If only she'd looked ...

[Dave Monroe]

"Yet she knew, head down, stumbling along over the
cinderblock and its old sleepers, that there was still
that other chance.  That it was all true.  That
Inverarity had only died, nothing else.  Suppose, God,
there really was a Tristero then and that she had come
on it by accident.  If San Narciso and the estate were
really no different from any other town, any other
estate, then by that continuity she might have found
The Tristero anywhere in her Republic, through any of
a hundred lightly-concealed entranceways, a hundred
alienations, if only she'd looked.  She stopped a
minute between the steel rails, raising her head as if
to sniff the air.  Becoming conscious of the hard,
strung presence she stood on--knowing as if these maps
had been flashed for her on the sky how these tracks
ran into others, others, knowing they laced, deepened,
authenticated the great night around her.  If only
she'd looked." (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 179)

Cf., by the way ...

"It was indeed a majestic idea, that the destiny of
nations should be revelaed in these awful hieroglyphs,
on the cope of the heavens.  A scroll so wide might
not be deemed too expansive for Providence to write a
people's doom upon ... the minister, looking upward to
the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense
letter--the letter A--marked out in lines of dull red
light."

Nathanile Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Ch. 12, "The
Minister's Vigil," cited in Pierre-Yves Petillon, "A
Re-cognition of Her Errand into the Wilderness," p.
168, n. 65 ...

http://www.bartleby.com/83/12.html

See paragraph 32.  But, again, what makes Oedipa
"Oedipal"?  What is her mis-recognition, her blindness
here?  Ours?  Has she been oblivious to the obvious? 
Have we?  America, "coded in Inverarity's testament"
or otherwise (p. 180), whoever's it was, is, "...
anywhere in her Republic, through any of a hundred
lightly-concealed entranceways, a hundred alienations,
if only she'd looked" ...


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger
http://im.yahoo.com