| Carpenter's Gothic
index
annotations for chapter
1 . 2
. 3 . 4 . 5
. 6 . 7
Abbreviated
References
A. Gaddis’ Books
CG: Carpenter’s Gothic. 1985. New York: Penguin, 1999.
FHO: A Frolic of His Own. New York: Poseidon, 1994.
JR: J R. 1975. New York: Penguin, 1993.
R: The Recognitions. 1955. New York: Penguin, 1993.
B. Gaddis’s Sources
EB: Encyclopædia Britannica. 14th
ed., 1929.
ODQ: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1st ed., 6th
impression (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). Gaddis owned this
particular impression, given to him by Ormande de Kay in Paris in 1950.
Plato: The Dialogues of Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett.
New York: Random House, 1937. 2 vols. |
26.12]
On a besoin d’un nouvel aspirateur: Fr.:
“You [or We] need a new vacuum cleaner.” (The succeeding French is
largely self-explanatory and consequently will not be translated.)
28.30]
LOSS OF $412 MILLION [...] BY GENERAL MOTORS:
a front-page headline in the New
York Times, 25 July 1980.
31.21]
While we wait for the napkin, the soup gets cold: from the second
stanza of Fitz Hugh Ludlow's 1869 poem "Too Late":
While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
And every thing comes too late--too late!
The second line appears at 62.1 and the beginning of line three at
122.16. "Too late" is a recurring phrase throughout the
novel. [James Bennett III]
35.35]
Montego Bay: on
the NW coast of the island of Jamaica.
36.10]
Laocoön: a
reference to the principal figure in the famous group sculpture, now
in the Vatican, dating from the second century B.C.
44.4]
Teakell: J
R features
a Vern Teakell, superintendent of J R’s school district, and a dentist
named Doctor Teakell (230).
46.16]
Rip Van Winkle: from
Washington Irving’s tale of the same name (1819).
49.8]
burnt out case: given
McCandless’s activities in Africa, probably an allusion to Graham
Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case (1961),
a novel set in a leper colony in the Congo.
50.33]
mysterious ways:
“God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform”—the best-known
line from William Cowper’s Olney
Hymns (ODQ).
50.36]
a mantled figure [...] all three vanished: from
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
(1847), chap. 12, by way of the 1943 film version starring Orson
Welles and Joan Fontaine.
53.19]
the moon ascending in solemn march [...] followed her course:
ibid.
54.18]
a warm glow [...] the most pleasant radiance: ibid.
55.6]
a demoniac laugh [...] in a deep sleep: ibid.,
chap. 15.
56.31]
down a winding walk [...] splitting half of it away: ibid.,
chap. 23. |
