, and Gaddis demands a lot out of the reader. I found that invigorating, although I suppose if I had tried to read it more quickly I would have just been annoyed by it. Circumstance is everything.
I have to assume that Gaddis did a lot of research into the market to find out everything in the book, so I’m going to trust him. And now I’m going to go to one of the sites Simon recommends to see what I missed.
Thanks for reading along. #occupygaddis signing out.
For ease of searching, I include: Fur Elise, eminence grise
Can you provide a link to any other sites/sources you read?
> [Nurse Waddams] is full of very funny stories about what she saw there.
(For those not keeping score, the school’s plumbing was stopped by condoms.)
> Duncan winds up providing a lot of information about the story, because he asks for newspapers
And also reports about Bast’s delirious comments. Notably, Duncan says Bast accused him of being a witch unscrewing his head at night: way back when Stella visited the Bast spinsters, she said that’s what kids accused her of. So Bast has been told about it since, either from his aunts or from her ex Gibbs (who intended to warn Bast about his dangerous cousin).
> The 4th grader trapped in the sculpture has been there for 5 days
(This point is recycled as a major plot throughout A Frolic of His Own, with a dog instead of a kid to make its unreality more tolerable.)
> Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony […] the strident quality of the musical work’s opening bars…
We all know its Da-Da-Da-Dummm opening (G, G, G, E-flat) is compared to Fate knocking at the door: this may be why Gaddis picked it, since Entropy and Fate are kin.
> Here’s a politician who pushed a girl out an office window he says she told him she could fly (uh oh, is Rhoda okay?).
Rhoda on cocaine went wildly off-script: Cibo’s stunt was for would-be Senator Pecci to prevent a suicide attempt in front of witnesses, and journalists wouldn’t crown him such a hero if he had “saved” her from a one-story drop, so I’m assuming Rhoda’s death.
> rolls of novelty toilet paper […] “on the hole business is very good”
Again with the Freudian association of money and excrement. And later, Duncan talking finance while taking an enema then, ahm, giving it back.
> Some “wetbacks” have gotten a new Cadillac for $5 and a yacht for $10. (Is that ‘s Glancy’s Cadillac?)
Nope, a few pages later the article mentions a Texan billionaire; besides, Glancy was broke and wouldn’t have a yacht.
> Duncan is constantly asking Coen for his bed pan (some urine spills on Coen’s sleeve).
It’s also part of another, minor craze: plenty of spillages, leakages, plumbing breakages – food for entropy.
> Bast wakes up and asks for 50 pencils so he can continue writing his music. He is given a crayon.
And again, it’s a purple crayon: exactly like the one Gibbs got (Eigen had no pencils) and used the whole time he worked on his book. (Cf. Week 6 comment.)
> a prostitute charged [Duncan] $5, he offered her $10 and when she said she’d go up and get change he followed (he’s no fool, unlike Bast) and he fell down the stairs.
Not Bast: unlike Eigen, who had confessed to Gibbs being stolen $20 that way. (Also, it’s unclear whether Duncan just slipped by himself or was shoved/hit in the dark.)
> And I believe that the two secretaries who worked for Mr Angel (recall the dirty pictures) are now working for Mr Skinner’s new company (wait for it) Skinnerflix
Indeed, Terry and Myrna. And some pages later, I wonder whether that “piggish little man with glasses” who’ll play the part of the shrink in the flix could be Davidoff: on the one hand that’s the physical description we got of him, and he was last seen with Skinner; on the other hand, the mention of Vida’s psychiatrist is unclear (either that’s actually him playing the part, or that’s Davidoff and the real shrink had something to say about it?).
> Coen is just about to ask Bast the most important question when… he can’t take Duncan anymore and he leaves.
The question of Bast’s age. It’s important for Coen, but even more for Bast: as Coen explained in the book’s opening, if Bast is less than 21 then his minority shields him from any responsibility in what he did or signed on behalf of JR Corp.
(As we’ve seen, majority has just shifted from age 21 to 18, meaning Bast could have his cake and eat it too: keeping his legal immunity from his then-minority, while now being able to inherit directly. As with many other things, it seems to be left to the reader to be optimistic or pessimistic about Bast’s age.)
> The wife of a wealthy East Coast publishing executive […] (Is that someone from earlier? I don’t recognize it).
I first thought it may be Vida Duncan (since her ex-publisher husband could now be a wealthy publishing executive), however it says this woman disappeared last Christmas (and it is now almost Christmas again) so she was absent for one year (though $1600 isn’t a lot for that), but the story is supposed to spread one season (about mid-September to mid-December, and less than six months anyway), so it can’t be Vida or even someone we’ve seen at all.
> all free enterprise till they wreck the whole thing they’re the first ones up there with a tin cup whining for the government to bail them out with a loan guarantee so they can do it all over again
Cited at Wikipedia about Alan Greenspan during 1987–2000, in 2011: “Matt Taibbi described the Greenspan put and its bad consequences saying: ‘every time the banks blew up a speculative bubble, they could go back to the Fed and borrow money at zero or one or two percent, and then start the game all over’, thereby making it ‘almost impossible’ for the banks to lose money.” (Our own Grynszpan is also a con man, but he only cons Con Edison.)
Paul Ingendaay interviewing Gaddis for Der Spiegel, in 1995: “[Ingendaay:] J R appearing twenty years ago is a highly realistic novel about finance and the stock market. In a certain respect, this book proved to predict a reality yet to come. / [Gaddis:] Right. Reaganomics. The book anticipated the Eighties, the stupidity of Reagan’s version of free enterprise. Today, everything is much worse. But as the book isn’t read, nobody takes notice.” (As Gibbs noted, “To see clearly and be able to do nothing (Heraclitus)”.)
> The 4th grader has been in the sculpture now for the eighth straight day.
So Culture Square is a windy place where people sell sausages while the younger generation is trapped inside a metallic contraption? I mean, that’s some sculpture.
> Duncan died during the night.
Duncan had his surgery before going into the room and was probably victim of casual mispractice, the same way his daughter died. (We read later that Cates too had something that looked like appendicitis but wasn’t, except Cates had Handler to save him while Duncan’s daughter was left to die.)
Trying to read between the lines: we see here the hospital as a place of infantilization, the nurse becoming a surrogate mother, the surgeon a surrogate father. Duncan’s death could thus be seen as a metaphorical instance of child neglect, a recurring theme in the story.
> Cates in 311 (whom the staff and soon just about everyone is pronouncing Katz, which makes him Jewish of course
Cates or his family probably was Katz at some point, whether before Ellis Island (like Alan Greenspan’s family came from Grynszpan), or after (like Angel changed from Engels). Still, we’ve seen Cates casually dismissive of “little Jews”.
> Cates has some thoughts on technology
Mirrors an earlier scene: we had lawyer Beamish expressing strong doubts about Frigicom, and his boss Davidoff countering with how they did send people to the Moon; now we have lawyer Beaton expressing strong doubts about Teletravel, and his boss Cates countering with how they did send people’s image through television. Beamish went on to quit his boss, and Beaton is about to too.
> Then Cates speaks of the law giving 18-year olds control of themselves.
A grand series of twists: Zona controls Boody’s 200,000 Diamond shares. But the new law will give Boody control! But Zona has paperwork to keep control via corrupt Judge Ude! But Judge Ude is dead! But he did sign the paperwork hours before! (But Zona’s going to die and Boody will inherit anyway!)
> Then Handler was looking for a tax loss
Cates also mentions someone going on about the pound until he realized it was only some dead poet (Ezra Pound died November 1972): at best it sets the novel in Fall 1972 (if we assume this guy was ranting because Pound’s death was recent), at worst it sets a minimum date (other clues give 1972 or 1974).
> Then there’s word of Gall
Worse, Gall’s copy-pasted Western is plagiarized from a movie called “Dirty . . .”: that must be Schramm’s Western Dirty Tricks (didn’t even have his name on it).
Also, when the kids went to buy their share (Week 2), we remember Gall and Bast taking them to see a Western: we could think they’ve watched Schramm’s Western, and Gall being such a hack he typed and sold it in a matter of weeks if not days (pulp-novels era style).
> Say what you will about Cates, he is very knowledgeable
Cates is missing his Quotron and annoyed not being able to know the price of anything: probably a reference to Wilde’s quip about people nowadays who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
But he gets his two phones, authorization 3597, same magic number we saw twice in Week 8 (maybe plastic-surgery rejuvenation means he’s another type of fake plastic green?).
> Cates asks if Monty has his desk cleaned out yet.
Mirror of Cates’s opening scene: in both cases, Monty is on his last day (then at New York, now at Washington) and being asked to do last-minute cover-up stuff, by Cates just about to have surgery (then corneal, now cardiac).
> Get Bast and JR banned
Before that was an important clue (swiped from the Gaddis Annotations): that “Eisen ruling” Cates praises diminished the importance of class-action lawsuits: it was affirmed in appeal in 1973, confirmed by SCOTUS in June 1974, and Cates most probably alludes to the latter ruling.
Most other date clues pointed rather at 1972 (Kennecot in October, Ezra Pound in November), but obviously Gaddis could insert the Eisen ruling only at the last minute: maybe he couldn’t change all his references to 1972, or he considered them fuzzy enough to be compatible with 1974 after some editing (it’s not stated that Kennecot or Pound’s death just happened, so they just could be from two years ago).
We know from other clues that the story runs from Indian summer and autumn (mid-September) to Christmas-is-coming (mid-December), and both within the same year because the novel happens in less than six months (delay between the 3rd and 4th dividends), so I don’t think it could, say, start in September 1972 and sneakily end in December 1974 or such.
So, even though the novel was apparently originally intended for “Fall 1972”, it ended up being more like “Fall 1974” (when Gaddis was finishing it in real time). At any rate, we know it’s set in the first half of 1970-1980 (because Brisboy quoted a mortality report implying that).
> Amy got married to Cutler. Online sources say Cutler was a salesman, although I don’t remember him at all
Cutler works for Cates at a high level, but we got his portrait when Amy was in Beaton’s office (around page 210): she was explaining how Cutler was the sort she’d never go out with, but she could marry Gibbs or Bast; and a fawning Beaton was ready to do anything for her, anything. (This is why JR has to be read twice in a row in order to get most payoffs.)
> Ritz Tobacco […] had good buzz from their new brands Ace and Mary Jane.
We remember that JR wanted “Ace” and Davidoff was pushing for “Mary Jane”, so apparently JR decided to do both and see what works. (Also, this is the company that Mrs Schramm had a lot of stock of.)
> This freaks out Zona
She’s also pissed that Cates fired his limo driver Nick: that’s where we have to remember he was often visiting his mother near JR’s “headquarter”.
> Cates wants to know if Emily is involved with all of this JR business, since she’s on the cover of She
We’ve already seen Whiteback confuse Ann for Amy, and Gibbs likening the former to a cheap edition of the latter (Week 4).
> Mrs diCephalis’s photo shoot appears to be re-creations from the Kama Sutra.
Featuring “el hedouli”, described page 161 as a rather graphic bondage position. I mean, that must have been some photo shoot.
> Then Cates talks to Broos
We also learn that Hyde was killed (I assume the hostage was executed) and his son was sent to the hospital. (By the by, Hyde Jr’s forename was slyly sneaked somewhere in the novel…)
> we get back to the “stunt that peachy little wop just pulled probably expects to run for president”
Pecci mangled again (“no sir it’s c, c, i an Italian name not, not peachy no sir”, page 214). I suppose the president thing to be a dig at Ted Kennedy’s drowned girl at Chappaquiddick.
> Cates whispers that he was the one who fired [Leva] (wasting too much money on films).
It’s not that he wasted too much, and not on films: it’s okay that Leva wasted 30 mil on film (that’s good for a tax break), but what Cates can’t stand is Leva also spending 60 thou on music; to give so much money to an artist, now that’s unforgivable (Cates was furious writers get 5% from a book’s price, he’d reduce it to 0% to straighten them out).
Also, it’s strongly implied this music was the one Bast sold to Crawley: bought for $400 (with a dubious check), resold for $60,000.
> During this whole thing Zona is crying out for water. […] Cates starts shouting that she declares it, but they drag him away from his room.
One more thing: Beaton also completed an assassination of Zona and Cates that he quietly engineered in favor of Boody and Amy (the two daughters of Moncrieff), but it’s usually on second reading one can grab most details.
Beaton had a secret report about tranylcypromine causing death when associated with strong cheeses like Stilton (page 207). Beaton explained to Cates that Bananx contains tranylcypromine when the addicted Zona came and demanded her free drug. Beaton asked Zona to come today, and provided her free Bananx. Beaton also sent for Stilton, knowing the nurse wouldn’t allow Cates but Zona couldn’t resist. Beaton knew Zona was weakly asking for water under the poison’s attack, and let her collapse.
For Cates, summarizing the obvious: Beaton deliberately let the 4th dividend pass, fully knowing it would give Amy total control of her father’s assets. Beaton also asked Zona to come because her nagging would be murder on Cates’s weakened cardiac system. Beaton then deliberately dropped his bomb at the last moment to cause Cates a heart attack. Beaton did say he was ready to do anything to protect Amy.
Some other pieces:
– The nurse said Cates would soon be too sedated to talk to Handler, so Cates was really trapped.
– When I first read how Cates “is beginning to throw p v c’s”, I pictured a half-artificial Cates throwing up PVC plastic (sort of like the android in Alien), but the Gaddis Annotations explained it’s Premature Ventricular Contractions (I suppose Gaddis intended the PVC confusion, though).
– At some point, Davidoff explained that Beaton was considered worthless but employed only in memoriam of his late father: Cates’s and Zona’s relationship to the beaten Beaton is one of abusive parents to a despised child, which helps explain Beaton’s Oedipus-like murder of them; still, Beaton needed to go throwing up in the toilet afterwards.
So, during the novel people go off-script and the best plans turn awry, echoing Gibbs quotation about life being what happens while you are busy making other plans: plans=order, life=chaos, entropy reigns. However, just like it is thermodynamically possible to locally increase order (at the expense of more chaos at the periphery), at least one careful plan seems to have turned right. (Or does that mean that Cates and Zona will survive and Beaton’s plan too will collapse?)
> [Coen] has found Bast’s aunts! They’re in a nursing home in Indiana.
And they may be dead too. Way back page 14-15, we saw a petition for the old Lemp home to become a nursing home, and the Bast aunts explained they’ve always dreamed of living there one day. Page 232-233, they discussed Coen who hadn’t found their attorney Mister Lemp, and how the old Lemp home did become a nursing home, except they put some horrible escape chute and they wouldn’t consent to go down like dirty laundry.
And now, Coen coulnd’t join them because of a fire in the nursing home. Would the aunts accept to slide the chute, or would they just keep a stiff upper lip and burn upstairs (the way they proudly accepted their trees to be cut down without stooping at calling the police)? As with a lot of protagonists, their fate remains unclear and seems open to optimistic or pessimistic evaluation.
(Also, on rereading, I remember one chaotic transition somewhere, maybe at Penn Station, with two people standing in the subway and described as being freezed as if unable to escape a fire; I thought it may have been a hint or foreshadowing of the aunt’s possible fate.)
> The woman who was behind getting the James Bast location preserved was a trustee of the Philharmonic and agreed to have it preserved only if James would come out of self-imposed exile.
That woman is Vida Duncan, we’ve seen Zona mock her for wasting one million on preserving artists’ places. If I got it right, they moved the house but still demolished the barn studio: that would be ironical because Vida’s goal was to preserve the places of art creation, and James (as Edward) composed in the demolished studio, not the preserved house.
As for James, his situation echoes the myth of Philoctetes (as in his opera), spurned and exiled by the Athenians, then later begged to help them conquer Troy.
> A janitor asks what to do with the music Bast wrote and he says to throw it away
Echoes the earlier scene of Amy asking Gibbs what to do with his list of quotations, and Gibbs saying to throw it away.
> They want to know if Stella will consent to donate [Norman’s] organs.
And they add that someone whose life depends on it could use them: this is of course Cates (and since he’s an administrator of the hospital, they could then sneaklily “unplug” Norman to harvest his heart). So apparently, Cates will die without this transplant.
But it seems Gaddis left some uncertainty here too: we see Coen exit with the doctor to discuss that matter privately, and come back later saying it’s settled without detail. A pessimist view is that Coen may negotiate a way to authorize the harvesting, which would put back some order in the legal situation of his new employer Stella (and would end up saving Cates, who’d owe one to Coen).
There’s plenty hope in the open ending(s) of JR, but only if the reader decides to interpret them this way; it’s also possible to see the goods crushed and the villains triumph all around.
> [Stella] told the fortune teller everything about the Bast brothers and Edward’s mother Nellie, and she noticed the short finger (does this mean it was Nellie?). Nellie later killed herself and they all blamed Stella.
Quite not Nellie. We had others pieces of the puzzle amidst the aunts conversations (mostly page 68, 230, 233-234): they had some horrible neighbor, a curtain-twitching gossip with the tip of one finger missing. Stella told the family’s dirty laundry to the fake fortune-teller then realized too late it was just that neighbor, who then spread the juicy stories in town.
Here too, there’s uncertainty about Nellie’s cause of death: Stella is convinced she killed herself, but the Bast aunts explained to her that Nellie died of consumption (page 66).
> [Bast] starts to worry about his scores in the garbage and asks for them back. But hospital policy says he can’t have them back.
I first thought that too, but we’ll see he did get back his papers (just like Gibbs did). Actually, Bast asked for two things: to have his papers back, and to not be wheeled to the exit. The hospital-policy answer was only about the wheelchair, so they give him his papers back but have to wheel him out (which is included in the description, as well apparently as an incoming Zona inert under bedsheets).
> And the orderlies are in a hurry to clean out this room because Zona is getting the room next and she wants it just so.
Zona’s fate too seems to rest with the optimistic or pessimistic collaboration of the reader: the orderlies aren’t sure she’ll make it, but they have to get everything ready like the last time she was there, just in case she’ll survive. U-decide!
> They arrive uptown.
They also see a truck with five dwarves claiming “None of Us Grew But the Business”, a sly commentary on the immaturity of JR (who hasn’t learned a real thing from his errors) and businessmen playing just to win. (They also see Dumor Delivery, who’s coming for Eigen.)
> Stella waits in the car and tells Edward to say nothing about her to Jack
Not exactly: Edward is still supposed to tell Gibbs she’s there, she just gives nothing more to say him.
> As he heads up paramedics come down the stairs with a woman on a stretcher. My vife mister…
A sad little story we get from a few pages later (and earlier): his obese wife couldn’t move, and he was kidnapped for several days by Schepperman to be the model of his last painting, so presumably his wife starved to death alone meanwhile. And now he’s apparently going to follow her to the morgue and cemetary, and probably just starve himself there, like goose-and-gander couples when one of them passes away.
He’s a minor tragic figure, but none of the artists who met him (Bast, Gibbs, Eigen, Schepperman) felt inspired by his humble real-life plight: they just rejected or ignored it. (I suppose Bolaño would have appreciated this subplot.)
> Chinese girl who came in from Hong Kong with sweaters […] a drunk general
Girl was Gibb’s suggestion to Piscator. Seems the Waldorf finally managed to expell General Haight.
> [Freddie] was a little upset when he found the drowned cat.
Rhoda was afraid of that, thought it didn’t happen at the time; it may be one of the various classic literary quotes or allusions Gaddis worked into the book for fun: “[Arnolph:] What news have ye? / [Agnes:] The little cat is dead. / [Arnolph:] It’s a pity. But what? we’re all mortal, and every one for himself.” (Molière, The School for Wives).
> [Freddie] fired a gun at the radio when they broke off the Minuet in G for an aspirin commercial
JR’s green aspirin, evidently. JR isn’t quite Hamlet, but still almost everyone is dead or about to die (more than 30 dead characters – not counting the Indians and the Africans, as Billy-the-Kid would say) or ruined by the end: even the fictional Grynszpan, the cat, and the radio!
> Turns out Gall sent Eigen’s play to Angels West
Cates told us Handler invested in a lousy theater company for a tax break, but they had an unexpected success: now we know why. (And we may wonder whether Bast’s score music will make Leva’s last movie a success, ruining another tax break.)
> Beamish says that Schramm got a letter from Arlington and Mrs Schramm is upset about that (I guess he’s not allowed to be buried there)
It’s unclear, but I got the feeling that Schramm was indeed buried there, and that’s why the newspapers are now angry about the epitaph, and people want to sue Gibbs for it: there wouldn’t be so much fuss if Arlington had just refused it, and the newspapers wouldn’t know about it.
(Maybe Arlington accepted it but didn’t know the epitaph was a traditional one for German soldiers buried in enemy territory? Kinda like the school’s motto that made a fuss only when they found out later.)
> And the back room, oh the back room – everything crashed through the ceiling. Bast thinks he sees Gibbs in the room, but Eigen says that it’s an artist working on a portrait he’s been trying to finish for years.
Gibbs had warned Beamish about Schramm’s ceiling ready to fall (Week 6). But the artist isn’t working on it, he had already finished the portrait: Schepperman kidnapped the old man (“my vife”) and kept it there for days until the portrait was finished, that’s when the old man escaped and slammed the door, causing the ceiling to fall.
The old man went back to his “vife” upstairs and found her dead, called the ambulance that just arrived. And Schepperman is now just trying to remove the plaster pieces glued into his fresh painting, while Gibbs reads him The Sleepwalkers, the book he found earlier as Schlafwandler (Week 9).
> Bast tries to tell Eigen that there’s a woman waiting for Gibbs, but he gets interrupted.
Eigen interrupt him because he thinks it’s about Amy, so he’ll give Gibbs the wrong (or right) message, and Stella should wait in vain then go away.
> Eigen gives him Amy’s address so he can bring Freddie there.
It seems left to the reader what will happen from that: (1) Basts tells Amy that Gibbs is alive and well, eventually reuniting them? (2) Amy is done with Gibbs, eventually trying with Bast? (3) Bast only meets some servant, never learning that Mrs Cutler is Amy?
> Bast wants his papers (scores with lavender crayon marking)
(I insist it’s purple crayon, like Gibbs. Lavender is the color attributed to Amy, her towels and handkerchiefs.)
Once Bast is out, I think Eigen’s muttering underlines how Gaddis surnamed Edward: Bast[ard]. Not only was Edward feeling like a bastard child, but he’s always been wondering whether he was Thomas’s bastard or James’s bastard.
> Then there’s a tape of JR
Hey why a tape? I mean holy, this here voice is JR live on the phone, man! Eigen picked up the phone and just left it hanging. Also, one could think Hyde is alive because JR is quoting him: but earlier, Bast said that Hyde gave him a copy of his Indian speech to send to JR, that’s probably what JR received and quotes.
> The book does feel like a puzzle, and Gaddis demands a lot out of the reader.
Some movies demand to be seen at least twice to really have seen them, whether it’s Eraserhead or Airplane. If one rereads JR on the side (like 10 pages a day) in the weeks following its reading, while one still has the whole book in head, then it’s not only ten times easier to read but also more funny and enjoyable, and it provides a rich tapestry of details and nuances.
(Of course, using all the annotated scene outline, essays, interviews, and Steven Moore’s book from the Gaddis Annotations site is a great boost before and during a rereading. I guess using a fully searchable e-book version should incredibly facilitate reading and parsing too.)
The important thing is not to read but to reread, warned Borges.
By the by, some name typos you may want to fix for ease of searching:
Waddems > Waddams
Governed Cates > Governor
Think how preposterous > “Think [with opening quotation mark]
Further, gates says > Cates
Delasera > Delaserea
Freddy > Freddie
diCepahliss’ >> diCephalis’s
Scheffermann >> Schepperman
Schefferman > Schepperman
My wife mister… > vife [sic]
Brittanica >> Britannica
(And you really can delete this post.)