The littl shining man the adam

The mollycule theory teaches us that although walking is safer than the bicycle it is by no means without peril. As each step strikes the road it agitates the mollycules of the gravel with reciprocal agitation of the mollycules of your foot, causing some to pass into the other and the other into the some and bringing you ineluctably closer to the stage when you are more clay than flesh. If the County Council would only maintain the roads with some alacrity then our footfalls would have less impetus, but as it is they are rough and undulating and have potholes large enough to allow wombats to lurk within.

An important corollary here is that one-leggèd men can more safely stride from A to B than can the symmetrical majority, for a full half of the mollycular interchange has no concomitant abbreviation of the life as it imbues gravelness progressively into the artificial limb rather than the real one. This is nowhere spelled out in The Third Policeman, but I suspect this is why the one-legged men are an important plot element there. They are united under the leadership of Martin Finnucane (robber and murderer by trade) and at one point they come to rescue the narrator from being hanged. The tracks lead Policeman Fox to prepare for seven rescuers, when in fact they are fourteen in their strength:

They took off their wooden legs before they marched and tied themselves together in pairs so that there were two men for every two legs, it would remind you of Napoleon on the retreat from Russia, it is a masterpiece of military technocratics.

Oddly enough, the topic comes up in Ecstasies, Carlo Ginzburg’s study of the shamanic stratum in the folklore of Europe and Asia. In the penultimate chapter Ginzburg discusses the folklore motif of a limp or a peculiarity of gait* that marks a character as a liminal figure, not entirely belonging to the realm of the living (e.g. Jason, Achilles):

We therefore have figures distinguished (a) by malformations or wounds to the feet or legs; (b) by possession of a single sandal; (c) by possession of two sandals.

It is a very interesting discussion that brings in Cinderella and the Chinese culture-hero Yu the Lame and the Plataeans who left their right feet unshod when they attacked the Spartans in 428 BCE. The effect accumulates and sends the mind reeling back through vast gulfs of time, much like reading Robert Holdstock. But does Ginzburg cite the one-legged men from Third Policeman, who would be a perfect instance of his thesis? NO HE DOES NOT. This is a serious defalcation and I have penned him the strongly-worded letter.

Instead he singles out "Oedipus of the pierced feet".

You know who else had his feet pierced and who fucked his own mother?



I know all about Ecstasies because it's we’ve been talking about in the Riddled bookclub this week. Least as, that’s what those of us talked about who did our homework and read the book. Certain people begged off and are waiting for a movie adaptation for fear of the mollycules in their hands interchanging with the mollycules in the paper.

* Figure 2. Peculiarity of gate.
Bonus Deselbiana.