ATDTDA (2): Merle's dream, 56ff #2

[Paul Nightingale]

The "official person in ragged plainclothes ... who may or may not have been
a museum guard" introduces policing by subterfuge, ie he doesn't wear a
uniform and so encourages self-policing. Merle's alleged crime here recalls
Lew's "sin" (37), just as his estrangement from Erlys recalls Lew's broken
marriage--the connection is confirmed by his thoughts upon waking. It
recalls also our introduction to Merle, his fear of the "giant eyeball,
perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinising from above, in a spirit of
constructive censure" (13).

The dream is dropped abruptly, mention of Erlys ("[h]er name ... never far
from the discourse of the day") introducing Dally, whose interrogation of
her father perhaps echoes the dream-interrogation by the supposed guard. The
museums of the dream are then echoed in the "bits and pieces" of information
about Erlys that Merle imparts (58). Dally, then, makes sense of her mother
through the way Merle puts her 'on exhibition', so to speak.

Another connection to Lew: Merle goes west, "his trip ... just a personal
expression of Yankee migration generally" (59).

And then--Merle's back-story in these pages offers us a glimpse of Professor
Vanderjuice as he used to be, in the days before his involvement with
Scarsdale Vibe. Cf the exchange between Merle and Ray Ipsow on 33.

Consequently, we can see the transition from Chs6-7: Ch6 ended with the
Chums lamenting their loss of innocence, Ch7 begins by turning back the
clock, not only in terms of the plot, but with regard also to
religion-science. If, as Weber argues, modernity is characterised by
disenchantment, the magic going out of the world as scientific rationality
supersedes religious hocus-pocus, then Vanderjuice's description of the
Aether as "a religious question" (58) is significant.