by Roy Clews
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Clews has written many historical novels about war, though there’s very sparse information about him and his work online. The book might speak to something about the past of Jack and Wendy, since the titular Jethro seems to be thrown from a more grand destiny by falling in love with a humble needle master’s daughter, just as Jack later complains that it’s Wendy’s “typical” concerns (like their child’s wellbeing) that disable him from “really accomplish[ing]” something.
The reason I imagine this book is here is to invoke the notion of a “clew”, which is the ball of thread Theseus takes into the labyrinth (given by Ariadne) when he goes to defeat the minotaur. A similar ball of thread is sitting in the Torrance kitchen (which I discuss at length in the mythology section), next to a washing up Wendy, with a strand dangling off the ledge. In the scene here, the clew is always distantly, blurrily visible behind Wendy’s head. So, just as James Ramsey Ullman brings the Ullmanosity, Roy Clews brings Clewsliness? And Wendy is…clueless about it?
And is it actually coincidence that a man named Clews would write about a man falling in love with a needle master’s daughter, and an ensuing riot among drunken needleworkers? These being occupations concerned with thread? Oh, speaking of sewing, Danny is seen to possess some Sewing Cards, which will prove to be of significance to all this sort of thing.
Incidentally, this book may (if Google Books tells true) have first been published in 1975, the same year Barry Lyndon came out. The man on the book cover here has a certain Lyndon quality about him, and the time period is roughly the same. So perhaps this was another of the Clockwork Orange–2001 soundtrack kind of signatures, if a good deal more abstract.
I also want to point out how Alexander Young Jackson, the painter behind the Red Maple painting, which might be the most significant painting in the film, has that “Young” in his name too.
Next literary reference: Squaresville: The Teen’s Guide to Adult Behaviour
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