M & D and ATD, thematic homage, parallels, etc.

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Mark Kohut:

>I just posted this on the M & D wiki as I finish M & D.

>  ==Page 504==
>'''You can get above it.... above Distance, above Time itself'''
>a foreshadowing of an overarching thematic plotline of ATD, the Chums of 
>Chance throughline?  >Notice the line about apprehending "all at once the 
>plexity of possible journeys", which seems to >be a clue to some meanings 
>of ATD thru the Chums.

It's a wonderful passage you point to here, and I can't resist the 
temptation to quote it in its entirety:

"Earthbound," Emerson continued, "we are limited to our Horizon, which is to 
be measur'd but in inches.-- We are bound withal to Time, and the amounts of 
it spent getting from one end of a journey to another. Yet aloft, in 
Map-Space, origins, destinations, any Termini, hardly seem to matter,-- one 
can apprehend all at once the entire plexity of possible journeys, set as 
one is above Distance, above Time itself." (M&D, 505)

FWIW, there is a passage in GR with a very similar import, even though the 
privileged - omniscient, even - perspective in GR's instance isn't an aerial 
perspective, but a view from the Other Side. Witness Walter Rathenau, in a 
seance for the elite "from the corporate Nazi crowd":

"You are constrained, over there, to follow it in time, one step after 
another. But here it's possible to see the whole shape at once" (GR, 165)

At another point in GR we hear of the spirits from the Other Side that "time 
and space on their side have no meaning, all is together" (GR, 153), and the 
narrator later informs us that there is:

"no serial time over there: events are all there in the same eternal moment 
and so certain messages don't always "make sense" back here: they lack 
historical structure, they sound fanciful, or insane" (GR, 624)

It would seem, then, that GR's Other Side, M&D's Map-Space, and AtD's 
Chum-Space function somewhat analogously: As privileged perspectives which 
are in a sense raised above (or beyond) the preterite affairs below - 
affairs which are ineluctably bound to time and mortality.

The positive side of these views from above is that they allow us to take 
the long view; to gain a clear historical perspective on what could 
otherwise seem very confusing. The negative side, however, is that they are 
in a sense Elect views, once or twice removed from the Preterite humanity 
below. The Chums, for instance, may have the advantage of a clear 
perspective from The Inconvenience, but they are often so removed from the 
events below that the historical events - including WW1 - seem somewhat 
muted to them. What they gain in clarity of perspective by rising up above, 
they lose in empathy.

By the way, I can really recommend Kathryn Hume's excellent essay "Views 
>From Above, Views From Below: The Perspectival Subtext in Gravity's Rainbow" 
(American Literrature, vol. 60, Number 4, December 1988, pp. 625-42). In 
this essay, Hume provides an interesting discussion of aerial vs. eartbound 
perspectives in GR, but I think that many of her arguments are relevant 
w/r/t M&D and AtD as well.

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