ATDTDA (15): A counterfeit mission, 406-413 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

The Chums arrive at Candlebrow to "find exactly the mixture of nostalgia and
amnesia to provide them a reasonable counterfeit of the Timeless". Well,
they started on this line of inquiry with the exchange between Lindsay and
Plug, the latter wondering if the half-dollar coin was genuine (397); and
the journey itself is an alternative of sorts to what Hierarchy (might have)
'intended' when the message was sent, a counterfeit mission perhaps.
Previously we have had the discussion of transmutation (305-306), Merle
insisting: "This Emmens process . could knock the Gold Standard right onto
its glorified ass" (306). And now, less glamorous perhaps: "'Smegmo', an
artificial substitute for everything in the edible-fat category, including
margarine, which many felt wasn't that real to begin with" (407).

As regards the reference itself, "the mixture of nostalgia and amnesia"
emphasises false memory and reminds us that what we remember might be a
memory rather than the event that is, ostensibly, the subject of
recollection. This point was first made in the scene featuring Veikko's
postcard (84).

The narrative goes on to describe Candlebrow's recent expansion, "well
beyond the memories of older alumni" (406). The reference here is to
architecture, something 'up-to-date' or 'modern' supplementing or replacing
"earlier masonry homages to European models, executed often as not by
immigrants from university or cathedral towns on the elder continent": just
like Veikko's postcard, then, a memory of a memory that attempts to wipe out
the 'new world' and its history. Cf. Professor Vanderjuice's subsequent
claim that "there's nothing to stop us going back as far as we like ." etc
(407). Chronology as writing, a theme the pre-publication blurb alerted us
to, of course.

Also on the to-be-wiped agenda is the source of Gideon Candlebrow's fortune,
Smegmo resulting from "the consequent scramble to develop more legal sources
of profit". And so a dodgy operator becomes a seat of learning, the export
of "countless adulterated tons of [lard]" (406) transformed (or should that
be 'transmuted'?) into the importation of intellectual traditions. When the
Chums discover Smegmo at breakfast Miles insists that his recollection of it
goes "clear on back into a previous life, to before I was even conceived"
(408); so among its "million uses" we can, perhaps, include time travel.