ATD: First section first thoughts, possible spoilers 3-118

[David Morris]

I just checked the group read schedule, and it's supposed to start on
1/22 w/ Dave Monroe as host.  I think you've got some good discussion
points here, but I think it should wait until Dave starts up the AtD
group read.

On 1/1/07, Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> One of the better reviews of ATD is by Michael Wood in LRB; yet he is far
> from satisfied with the ("tiresome") Chums of Chance. We can ponder the
> function of the Chums, and ask how Chum-chapters relate to other parts of
> the novel ...
>
> 1. The Chums open and close the first section. The non-interference charter
> is referenced on 8 and again on 117, when the narrator summarises the
> adventure we won't read. As readers we are excluded from the Chums' world at
> the end, as at the beginning: we must all be aware that we can't claim
> membership of "my faithful readers" (3), whether or not we live in Tunbridge
> Wells (117). We might think we can identify (decode) the eponymous Evil
> Halfwit (5), but this is a text we shall never be able to read.
>
> 2. The first chapter opens with Inconvenience taking off; there is an air of
> optimism in the opening lines (3). The second chapter opens with the
> airship's descent over the Stockyards, and the tone is darker (10). The
> first few pages, then, describe an arc (optimism/anticipation, then
> disillusionment) that we can look for elsewhere (not least in the title of
> the novel itself). Cf the Turner thesis, referenced on 52 and the West that,
> subsequently, both Lew and Merle will travel towards.
>
> 3. Is this narrative structuring related to the juxtaposition of different
> 'levels' of understanding reality, the global and local, macrocosm and
> microcosm? This question was begged, firstly, of course, by the publication
> of novel blurb and Young Willis extract. First reference on 3, to "those
> features left behind on the ground having now dwindled to all but
> microscopic size". Cf "the giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself"
> (13), or the "view from overhead" (25), or the apparently uninhabited
> islands described in Ch. 10.
>
> 4. The novel opens with unattributed speech. We can speculate that orders
> are given by Randolph (perhaps Lindsay); and other lines are spoken by Darby
> or Chick. Our first task as readers, then, is to impose order on the text by
> assigning ownership to these lines. Impossible, not least because we cannot
> hear the voices. So another novel opens with the impossibility of
> representing sound. Further down, characterisation establishes both order
> and the threat to it; at the outset, Lindsay, for one, is defined by his
> place in the hierarchy (4), hence his doubts when visiting the Fair with
> Miles (21), just before their odd introduction to a Fair they hadn't been
> expecting. Subsequently, scenes on the airship are marked by conflict (the
> camaraderie on 18-20 notwithstanding), leading to the likelihood (?) of
> mutiny (54-55) and "[t]he figurehead debate" (109-111).
>
> 5. Ranking is an expression of the ideal; everyone in their place, and a
> place for everyone (most of all, perhaps, in an 'era of uncertainty'). The
> paternalist, not to say patriarchal, order of Inconvenience is thrown into
> relief by the arrival of Penny Black. We might draw connections with the
> depiction of family life elsewhere: conflict and break-ups mark the
> marriages of both Lew (38) and Merle (57), and Webb is an inept patriarch
> (104-105; also relevant is the exchange with Rev Gatlin, 91). His
> estrangement from Kit is followed by the aforementioned "political
> instability" (109).
>
>
>
>