MDDM Re: ch. 67, "Life as Fiction"

jbor jbor at bigpond.com
Wed Jul 31 17:01:39 CDT 2002


I was also struck by the passage from 649.26 which begins "And so on
(records the Rev.d) .... " It does indeed seem to be one of Wicks's rare
narratorial interventions. What caught my eye was the florid style of
language he uses, his prolixity and obscurity, and how different it was to
that of the general narration.

There's a reminder that Wicks is present in either of or both the venues at
649.26, and a parenthetic interpolation at 652.12 where Lomax takes Wicks to
task for attempting to Christianise one of the Mohawks in his recount, and
then Wicks's tale-telling proceeds for a moment inside the parenthesis, and
then we jump out of the parenthesis and into the main narrative again.

I actually think the "usual pomo whim wham" is the main point of the analogy
between the Warrior Path being "yet unrecorded as Fact, [and] a-shimmer,
among the few final Pages of its Life as Fiction". It's an example of what
is meant when text is described as "reflexive" or, more commonly, if
redundantly, "self-reflexive".

best



on 1/8/02 6:29 AM, Bandwraith at aol.com at Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> And may we assume a certain amount of self-interest in
> this meditation of Wicks?
> 
> "...yet for as long as its Distance from the Post Mark'd
> West remains unmeasur'd, nor is yet unrecorded as
> Fact, may it remain a-shimmer, among the few final
> Pages of its Life as Fiction." {650]




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