VLVL Takeshi

Terrance lycidas2 at earthlink.net
Sun Nov 30 11:44:57 CST 2003


Well, I think it would help if we could untangle the narrative a bit and
line the ducks up, figure out who is telling this story. 

Takeshi has been "putting in color commentary on DL's version" (149). 
Although I don't think that the reader is in Prairie's shoes here it
helps to consider how she is getting the story. At the bottom of page
149 we have another interruption. This time it is Takeshi who interrupts
the story. He pauses and wonders aloud. This seems to suggest that DL is
telling the story and Takeshi is adding the color commentary, but  no
one is speaking. How does that work, exactly? How does Prairie get it?
Does she read their minds? Are they inside a computer? In Plato's
Cave? Beneath The Planet Of The Apes? Where is the "magic lantern" that
"[throws] the nerves in patterns on a screen"? 

At VL.130.7 DL's narrative "detaches." But who picks it up? 

The simple explanation, that a filtered and detached narrative
consciousness (DL's in this case) is not adequate if we hope to
understand all the subtle forms of communication, the shifts in
narrative time and space, the role that Prairie plays as listener, the
role of the audience or readers. 

Ralph has an FBI file (including photographs)   on Brock Vond (130) and
a file on
DL too because "It's all in the computer."  (131)

It's all in the computer. DL doesn't want to  become a tool of Ralph's
Holding Company or what/whom-ever his people are (DL suspects that THEY
may be Government agents, mafia drug dealers or both). She runs. THEY
are too powerful. She checks Ralph out from shoes to tie, trying to
figure out if he is who he he seems to be. She's not sure. But one thing
is for sure, he has her history on file. He has BV on file. He has
access to the MACHINE. 


This narrative thread goes way back to page 14  where Prairie is
watching The Clara Bow Story (an example of the medium and media within
media, i.e., Story-Movie-Tube), but we can pick it up at page 101 when
Prairie tells DL what she knows (what Zoyd and Sasha told her about
Frenesi). Prairie goes with DL to the Sisters. Sister R tells her about
the computer file they maintain in Frenesi Gates. Prairie discovers that
she can **Summon** to the screen photographs of her mom. And Prairie and
DL add color commentary to the computer's version. Sometimes Prairie
imagines dialogues and gestures, projects these onto her mom or DL. 

pg. 115 Prairie says good night to the Machine. But the narrative is
picked up by the zeroes and ones down in the computer, in storage. 

What the computer tells is the story of DL's life. 

Is this the computer that Ralph Wayvone says he has access too? The
computer at the Sisters also has FBI and DMV data just like the one
Ralph has access to. 

DL wonders if Ralph has a line into the NCIC computer (131). 

This computer is a very powerful Machine. It can tell stories.



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