Theatre/theater?

[Seb Thirlway]

-----Original Message-----
From: Lycidas at worldnet.att.net <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>
Date: 25 February 2000 06:07
>You also noted that Enzian says, "Perhaps it's all
>theater..."
>
>This is seems very significant too. As I mentioned, the
>reliability of narrative is confirmed here, first because it
>is Enzian and second because he is making a significant
>discover at this moment, personal, historical,
>psychological, theological, philosophical. When certain
>characters make discoveries, particularly about Them, the
>System, the Firm, etc.,  Their Theatre, or what is real and
>not reel or fake, and when characters have visions
>(hallucinatory revelations), what they say or think, their
>narrative is reliable.


(well, if you've all moved on to another topic by now that will
be no surprise - just catching up on my reading after too long
off-list)

Wonder what you mean by "their narrative is reliable".  What
strikes me much more in this section of GR is that the
discoveries about Them, the great A-ha moments are becoming more
and more inconsequential.  e.g:

(earlier)
Slothrop discovers something at the Casino HG: therefore -
Slothrop runs away (stopping at a great party on the way).
(now)
Enzian has a sudden realisation that this may be all theatre:
therefore -
nothing at all.  The realisation makes absolutely no difference
to Enzian's course.

The realisation is reliable because paranoid realisations just
feel that way - "at last I've got it - suddenly it all makes
sense" - they carry a freight of "this way of seeing things is a
way of seeing what is hidden, what is REALLY the case".  But by
this stage in GR they've relaxed into paranoia, are quite
sophisticated about it - the paranoid phenomenology is just a
phenomenology, it means absolutely sod-all - Enzian writes a
mental note to "cut down on the drugs and let's say no more about
it".



seb