MDDM Ch. 70 Higher Assembly

[jbor]

on 18/8/02 1:13 PM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> jbor:
>> While not discounting this additional possibility it's noteworthy that the
>> episode (and much of the narrative) is written in the present tense.
> 
> Many oral storytellers work in the present tense, as I'm sure you're aware.

When Wicks is noted in the text as telling his stories he recounts in the
past tense. The bulk of the narrative, however, is related in the present
tense. It is a quite noticeable, and I assume deliberate, distinction.

> Sha is an anachronism?

No, *Sha* is something which Wicks, as a Christian, would not believe in, a
metaphor he would not employ, imo.

> I agree that Wicks isn't the author of the novel's obvious anachronisms,
> that author being Pynchon.

That's right, via a source of narrative agency which lies *outside* Wicks's
perspective.

best