NPPF Preliminary

[Terrance]

Happy to hear that we are considering doing away with the spoler clause.
Now if only we could get rid of the structure. I agree with Paul that we
need to Just Do It. 
However, the structure we have now is going to fail. 

Can I make a suggestion? 

Another matter ... 

I can't make  out what Mary McCarthy is saying here.  A little help? 

Sounds like she is talking about some sort of Platonic reality. 


Anyway, in the Franz Kafka "lecture" N is talking about "The Carrick",
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and "The Metamorphosis" and what is meant by
saying these stories are fantasies. 

Now, note that N tales quite some time to define his term--reality. 

This lecture is a good lesson in pedagogy. 

"But when people call these three stories fantasies, they merely imply
that the stories depart in their subject matter from what is commonly
called reality. Let us therefore examine what Reality (N's italics) is,
in order to discover in what manner and to what extent so-called
fantasies depart from so-called reality."

You can read the Lectures here: 



 http://www.fulmerford.com/waxwing/letonlit.html#mansfield


After the wonderful example of the farm and the multiplicity of
individual  perspectives  N says, 

"The only way back to objective reality is the following one: we can
take these several individual worlds, mix them thoroughly together,
scoop up a drop of that mixture, and call it Objective Reality (N's
italics)." 

"So when we say Reality (N's italics), we are really thinking of all
this--in one drop--an average sample of a mixture of a million
individual realities. And it is in this sense (of human reality) that I
use the term Reality (N's italics) when placing it against the backdrop,
such as the worlds of "The Carrick," "Dr. J & H," and "The Met," which
are specific fantasies." 




> << From Mary McCarthy's 'A Bolt from the Blue':
> 
>     [...] Whether the visible world, for Nabokov, is a prismatic
>     reflection of eternity or the other way around is a central
>     question that begs itself but that remains, for that very reason,
>     moot and troubling. In the game of signaling back and forth
>     with mirrors, which may be man's relation with the cosmos,
>     there is perhaps no before or after, first or second, only
>     distance - separation, exile - and across it, the agitated
>     flashing of the semaphore. (xxi) >>
> 
> But the mirrors, except by definition, by force of will-
> or what might be will as design might be creation-
> are not quite parallel. The slightest bit of asymmetry
> has catted in to curve time, bend space and belie an
> otherwise infinite regress.