the knowing room

[mike j]

"the room, which knew" --- just sounds artsy fartsy to
me.




--- Kato du Bois <funkyrubber at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 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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