Slothrop's Desk

[RICHARD ROMEO]

from _The Book as World_ by Marilyn French:

speaking of Ulysses, but just as well for GR it seems.  Can we call TS 
desk then a "retrospective arrangement'?

"Another function of the correspondences and the precursors and backward 
references is to act as symbols for the intermeshing, in life, of past 
and future.  It is always possible in life to look back and see 
precursors of and correspondences with some present state;  there are 
always elements in the present that seem mysterious, some of which prove 
later (or are taken as proving) to have signifigance.  The "retrospective 
arrangement" is also a prospective arrangement;  there is continuity as 
well as discontinuity.  The suggestion that everything happening has 
signifigance if we could only see the larger pattern occurs 
simultaneously with the suggestion that all patterns mankind selects are 
arbitrary and personal."



Richard Romeo

Coordinator of Cooperating Collections

The Foundation Center-NYC

212-807-2417

rromeo at fdncenter.org