Atd : page 542---starts on page 524.Big Ass Spoiler

[Seb Thirlway]

> > Seb wrote:
> > "Real life" has a very different role in AtD from GR, a role 
> > which maybe I'll figure out more on 2nd or 3rd reading...

Monte wrote:
> NB this from p. 36:
> 
> "The Chums of Chance could have been granted no more appropriate form of
> 'ground-leave' than the Chicago Fair, as the great national celebration
> possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and
> agency."
> The most straightforward inference from this is that the CofC do *not* have
> access to and   *cannot* act upon that which is 100% factual. From there,
> the roads diverge: 
> 
> Are "100% factual" and "real life" synonymous?

Nice, and appropriate quote.  You're widening out the question (dizzyingly!).  By "real life" I
just meant whatever interests compete in characters' minds against the Mission to Find Out the
Secret Of Everything.  Something like an imagined Jessica/Beaver reproach against Roger - that
Roger's stuck in some obsession of the War and the Counterforce, while they in contrast are
getting on with their lives.
This opposition is explicit in AtD, in that all the Webbs get on with all kinds of other things
which distract them from their supposed Mission to avenge their father.  And IMHO just on 1st
reading TRP sides much more with "Real Life" in AtD than he did in GR; though this tendency is
obvious in both VL (Zoyd doesn't get back together with Frenesi or actually defeat Brock, because
that's just "what happens sometimes") and M&D.  In GR the Mission-"phantasy" also goes down
against Real Life, but goes down kicking and screaming, leaving a bleak crater.

By bringing in the "fictitious" you're widening the debate into one which is fascinating (maybe
all these Missions are in fact fictitious to some degree, and only Real Life is real?), but one
which I can't quite figure out at this point; I'll have to mark your post as one to come back to
when I have more time and when I've had a couple-three more readings of AtD.

> Are the other airship crews on the same footing vis a vis access and agency?
> Will heavier-than-air craft be different? (Renzo & Kit's dive-bomber sure
> seems to be fully interactive... a-and to promise So Much More!)
Now you're making me dizzy!

> What other characters or organizations share this problematic relationship
> with the non-ficititious? The Trespassers? Novelists? Listserv subscribers?
;)


seb


		
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