Blicero

[jbor]

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>From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>


> But, the scene is narrated from Blicero's
> point of view, start to finish,

Well, that's not true at all.

> (just a few
> paragraphs before, Blicero has been fantasizing about Gottfried's
> "creamy buttocks knotted together in fear")

    There ought to be big dramatic pauses here. Weissmann's head ought
    to be teeming with last images of creamy buttocks knotted together
    in fear (not one trickle of shit, Liebchen?) the last curtain of gold
    lashes over young eyes pleading [ ... ]            (757.33)

The modality used here and reemphasised ("ought to") straight away seems to
me to indicate that Blicero isn't fantasising any such thing, and the whole
segment is reported from a detached perspective. But, indeed, in case a
reader might have missed it, right after this the detached narrative
actually and overtly demurs that the fantasy about Gottfried's "creamy
buttocks" which "ought to" be taking place in Blicero's head isn't:

    But no, the ritual has its velvet grip on them all. So strong,
    so warm. . . .                     (758.2)

["But no ... ": i.e. but no, this is *not* what Blicero has been imagining.]

Blicero is simply giving the orders as always, and appears totally
transfixed by the ritual of the launch:

    Blicero is a master. He learned quite early to fall into a trance,
    to wait for the illumination, which always comes. It is nothing
    he's ever spoken of aloud.          (758.18)

The scene is very deliberately written from an exterior perspective, and
just as deliberately details what Blicero "ought to" have been thinking but
was *not*. It's quite clear. And it's quite a contrast to Marvy in that hot
tub with Manuela, when the narrative reports exactly what he *is* thinking.

best