Read Online Agape Agape by William Gaddis - Free Book Online

priest’s the pandomimic and the gap gets wider, just look back at the great 1890 census that Hollerith put together now there’s the beginning. There was the beginning of key-sort and punched cards and IBM and NCR and the whole driven world we’ve inherited from some rinky-dink piano roll widening the gap when Aeolian finally got into the reproducing piano act with their Duo-Art Pianola piano right before the war, they’d put one into a Steinway, for the pleasure of Plato’s best educated elite and the unique great artist whose use of the sostenuto and soft pedals and his tempo phrasing and attack they pretended they could hear giving demonstrations and testimonials for Welte and Aeolian and Ampico and Angelus and Apollo, because these things ran four or five thousand dollars even before they started the wood carving on the case like Tom Mix in the manner of the Spanish Renaissance to match his house or the gilded garlands and decorations on the old ivory enamel case for the juvenile movie star Jackie Coogan or Rudolph Valentino’s Angelus they’re all here I just saw it, where’s the list royalty right down the line I just yes, Dowager Empress of China letter here from Prince Ch’ing gets the jump on them all with her Apollo piano player back in 1906 goes right on to something I wrote in the margin what’s the last ⅛“ 51 100/thndth sec this my writing? Must be, shaky uncertain like every wrong decision I’ve ever made never made any other kind, never came through for anybody, why I end up here with a hopeless project like this one conversations with these detachable selves and belly-talkers get back to the slurred letters in dght can’t even read it shows character that’s what’s at the heart of the whole thing, lack of character see right here where money my ideas of money, my whole view of money has warped my entire life and the, all the, stress yes avoid stress widening the gap between Freud’s nickel and dime trash and Plato’s wealthy educated elite with these reproducing pianos in the Élysée Palace in Paris and Queen Mary in London, ex-King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive of Egypt, the Shah of Persia and the King of Siam, Mussolini in Rome, the Dowager Queen of Italy, the Duchess of Argyll and Her Late Majesty the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia direct line back to Marie Antoinette’s gold canary and that mob at the Bastille but here the widening gap was money and democracy, between the Ampico in Vincent Astor’s music room and six Autopianos on the battleship USS Delaware, between Helen Keller in the forest when the tree falls and the, no, no wait. Wait, this whole discovery I just made yes that’s what this is, this scribble in the margin it’s the technology! good God the technology! A hundred years ago this recording instrument that measured the time it took the hammer on the last eighth of an inch before it strikes the string for exact loudness, to fifty-one hundred-thousandths of a second! It’s the whole thing! It’s the proof of the whole thing, of my whole idea my whole thesis entertainment the parent of technology I should, I could write and publish a paper separate from this big project, combine this with authenticity preserved in the music itself and the fleeting performance by its finest interpreter or the composer himself like Grieg playing his dreadful Wedding March piece of paper here somewhere get it all written down before somebody steals it, of course if I write it down that’s almost an invitation to steal it, mail all over the place here drying out just something to write on because this is the heart of it right back to the start, you see? Back to Vaucanson’s flutist gives us Jacquard’s loom back to pleasure that’s bad in all circumstances and Pythagoras’ terrible catechism sit here wet as a hen suddenly see the underside of my arm royal