A Frolic of His Own
pp. 251--300
Annotations by Steven Moore except as [noted].

Page references are to the current Scribner softcover edition. References in parentheses are to first US edition (Poseidon) and to U.K. editions.

A Frolic of His Own
index
annotations for
softcover (hardcover & UK)
 pages
         1-50 (1-54) §
51-100 (56-112) §
101--150 (119--164) §
151-200 (174-224) §
201-250 (228-281) §
251-300 (285-341) §
301-350 (344-394) §
  351--400 (402-449) §
401--450 (465-516) §
  451--end (517-end) §

252.23 (286.8) curator bonis: legal guardian.

252.31 (286.16) N.O.V.: non obstante verdicto: Lat., notwithstanding the verdict, a judgment reversing the decision of a jury.  

252.38 (286.23) Justice Holmes’ The Common Law Lecture V: an 1881 book, generally considered one of the most important contributions to American jurisprudence. Gaddis probably used the 1963 edition published by Harvard University Press, edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe (cited hereafter). The present quotation is found on p. 130.  

253.11 (286.35) ‘For the bailee […] Holmes op cit.: Common Law 135 and n.12.

  253.37 (287.22) (Wilcox […] 335): {this & following not in Prosser}  

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
Catton: Bruce Catton, The Army of the Potomac: Mr Lincoln's Army. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962.
EB: Encyclopædia Britannica. 14^th 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.
Prosser: William L. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts, 4th edition (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1971).

258.4 (292.3) ‘the unswerving punctuality of chance’: a phrase appearing near the end of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel (1929)

"Then I of yours the seeming, Ben? Your flesh is dead and buried in these hills: my unimprisoned soul haunts through the million streets of life, living its spectral nightmare of hunger and desire. Where, Ben? Where is the world?"

"Nowhere,' Ben said. "You are your world."

Inevitable catharsis by the threads of chaos. Unswerving punctuality of chance. Apexical summation, from the billion deaths of possibility, of things done. Scribner softcover edition, p. 520)

Gaddis told Steven Moore he heard the phrase used by a fellow Harvard classmate in the 1940s; it appears in all five of his novels: R 9.5, JR 486.1, CG 233.3, FHO 50.34, 258.4, AA 63.1. – Travis Dunn

258.5 (292.4) the twilight of confusion [...] inter canem et lupum: Lat.: “between the dog and the wolf."

258.33: magic despaired and became religion: also used in The Recognitions at 12.1; see note there.

259.2 (293.3) E M Cioran [...] errors and confusion wherever you look!’: E. M. Cioran (1911-95), Rumanian-born French philosopher. The quotation is from his History and Utopia, trans. Richard Howard (NY: Seaver, 1987), 74. (Gaddis also used the quotation in “Old Foes with New Faces” [RSP 92].)

259.17 (293.20) He marks the sparrow’s fall: paraphrased from Matt 10.29.

268.16 (303.36) read someplace where they put this rattlesnake in this man’s mailbox: the same story that terrified Elizabeth Booth in CG (98.28).

268.36 (304.19) Gresham’s law: the tendency for money of lower intrinsic value to circulate more widely than that of higher value (e.g., paper dollars over silver dollars).

268.40 (304.23) drowned ceremony of innocence now the worse were filled with passionate intensity: from Yeats’s poem "The Second Coming": "The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

272.29 (308.37) Massapequa: Gaddis’s hometown on Long Island and the setting for J R .

274.26 (311.10) Mister Mohlenhoff: a character from J R: Herbert B. Mohlenhoff, head of Endo Appliance and Major Hyde’s boss. (His firm’s name is given on 318: Schriek Mohlenhoff & Shransky.)

276.9 (313.4) Nearer My God: "Nearer My God to Thee," a popular religious hymn.

276.37 (313.32) judge named Cooley coined the phrase: Thomas McIntyre Cooley (1824-98), American jurist.

277.32 (314.36) Lee Harvey’s widow: Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy’s alleged assassin.

280.19 (318.3) Where had Maid Quiet gone to, nodding her russet hood?: see 88.13.

283.8 (321.14) full of passionate intensity [...] mere anarchy upon the world: also from Yeats’s "Second Coming."

284.27 (323.4) It seemed to me [...] as if the lake were slowly flooding: the italicized passages on 323-24 are from James Fox’s White Mischief (New York: Random, 1982)—as acknowledged on the copyright page—a book about the decadent English colony in Kenya during the 1930s. The italicized passages are taken from a paragraph on p. 260 where Fox describes Lake Naivasha in Kenya’s Rift Valley. (This is a book Gaddis apparently read when gathering African material for CG.)

285.17 (323.39) that time of year [...] when yellow leaves, or none, or few: from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, often quoted or alluded to in CG (originally called "That Time of Year," just as A Frolic was originally called "The Last Act").

285.30 (324.14) beauty nothing but beginning of terror it was still just able to bear: from the opening lines of Rilke’s first Duino Elegy.  See
http://www.homestar.org/bryannan/duino.html

285.38 (324.24) Minjekahwun [...] Omeme [...] Mudjekeewis [...] Wawa [...] Adjidaumo [...] Kenabeek: more names from "Hiawatha." more name from The Song of Hiawatha: “Minjekahwun” are Hiawatha’s magic mittens; the Omeme, Wawa, Adjidaumo, and the Kenebeek (plural) are animals mentioned often; “the heartless Mudjekeewis” is Hiawatha’s father, personified as the West Wind.

286.23 (325.14) John Brown’s mother and grandmother both died mad: American abolitionist (1800-1859); cf. 329.9 ff., where Oscar quotes the famous marching song about him.

289.36 (329.9) John Brown’s body lies amouldering in the grave: Catton explains how this 1850 gospel hymn was adapted as an abolitionist marching song before finally given new words by Julia Ward Howe to become “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (39-40).

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes that poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.         
[CL]

292.40 (332.34) Sheridan’s School for Scandal: a comedy by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1777), often revived (but not, according to the New York Times, at the time FHO is set).

293.39 (333.38) REVEREND UDE: from CG.

295.12 (335.23) let’s part better strangers as the Bard says: from As You Like It (3.2.276: "I do desire that we may be better strangers").

297.32 (338.21) the battle of Shiloh: a battle at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, on 6-7 April 1862; Confederate forces made a successful surprise attack on Grant’s Union forces, which eventually repelled them. (The details are not from Catton; Gaddis obviously used several sources when writing Once at Antietam.)

298.4 (338.36) Babri Masjid mosque in far off Uttar Pradesh: in 1990 this Moslem mosque in Ayodhya, India, was stormed by fundamentalist Hindus, who wanted to build a shrine to the God Rama there. See "A Hindu Militant is Seized in India," New York Times, 30 October 1990, 6.

300.12 (341.20) things are in the saddle and ride mankind in Emerson’s voice: from Emerson’s "Ode (Inscribed to W. H. Channing)," ll. 50-51 (ODQ); first used in J R (400.41).

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