Subject
Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I
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------------------ One thing 'Hullo' certainly does is resonate with
later utterances of Mr. R., not least remarkably with
the equally informal last words of the novel, 'Easy,
you know, does it son.' As for spectral characters
besides Mr. R. in the first chapter, the best evidence
for them is the remark 'What's the matter, don't pull
me. I'm not bothering him.' Which to me sounds like
bothersome parents, and we know Hugh's to be deceased.
The problem with this interpretation is that his
parents probably wouldn't address him as 'person.'
------------------------------------
ED: Quite true. More specifically, it will (retroactively identify Mr. R as
the narrator since he is the only person to use "Hullo" later in the text
(C-10).
The other characters here are trickier. For sure they are dead. Armande?
Hugh's father? Julia Moore? Other ideas? Who would be disposed to dissuade
Mr. from ghost-messaging H.?
---------------------------------------------
I like the play on 'see/saw', but I can't offer any
help with Bergson.
I thought one of the most remarkable sentences in this
first chapter was the parenthetical remark towards the
end, in which the narrator declares that 'you are
thinking, and quite rightly so, of a hillside stone
over which a multitude of small animals have
scurried...' After following the philosophical
musings in the preceding paragraph, this direct
address comes as something of a shock, all the more so
because the intended effect is that the narrator is
'reading' the reader's mind. I should say 'came' as a
shock, because my own feeling is that successive
readings actually blunt the surprise a bit. Having so
thoroughly conditioned us for the necessity of
re-reading, it is as if the author here wants to make
the initial experience of reading especially vivid.
The reader feels himself to be transparent. Or so it
was for me.
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere. I've
read the Boyd biographies but not much else in the way
of secondary material.
-----------------------------------------
ED. Yes, an interesting sentence and the first "concrete" example of a
"transparent thing." I have a faint recollection of a similar stone in, I
think, a tale by Sci-Fi writer Olaf Stapleton, _Odd John_?? It caught my
fancy in in Sci-Fi reading youth. Do anyone have a copy at hand?
-----------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
--- "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> Since no one has taken the initiative in the TT
> read, I offer an opening
> thought and query.
>
> 1. What's with that "Hullo"? Who are the characters
> in Ch. I? Evidence?
>
> 2. The second paragraph introduces the TIME theme.
> Is there, BTW, a person
> out there conversant with Henri Bergson's ideas on
> TIME, who can montior
> the theme as we read?
>
> 3. My own opening shot:
> If the future existed (which it doesn't),
> "Persons might then straddle
> the middle stretch of the seesaw when considering
> this or that object."
> This is a very neat metaphor. The two ends of the
> "seesaw" depict the
> PAST & the FUTURE. The PRESENT is the fulcrum
> astride which the individual
> looks at the PAST and FUTURE from the PRESENT. The
> word "SEESAW"
> encapsulates the present (or future) tense of "to
> see" while the "saw" is
> the past tense.
> Very apt, if etymologically inaccurate. The
> playground object's name
> involves a reduplication of "saw" in the sense of
> "sawing logs" and refers
> to the up & down motion of the act.
> Out of curiosity, I checked Sergey Ilyin's
> Russian translation in the
> SYMPOSIUM volumes. He translates "seesaw" as
> "kachayushchaya doska"
> (swinging board) thus losing the semantic play which
> is, I suspect,
> untranslatable. It might be entertaining to look at
> translations into other
> languages to see how it is handled.
> Note also that VN points out at the start
> that the imagery is not entirely
> successful since in Mr. R's view the future (one
> end of the board) doesn't
> exist.
> I suspect what VN means is that while the
> FUTURE may exist as an abstract
> concept, it remains vacant or unpopulated until
> someone arrives to sit on
> the far end of the seesaw.
>
>
>
>
> D. Barton Johnson
> NABOKV-L
>
__________________________________
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later utterances of Mr. R., not least remarkably with
the equally informal last words of the novel, 'Easy,
you know, does it son.' As for spectral characters
besides Mr. R. in the first chapter, the best evidence
for them is the remark 'What's the matter, don't pull
me. I'm not bothering him.' Which to me sounds like
bothersome parents, and we know Hugh's to be deceased.
The problem with this interpretation is that his
parents probably wouldn't address him as 'person.'
------------------------------------
ED: Quite true. More specifically, it will (retroactively identify Mr. R as
the narrator since he is the only person to use "Hullo" later in the text
(C-10).
The other characters here are trickier. For sure they are dead. Armande?
Hugh's father? Julia Moore? Other ideas? Who would be disposed to dissuade
Mr. from ghost-messaging H.?
---------------------------------------------
I like the play on 'see/saw', but I can't offer any
help with Bergson.
I thought one of the most remarkable sentences in this
first chapter was the parenthetical remark towards the
end, in which the narrator declares that 'you are
thinking, and quite rightly so, of a hillside stone
over which a multitude of small animals have
scurried...' After following the philosophical
musings in the preceding paragraph, this direct
address comes as something of a shock, all the more so
because the intended effect is that the narrator is
'reading' the reader's mind. I should say 'came' as a
shock, because my own feeling is that successive
readings actually blunt the surprise a bit. Having so
thoroughly conditioned us for the necessity of
re-reading, it is as if the author here wants to make
the initial experience of reading especially vivid.
The reader feels himself to be transparent. Or so it
was for me.
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere. I've
read the Boyd biographies but not much else in the way
of secondary material.
-----------------------------------------
ED. Yes, an interesting sentence and the first "concrete" example of a
"transparent thing." I have a faint recollection of a similar stone in, I
think, a tale by Sci-Fi writer Olaf Stapleton, _Odd John_?? It caught my
fancy in in Sci-Fi reading youth. Do anyone have a copy at hand?
-----------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
--- "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> Since no one has taken the initiative in the TT
> read, I offer an opening
> thought and query.
>
> 1. What's with that "Hullo"? Who are the characters
> in Ch. I? Evidence?
>
> 2. The second paragraph introduces the TIME theme.
> Is there, BTW, a person
> out there conversant with Henri Bergson's ideas on
> TIME, who can montior
> the theme as we read?
>
> 3. My own opening shot:
> If the future existed (which it doesn't),
> "Persons might then straddle
> the middle stretch of the seesaw when considering
> this or that object."
> This is a very neat metaphor. The two ends of the
> "seesaw" depict the
> PAST & the FUTURE. The PRESENT is the fulcrum
> astride which the individual
> looks at the PAST and FUTURE from the PRESENT. The
> word "SEESAW"
> encapsulates the present (or future) tense of "to
> see" while the "saw" is
> the past tense.
> Very apt, if etymologically inaccurate. The
> playground object's name
> involves a reduplication of "saw" in the sense of
> "sawing logs" and refers
> to the up & down motion of the act.
> Out of curiosity, I checked Sergey Ilyin's
> Russian translation in the
> SYMPOSIUM volumes. He translates "seesaw" as
> "kachayushchaya doska"
> (swinging board) thus losing the semantic play which
> is, I suspect,
> untranslatable. It might be entertaining to look at
> translations into other
> languages to see how it is handled.
> Note also that VN points out at the start
> that the imagery is not entirely
> successful since in Mr. R's view the future (one
> end of the board) doesn't
> exist.
> I suspect what VN means is that while the
> FUTURE may exist as an abstract
> concept, it remains vacant or unpopulated until
> someone arrives to sit on
> the far end of the seesaw.
>
>
>
>
> D. Barton Johnson
> NABOKV-L
>
__________________________________
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New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
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D. Barton Johnson
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