Beginning at the bottom of page 59 “See I crack, so, he sit in the poele…”
Continuing with themes from the last few sessions, p.59 through the bottom of p.60, we share the sentiment of the “perspirer” who knows “ho har twa to clect infamatios” (how hard it was to collect information), as we receive more information from passer-by types being asked to testify their accounts of HCE’s reputation, ranging from: “the skalot shame” it would be to “jailahim in lockup…with ehim being [a n]orphan and enjoining such wicked illith(health)” to exoneration, placing blame on “Them two bitches [who] ought to be leashed.” To a 17-year-old revivalist, the coincident (coincidence-incident) of “interfizzing” [interacting] “with grenadines (grenadiers) and other respectable and disgusted peersons using the park” is bad enough. “That perpendicular person is a brut! [as she insinuates HCE, in a perpendicular, erect, form |_|_| as a peering + person = peerson]. But a magnificent brut!" Each passers-by's testimony is suspect; of course there is drinking: grenadine, fizzing, brut. An unnamed “wouldbe martyr” also chimes in, but only after being “grilled” on the subject. Possible associations to fraudulent testimonies under electro-shock torture, as his grilling comes while he is “taught/thought” to wear bracelets” and is in discussion of “shadowers torrified" (terrified or tortured-fried) by “potent bolts of indradiction (Indra the Zeus-like Indian God or – lightning talk)."
We discussed how the chaos of the streets creates a need for an authoritative regulation of morality. Without fear of lightning (indradiction) “there would be fighting all over Cuxhaven.” And with no clear law recorded to punish HCE, Sylvia Silence, the girl detective, suggests “he should pay the full penalty…as pew Subsec. 32, section 11, of the C.L.A. Act 1885,” the law that sent Oscar Wilde to prison. Wilde’s figure epitomizes this regulation in terms of human sexuality. Wilde’s shadow, as we discussed, is present throughout pp.60-61. “We have meat two hourly,” which reminded the group of De Profundis “I have met too late or too soon,” the “C.L.A act of 1885,” “that sheew gweatness was his twadgedy,” written with an influx of Wilde letters that stand in for R’s. It seems, as Meagher notes, there is something more at work, a “siege of his trousers.” Keeping with interchanging letters signifying errors and shadowy signifiers, p.61 also features repetitions of q-p and p-q, pints and quarts, “Questa and Puella, piquant and quoite.” The mirroring of the expressions reminded the group of Issy looking in the mirror. And interestingly enough, Puella is Latin for girl – but if the p were to take its q mirror image, completes the Italian phrase questa and quella: this and that.
The bottom of p. 61 creates a shift in the text, in subject matter and in style. The collection of information, for now, “is now all seen heard [and] forgotten.” The language of the text shifts as well. We noticed that while the previous section focused on the pronouns “I” and “you,” (58-61) the bottom of p. 61 creates a shift that carries over through p. 63 to “we” and “us.” Who are the we and us in the shift? Well, they are we ourselves, us, along with our self-reflective text/narrative that reminds us, that “We seem…to be reading our Amenti [Book of the Dead] in the sixth sealed chapter,” FW being a book of the dead itself, is reminding us that chapter six, the Quiz Show, is still sealed, in that we haven’t read it yet, and while we think we may have answers, we do not yet know the questions.
The narration warns us, on pp.61-62 about the flaws of the testimonies given, being “fables” of “la[y]men and their counts” that may “beyessed [or] denayed…given to us by some who use the truth but sparingly…” and with their “proper sins” they will rise up against HCE as if he “as were he made a curse for them…” Lots of imagery to the seafaring on the top of p. 62 “the outraved gales of Atreeatic” the Adriatic Sea, “shipalone, a raven of the wave” possibly remembering the quest that brought HCE to Ireland or a journey that takes him elsewhere now.
This warning introduces us to the “premier terror of Errorland,” which we will now enter. In Errorland starts with what we perceive as an intentionally fabricated “transparingly nontrue” account of HCE's crime in the park told through a Lionel Hutz like-lawyer. This speaker concocts scenarios he is unsure of, yet seems to make up as he moves forward. The story is introduced that HCE “one tall man, humping a suspicious parcel” while walking home may have been attacked with a “revolver placed to his [face] with the words: you’re shot, major, by an unknowable assailant (masked)” who may have been jealous of the girls in the park. This is, of course, followed by a question mark, as though the speaker is working out the story himself as he speaks it. On p. 63 the story continues. The tall man can either be shot or have his face bashed in by this assailant for non-compliance. The speaker stutters “that that that” as he tries to move the possible story forward, and HCE is arrested by a town guard for being out after dark with a bottle of alcohol at Haveyou-caught-emerod’s temperance gateway.
End: page 63 “Haveyou-caught-emerod’s temperance gateway was there in a gate’s way.
