GRGR(6) Discussion Opener

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Regarding two of J. Burgess's comments:
>
>2) "Grafitti of ice the sunless day,..."  
>   
>   Does this seem like an odd or awkward clause to anyone besides me?
>
<snip>
>
>3) "Ice of varying thickness, wavy, blurred, the legend to be deciphered
>   by lords of winter, Glacists of the region, and argued over in their
>   journals."  
>   
>   Is this a dig at scientists, literary theorists or academics in 
>   general? (no offense intended to the .edu-foax)  Are we here talking 
>   about some kind of hidden meaning, a plaintext, in a cipher of ice?

<long snip>


Not necessarily academics,  all readers maybe.  Though the overt reference to journals 
definitely evokes aacademics, well, look at us--we become the glacists too, trying to 
determine how to read, e.g. "grafitti of ice the sunless day."  We're set up for that one 
pretty neatly, it seems to me.  This is another of a whole set of images of texts, or writing 
surfaces, that  cluster in this chunk of the novel, all the plays on textual surfaces.  What 
makes the Ur-surface, i.e. the book in your hand, the page you are reading, different from 
grafitti of ice?  Is it so diffferent, after all?  And isn't this list a journal for all the glacists 
here today?

john m