Johnny's Buttons

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

I realize that there is a thread with buttons in the title but that one has more to do with Morse Code.

I'm wondering about those infamous buttons that scattered on floor.

Given Johnny's way of misinterpreting the world around him, how might the buttons represent something other than mere buttons?

Finding the missing lead from the bullet on the second of the two collage pages brought me here. Where? To a hypothesis; To a wondering-- the corduroy's coat/jacket's buttons. There are two types of buttons that come to mind when I think of the corduroy coats I've seen:

That '70s blazer has sort of dome-shaped, perhaps wooden buttons. The heavy material needs something more substantial than the wafer like buttons used on, say London Fog raincoats. If they're the wooden ones with that sort of knot shape, maybe that relates to the Yggdrasil Tree- relating to life while it lives.

The type of corduroy jacket I had once had bore buttons similar to those on a denim jacket with words emblazened in a circular format not unlike some of the strange text on one of the pages in HoL and in a similar fashion as the words that describe the caliber/calibre on the flat end of a bullet. This would relate to death or maybe a false sense of power (recall why he kept those guns, holding on to them).


The way in which the buttons make appearances in the book is really not that different from the way people and places have been brought up and we see people and places and times redefined or muddled in Johnny's words.

Maybe the buttons make this a kind of choose your own adventure book but, then again, the missing lead in the empty shell in the collage would be foolish to overlook in such a book of clues.

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

That's crazy talk, cord. Don't you understand that the lead was Photoshopped out. They used the erase tool and, the image that was behind the lead was a layer added in from another file. Didn't you read the part about how Adobe-savvy Johnny/Zampano was?

Yep.

[Ellimist]

There's a reason no one replied to your thread.

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

Thank you for sharing.

[rend]

I feel you're reading into it a bit too deeply. the only mention that was made of the buttons were that they had disappeared.

In an abstract sense if could mean that Johnny was beginning to come apart at the most vulnerable point (his hunger for fighting was returning and his sharp concentration (that he used for making 5 or 9 point needles) gave way in favor of whim and all that came with it).

Or it could relate to how Navy was found by Karen stripped of his clothes, as the darkness slowly strips everything from anything within its depths until there is no longer evidence that the depths still exist; not quite oblivion, but about as close as the house is going to get.

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

Corduroy= cord of the king

There's a reference to the 'suicide king' the King of Hearts by Johnny. The line (forgive me for not having the book on me at work) also says something about the second person clueing-in on to what he is doing...as if it is a dark secret.

So, you're saying that, when the buttons are gone, he's like Navy at his most vulnerable? I could buy that, especially since Navy is, for the majority of the story, very empowered and noble and more of a go-getter (not so vulnerable). Kingly, I suppose.

The buttons were 'sewn' back on at some point, though. Without mention to any sutures that I can recall. More needle work, I suppose.

[fearful_syzygy]

Everything has chains.
Absolutely nothing's changed.
Take my hand, not my picture, spilled my tincture...

[Karuvitomsk]

Stop with the Kerouac, Cord. Especially if you're trying to make some sort of point.

The loss of trivial objects usually isn't an issue unless they're all gone.
Old Man Z'd know that.

And I'm assuming "corduroy" is an anglicisation of "corde du roi"? No relevance, really. I'm just satisfied I recognized it.

[Short_Fuse]

Hmm, what should everyone do at the same time on this topic which has been discussed multiple times...









ignore

[fearful_syzygy]

FYI:

corduroy, n. and a.

[A name app. of English invention: either originally intended, or soon after assumed, to represent a supposed Fr. *corde du roi ‘the king's cord’; it being a kind of ‘cord’ or corded fustian.

  No such name has ever been used in French: on the contrary, among a list of articles manufactured at Sens in 1807, Millin de Grandmaison Voyage d. Départ. du Midi I. 144 enumerates ‘étoffes de coton, futaines, kings-cordes’, evidently from English. Wolstenholme's Patent of 1776 mentions nearly every thing of the fustian kind except corduroy, which yet was well known by 1790. Duroy occurs with serge and drugget as a coarse woollen fabric manufactured in Somersetshire in the 18th c., but it has no apparent connexion with corduroy. A possible source has been pointed out in the English surname Corderoy.]

[Rryssa]

FYI:

corduroy, n. and a.

[A name app. of English invention: either originally intended, or soon after assumed, to represent a supposed Fr. *corde du roi ‘the king's cord’; it being a kind of ‘cord’ or corded fustian.

No such name has ever been used in French: on the contrary, among a list of articles manufactured at Sens in 1807, Millin de GrandMaison Voyage d. Départ. du Midi I. 144 enumerates ‘étoffes de coton, futaines, kings-cordes’, evidently from English. Wolstenholme's Patent of 1776 mentions nearly every thing of the fustian kind except corduroy, which yet was well known by 1790. Duroy occurs with serge and drugget as a coarse woollen fabric manufactured in Somersetshire in the 18th c., but it has no apparent connexion with corduroy. A possible source has been pointed out in the English surname Corderoy.]

I saw that. Next thing you know you'll be stamping out misinformation.

Or something.

[Karuvitomsk]

Well that's nifty, ain't it.

[fearful_syzygy]

I mean, not that that necessarily means anything. Just because it's a folk etymology doesn't mean it's not a common assumption; quite the contrary.

Even so, Monsieur Corde de Suerle here has seemingly constructed his own private language of allusions and metaphors on which to base all of his posts. This is at least the fifth post (nay, thread) in which this so-called Suicide King (him and all his silly suicide k'niggets) is mentioned, and of course he managed to slip a reference to heroin in there without anyone even noticing. It's impressive really, this ability to construct entire webs of meaning out of thin air like that.

It's also kind of psychotic.

[Rryssa]

and of course he managed to slip a reference to heroin in there without anyone even noticing.

I think everyone noticed. I'm almost sure of it. :|


Edited for copy/paste failure. Twice.

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

I'm not sure what the Pearl Jam reference was but, no, not out of thin air. The King of Hearts is referenced. If I have to read through the book to get the page number I will...eventually. The King of Hearts is nicknamed "The Suicide King". Wiki it. As far as buttons go, you show me a thread addressing the subject without it relating to a different subject.
I'm trying to make sense of why the author chose a corduroy coat as opposed to another material. Again, not out of thin air. There is all that stuff about materials in olde English but, why bring it up again, right? I might expect some more McCain-style selective listening.

As far as serif fonts being less legible than sans-serif, here's what Wiki has to say on the topic:

"In traditional printing serifed fonts are used for body text because they are considered easier to read than sans-serif fonts for this purpose.^[1] Sans-serif fonts are more often used headlines, headings, and shorter pieces of text and subject matter requiring a more casual feel than the formal look of serifed types"

and, with a background in newspaper, that's how I'd always experienced the font issue.

Reading further in Wiki I found "While in print serifed fonts are considered more readable, sans-serif is considered more legible on computer screens." Again, I'm old school like that so, here's your sans-serif. Nice and easy.

[Rryssa]

There was a post here. It's gone now.

[fearful_syzygy]

I'm not sure what the Pearl Jam reference was but, no, not out of thin air.

"Corduroy" is the name of the eighth track on Vitalogy, Pearl Jam's third studio album. The title is a reference to a corduroy coat Eddie Vedder owned at the time. Track three on the same album is called "Not for You", the chorus of which bears a striking resemblance to the epigraph of the book of Leaves.

I'm not denying that the King of Hearts is mentioned in HoL (p. 327, etched in the chrome of Lude's Zippo). Nor am I denying that Johnny has a corduroy coat that loses its buttons. I'm suggesting that I fail to see the connexion and you are not doing anything to establish one.

Also, can I just say...

As far as buttons go, you show me a thread addressing the subject without it relating to a different subject.

Are you suggesting that this, finally, is such a thread? Seriously?

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

Kingdom...page 381

This is also the page in which Johnny elaborates on his sensation with guns. The master of his domain.

As far as connecting those dots go, the bullets are referred to as 'rounds'.

.


To back up my "buttons might actually be shells theory" the one gun that he already possessed is the highlyl concealable H&K (Heckler & Kock) which has been used by James Bonds about as often as the PPK (which seems to be making another appearance in the Quantum of Solace or, what I prefer to call, Phantom of Frolic.

[Karuvitomsk]

There was a post here. It's gone now.

It came back. Unfortunately an undead madman came with it.

To back up my "buttons might actually be shells theory" the one gun that he already possessed is the highlyl concealable H&K (Heckler & Kock) which has been used by James Bonds about as often as the PPK (which seems to be making another appearance in the Quantum of Solace or, what I prefer to call, Phantom of Frolic.

.. I'm not sure how to respond to this.

[fearful_syzygy]

I think what you need, Cord, are bullet points, not bullets.

[sutrix]

Burn!

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

Okay, so, as far as the H&K goes, the weapon was chosen by the author's Johnny for some reason. My guess is because it is considered among the most concealable modern weapons, so much so, that M16 and secret service, etc. use it.

• We know Johnny has been brainwashed by his foster father to only feel safe with a gun under the pillow.

• We know that Johnny buys bullets along with his Christmas presents to himself and can safely assume that he had bullets before this before he bought the Taurus and rifle (but he downplays the presense of the bullets until Christmastime-ironic).

• So, what I am wondering is has the handgun been implimented in the same obscure manner as the axe?

• Does the corduroy coat represent a literary symbol for his sense of security (perhaps more violent than he lets on)?

• If he and Lude are one in the same person, as others have speculated, could the King of Hearts on the Zippo and the 'cord of the King' coat have a common 'thread'?

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

That's crazy talk, cord. Don't you understand that the lead was Photoshopped out. They used the erase tool and, the image that was behind the lead was a layer added in from another file. Didn't you read the part about how Adobe-savvy Johnny/Zampano was?

Yep.

That was a response to the retort from FS (which she must have erased the same day) in which he supposed that the image had been altered so as to appear that it has no lead in the shell.

He must have realized how stupid it sounded.


Maybe he felt a little bitter having not noticed that there was lead missing from a rifle casing. The absense of the lead implies that there is gun play left unwritten.

I find it interesting that people do not acknowledge this observation. That is, in posts that they do not erase.

[heartbreak]

The absense of the lead implies that there is gun play left unwritten.

If you're talking about the silver casing in Collage #2 on page 583. It doesn't look like that casing has ever been fired. It's too clean. It might not have been loaded, thus no lead.

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

They don't all split or get all burnt. I've seen brass casings that clean at the ( albiet, weathered ) army training wilderness. Brass casings are used by the military because other metals tend to corrode in the harsh regions of combat zones.

So, why is it a hunting rifle casing? Unloaded? What, would Zampano be doing with a spent hunting bullet from a time he was either blind or maybe Johnny added to the collage (I tend to think the latter). After all, it is a zinc? casing more geared for a sport rifle such as the Weatherby?

We know Johnny omits occurances and moments. So, what was he up to with those firearms?

[heartbreak]

They don't all split or get all burnt. I've seen brass casings that clean at the ( albiet, weathered ) army training wilderness. Brass casings are used by the military because other metals tend to corrode in the harsh regions of combat zones.

It doesn't appear to be brass.

So, why is it a hunting rifle casing? Unloaded? What, would Zampano be doing with a spent hunting bullet from a time he was either blind or maybe Johnny added to the collage (I tend to think the latter). After all, it is a zinc? casing more geared for a sport rifle such as the Weatherby?

Unloaded as in it has never been filled with powder and a lead bullet.

We know Johnny bought guns. He says he did.

The appearance of an unloaded shell casing in the collage suggests two things:

a) it was fired,

or b) it was never loaded.

Seeing no evidence for a then it must be b.

We know Johnny omits occurances and moments. So, what was he up to with those firearms?

What occurrences do we know Johnny omits?

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

It doesn't appear to be brass.


What occurrences do we know Johnny omits?

Right, that's exactly what I am saying. Since it is not brass we can assume that the bullet was not a wartime round. So, as with the editing job Johnny's done with the writing this evidence begs the question What has Johnny added to the collage? and How?

What occurrences do we know Johnny omits? Well, it may seem like little things but they all add up: what was he eating, what lead up to his sexcapades, what was all that vomitting about? Holes in the timeline.

[heartbreak]

Right, that's exactly what I am saying. Since it is not brass we can assume that the bullet was not a wartime round. So, as with the editing job Johnny's done with the writing this evidence begs the question What has Johnny added to the collage? and How?

But how can we assume Johnny added it to the collection of Zampano's stuff? Perhaps Zampano had it to see what the casing of a Weatherby rifle round would feel like so he could describe it if need be for Holloway's character.

What occurrences do we know Johnny omits? Well, it may seem like little things but they all add up: what was he eating, what lead up to his sexcapades, what was all that vomitting about? Holes in the timeline.

How do they add up? What is the importance of what Johnny ate? Or the events that lead up to his sexcapades? Or why he was vomiting?

[On a Map of Swirling Cord]

I'm about to board the portal again (re-read) but isn't it one of his lady-friends that vomits? (not that Johnny doesn't, which, by the way is something that happens with heroine addicts- there's that hole, which of his experiences are the lie that he admittedly might believe?)

[heartbreak]

I'm about to board the portal again (re-read) but isn't it one of his lady-friends that vomits? (not that Johnny doesn't, which, by the way is something that happens with heroine addicts- there's that hole, which of his experiences are the lie that he admittedly might believe?)

Food poisoning also causes vomiting and since like you said, we don't know what Johnny eats, perhaps he is trying to cover it up.