ATDTDA (11): Frank bewildered, 304-307

[Paul Nightingale]

At the Silver Orchid Frank's 'isolation' is interrupted by Merle's arrival.
Cf. the way Bob burst into his room earlier (290). Leaving together they
find themselves "down beside the river, where the Row had been squeezed to
by more respectable forms of commerce" (305). At the start of the chapter we
find: "Despite the day-and-night commercial bustling down below, the
wide-open promise of desire unleashed, you only had to climb the hillside
for less than an hour to find the brown, slumped skeletons of cabins nobody
would occupy again ." etc (297).

This is, of course, a town in transition, fully in keeping with the way the
novel has described landscapes previously. Consider the start of Ch17, ".it
was sure another world they were riding through ." etc, juxtaposed to the
description of Nochecita, eg ".the town had grown ." etc and, on commerce,
".for the place never closed" (200). Merle goes on to describe the "Emmens
process" (306), which links 'nature', technology   and transitory values,
the absence of anything more permanent, even with regard to identity: eg
"silver gets transmuted to gold ." etc (305). Initially, Frank appears
sceptical (". and spare me that face"), but the reader might be thinking of
the way his identity is equally unstable (cf. ". maybe not the spit", 299).

To put it another way, Frank looks at/into the nugget and sees himself, just
as he might see himself replicated in the townscape generally. (In
particular, cf. Lew in Chicago, 38-39.) Merle speculates (if that isn't too
loaded a term) on the likely effects on the global economy (". and what'll
there be then to crucify mankind on a cross of?", 306-307). Cf. Frank
himself, as a child, when Webb is demonstrating dynamite: looking for the
big picture, "to see if there was a general rule to any of it" (90).

At the end of this discussion Frank is bewildered. Merle has just said: ".
maybe what you think you're looking for isn't really what you're looking
for" (307). Well what is Frank looking for? He has sacrificed his studies to
the quest to find Deuce; he has come to town ostensibly seeking business
with zinc, a meeting with Ellmore Disco, Bulkley Wells, pretty much anyone
who'll keep the pages turning. Here, "what you're looking for" suggests the
kind of narrative agency that Frank has failed to demonstrate, not least in
his relations with Wren and Dally. Merle's suggestion: "Go talk to Doc
Turnstone. He might have an idea or two." To prescribe to a bewildered
patient, perhaps?