I also missed the somewhat subtle clue(s) about Eli’s con. I was pretty sure he had framed Carlos, but didn’t guess the reason why. How was Carlos about to figure out the con? I recall he kept Eli’s book checked out of the school library for a long time – was that related? I’d also never heard of bishop’s weed, or it’s effect on skin color. Google to the rescue! The plant that darkens your skin permanently
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@CBBBlinker from your link, not a pleasant process to darken skin with bishops weed-
“The plant is phototoxic, and unleashes its unpleasantness in the presence of sunlight. Often this means terrible rashes and blistering when the eater is exposed to sunlight for any length of time. Enough exposure to light and it becomes carcinogenic. But it does have one interesting effect — when a person who has eaten bishop’s weed exposes their skin to sunlight, it darkens dramatically. Those who take it often, or in high enough doses, find that their skin turns permanently darker.”
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So maybe this is why Eli did not get the outdoor mundane tasks like taking care of the chickens??
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Does Eli ever say he is Black or White? I know he doesn’t in his book. He lets others fill in that blank for him. Interesting that Harrison fills in “Black” which says more about Harrison than Eli.
I figured Eli was on the wrong side of truthful but … What he did to Carlos was just cruel.
While Harrison isn’t my favorite of the three triplets, I didn’t dislike him per se. He’s obnoxious, particularly to his siblings. I also think he’s the most displaced of the three. Walden was a decidedly poor fit for him starting at an early age. However, he’s good to his mother as Stella points out when talking about him.
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Much the same for my sisters: dressed alike - same classes - same college. They were considered a unit with a “baby sister.” One’s obituary says it all: it identifies her as a triplet listing the names of those who survive her including her “baby sister Ignatius.” I happened to be close to sixty at the time but “baby sister” is my place in the family and evidently will be forever.
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I don’t know about publicly, but he does say it (albeit with analogies and air quotes) to the Oppenheimer siblings. To Harrison:
“But still,” said Eli, though he was smiling, “the sacred brotherhood of the Negro and the Jew. Go down, Moses. Two peoples bonded in suffering. Do you think that explains our friendship?”
And to Phoebe:
“Now as a person”–again with the quote marks–“of color, I wave my magic wand and absolve you of all crimes real and imaginary.”
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Yes and hey!! Your question just gave me clarity on a passage that had confused me. Harrison is talking to Eli about Dr. Loring:
“Did he check out your hands?” asked Harrison.
Eli’s fork, laden with the end of a sausage link, paused in mid-air. “What?”
“Oh…it’s just, he wanted to look at my hands last night. Something about evidence of physical labor. In the Roarkian tradition.”
Eli continued to look at him, and as he did, Harrison felt his own face begin to tighten, and the absolute conviction that he had offended Eli started to pulse through him, horribly. But after a moment his friend shook his head in an affable way, “No, he did not. We’re not all meant for the fields, I suppose” (p. 233).
I’d say Eli thought for a split second that Harrison had figured out his secret.
(Eli would have had to come up with a bogus reason for not being able to work outside because I’m sure the Roarke administrators weren’t in on the con.)
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@mary13 excellent discovery- very interesting-
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I don’t think we are told what Eli did instead of outdoor work are we?
I don’t think so. I can’t actually picture him doing any kind of manual labor.
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I remember them indicating (if not specifically, I don’t recall) that Eli had inside tasks. Like in the kitchen or the office guy or something!
@abasket Good catch! I was thinking it was that he wouldn’t made to do manual labor BECAUSE he was black, which is what his comment back to Harrison gets at. So, a la @Mary13, I wonder what he told the people at Roarke to get out of doing anything outside?
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Whenever I read anything about Harrison, I could only think of Tucker Carlson.
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Re September 11: I’m wondering if it was deliberately written to be a surprise to us all, just as the actual day was a surprise to everyone.
Re Eli and race: I actually went back and looked for references when he said he had never publicly self identified as black, and he is very cautious in the beginning, allowing (facilitating) others to identify him as black but never explicitly saying so. However, towards the end, he gets sloppier about it, to the point where he uses air quotes when speaking with Phoebe as a person “of color.”
I see Eli as a modern day Jud Suss for the conservative movement, with his fairly pedestrian views elevated simply due to his apparent ethnicity.
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So given this is CC I’m wondering how people reacted to the grandparents’ (and then Salo’s) art donations to Cornell? Did they need to do this? Do you resent it given most of us don’t have valuable artwork to donate to a college to ensure our kids’ acceptance? Did it make you cringe? Were you surprised none of the kids in either generation seemed to object to the donations and what does that say about them or about the milieu they were raised in?
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It made me cringe and I absolutely hated it. I also don’t know if it really made a difference. Additionally, while Cornell is a fabulous school and I would have been proud if either of my kids went there, if you’re going to try and bribe your way in, why not go for Harvard or Yale??
I was laying in bed last night thinking about 9/11 being part of the story. Losing someone in 9/11 was a life-changing event. Not in just the physical sense of the person no longer being around, but the emotional component of losing someone as a result of such a horrific terrorist attack. Did losing Salo on 9/11 change any of the family members’ lives? Not just the trajectory of their lives, but change them emotionally, causing them to approach life differently. Being New Yorkers, they would have known a lot of people who lived, or didn’t live, through 9/11. I’m not near NYC but still had a dad of one of my students in Tower 1 on 9/11. He just made it out with the other people in his office. The Tower collapsed minutes after they got out. His coworkers who turned left out of the building all died in the collapse. He and his other coworkers who turned right, lived. The experience changed him and his family significantly.
I’m not convinced the triplets changed at all, at least by what the book shared with us. Johanna’s life changed because she never got divorced, but did she change? The only one I see 9/11 significantly impacting, both emotionally and the trajectory of her life, is Phoebe. She grew up with an absent father because of death. Very different from how the triplets grew up missing Salo in their lives.
I don’t know why this all popped into my head last night. It took up enough space in my head that I figured I’d share it here.
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@Caraid, your story about those who turned left and those who turned right gave me shivers. You’re right, the impact on the Oppenheimer family should have been tremendous because of the nature of Salo’s death. But in fact, they seemed only to have been affected by the fact that he died, and not the way in which he died.
A person’s death and the manner of death are sort of two “layers” of trauma, if that makes sense. I don’t think it was touched upon in that way with Salo’s death – which is kind of ironic, since those layers were crucial to his own story.
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Privileged to the point of being utterly clueless. The Oppenheimer attitude as a whole can be summed up for me by taking Johanna’s own words out of context: “And you know, there it was, and we could afford it. So we said, you know, Why not? We might as well.”
By the way, here’s Boy with a Spoon, which disappears from the wall by Salo’s bedroom door without so much as a comment from his parents or an iota of feeling from Salo:
File:Bartholomeus van der Helst - Boy with a Spoon.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
I said upthread that I was a traditionalist, but I take that back. I would much, much rather have Twombly’s Untitled hanging on my wall than Van der Helst’s painting!
The painting is in a private collection at an “unidentified location.” I often wonder about those collections. I wonder if the booty from the Isabella Stewart Garnder theft is currently hanging in some crooked zillionaire’s climate-controlled basement.
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Wasn’t the art collection so valuable, the donation to Cornell was a pittance, compared to the rest of the collection ?
Or had they donated the painting from Salo’s family’s property, stodgy old paintings he disliked and no one cared ?
Can’t remember the details about the donation.
I have been to the Cornell art museum it is stunning, open to the public. Nicer to have art donated to public galleries then to private collections -
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