A Soul In Ev'ry Stone

[Mike Weaver]

>"There is a hand to turn the time,
>Though thy glass today be run,
>Till the light that hath brought the Towers low
>Find the last poor Pret'rite one...
>Till the Riders sleep by ev'ry road,
>All through our crippl'd Zone,
>With a face on ev'ry mountainside,
>And a soul in ev'ry stone...
>
>Now everybody- ">

While liking the interpretations suggested on this thread I notice that the
last line of the book has been ignored by the respondents.  It may be
interpreted as an invitation to join in the (unwritten) chorus of William
Slothrop's song or there may, IMO most likely, be a liitle more to it than
that.  (The simple explanation  begs the question of what that chorus might be)
Among other things GR is a definition of the way the System (They)
disempowers and controls us,  the preterite, and a suggestion of the
weaknesses of the Counterforce,  along with a celebration of their striving
and multifarious humanity.The last line leads us back out into the world we
the readers inhabit and may be  a challenge to each of us to get up off our
endless bums and join the resistance,  to recognise our equivalent of
Roger's dilemma as posed on p713 - 
"...which is worse:  living on as Their pet or  death? ... Letting it sit
there for a while is no compromise, but a decision to live, on Their terms.
. . ."
Jeff St Clair (remember Steelhead?) may be an arrogant sod and no diplomat,
but as one who is on-off politically active in the anti-capitalist current,
I find it easy to see how his frustration and rage arises vis a vis the
often academic (small a) concerns of the list.  
Maybe the poles of this list are ( i.) those of us for whom TP's writings
are, primarily, a literary incandescence and (ii) those of us for whom they
are a cultural/political one.  Often we find congruence,  but sometimes not.
Those of us who link TP with (eg) Gaddis, Delillo, Nabakov... and those of
us who put him with (again eg) Lenny Bruce, Chomsky, Gramsci...   I am not
trying to say that we separate neatly into two camps, but the poles are
magnetic and exert their pulls and there is no compromise, no static point,
we tend, actively,  to move in one direction or the other.  
What you think?  


TTFN Mike