What's it all about?

[Doug Millison]

At 10:21 AM -0400 7/11/99, Paul Mackin wrote:
> the Central
>Office in downtown Rainbowville is indisputably occupied by Old Mr.
>Fuckin' Death hisself by order of that famous JUDGEMENT FROM WHICH THERE
>IS NO APPEAL or in the words of another P who was no slouch at the long
>multilayered death-obsessed novel either ". . . une realite qui n'etait
>pas faite pour moi, contre laquelle il n'y avait pas de recours .  . . "
>(p. 221-2, Combray)

Oh, I don't know. Just because there are references to death throughout GR,
that doesn't mean death is "central" to the novel, does it? Not central in
the way death is central to, say, Thomas  Lynch's recent _The Undertaking :
Life Studies from the Dismal Trade_, for example. All of the GR's
characters, after all, are alive, either on this side or the other of
death's "interface" ("those souls across the interface, those we call the
dead" 147.2).  Why not argue that the ubiquitous references to life and
living -- not to mention the object lesson of TRP's novel itself,  a
product of his life and energies -- make life what GR is "about"?  You can
of course make the same argument for Proust's A la recherche du temps
perdu, a novel that is packed with people and  running over with life.

Might as well say GR is about the Holocaust, don't you think?

Still calling the glass half full,
Doug

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