the knowing room

[Kato du Bois]

May I bring this line up, to see how others read it? it stopped me dead in 
my tracks upon last re-reading::

"Was that how he'd died, she wondered, among dreams, crushed by the only 
ikon in the house? That only made her laugh, out loud and helpless: You're 
so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew." (p.10, 
Perennial)

The knowing room is my question ... a nice trick, surely, to cast us back 
beyond the text into Oedipa's life and all she's done in that house or room; 
and it's not just that she's laughing at Pierce being bonked by a bust that 
makes her sick ... so what is it? Is it her suburban existence that defines 
her as sick? Well, the room itself is concrete suburbia, how can it pass 
judgement on Oedipa for that?

My take is that Oedipa's problems and discontent run deeper than, and begin 
prior to, merely being a suburban housewife ... the claims that Oedipa's 
quest begins with casting off the shackles of suburbia being too-simple for 
me ... and too convenient for urban-sophisticates ...

And, again, it's an amusing device ... one he repeats in Vineland with 
house-plants, listening in on Frenesi & Flash ...

K d B



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