GRGR (1): Wayward Thoughts and Forshadowings (pp. 3 - 7)

[Paul Nightingale]

Yes, I prefer to think of narrative consciousness, or narrative voice,
insofar as that is one possible voice among many in the text and not
necessarily superior in the sense of a conventional godlike narrator.
Sometimes this voice, in P's novels, shares what we can take to be the
pov of a character (the "vapor trail" passage on 6, Pirate correcting
himself at the start of the new paragraph); and sometimes, when
addressing the reader, it seems to be annotating/revising the text (the
"not a disentanglement" passage on 3). It isn't that P's narrative voice
is a controlling presence; rather it often seems to be improvising a
commentary that accompanies the action.

On 3: "No, this is not a disentanglement from ..." etc is a response to
the earlier question, but the question hasn't actually been asked, "not
out loud" (and cf "Incoming mail" on 6). Prefacing the statement with
"[n]o" raises the possibility that some consideration has taken place,
and the narrative voice is working to explain something that doesn't
lend itself to ready explanation (or representation): "... not a
disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into ..." - the
italicisation at the end underscoring the narrative-as-labour.
Furthermore, the juxtaposition of "out of" to "into" reminds us of the
way the epigraph has juxtaposed "extinction" to "continuity" (1).