ATDTDA (5): Rival systems might be acknowledged now and then, 131-134

[Paul Nightingale]

Vormance's speech projects a narrative of progress, one thing leading to
another. Following a series of rhetorical questions concerning the future
(what will God do?) he is interrupted and argument ensues: hence a closed
narrative is replaced by an open narrative. This is "[a] recurring
argument": so again repetition, the unending rehearsal of fixed positions.
Rao's point about "the possibility of linear time becoming circular" (132)
concerns the 'opening up' of a closed narrative, certainty replaced by
uncertainty. According to Vormance, "the Brits" are prone to irrational
belief, although we are later told: "Icelanders ... had a long tradition of
ghostliness that made the Brits appear models of rationalism" (133). Hence,
judgement is relative; and if rationality is measurable, it is therefore
open to dispute.

A range of characters are introduced here; given that differentiation is an
issue, one might recall the way the Chums were introduced at the outset.
There, characters were differentiated by means of their attitude to
authority: there was a hierarchy that fixed status. There appears, at this
point, to be no such hierarchy in place to fix the status of the
participants in this discussion. Each is anxious to score points at the
expense of others, with no higher authority to confirm superiority: hence
the "recurring argument" (131). And: "Rival systems might be acknowledged
now and then ... but those of the Hamiltonian faith felt an immunity to ever
being superseded, children imagining they would live for ever" (131-132).
Such "an immunity" would be based, of course, on a mastery of Time; it might
also recall the characterisation of the Chums, notable for the way their
ages, and the process of ageing itself, is left vague.

The Book of Iceland Spar (133) refuses to confine itself to the 'past' or
the 'already completed'. So this text also refuses to bow to Time, or to
acknowledge the customary, and elementary, distinction between the textual
and the extra-textual. Earlier sections in this chapter, when dealing with
Constance and Hunter have also shown narrative dexterity; there, as I put it
earlier, the text approaches the moment of narration, the 'now' of the
narrative voice: the Book of Iceland Spar seems to deny the existence of any
such source (which might be termed a point of closure). Discussion here
focuses on the possibility that some texts are "[i]n a different relation to
time" and have "to be read through": the relation between textual signifier
and extra-textual signified is, therefore, destabilised.

The Librarian points out that "this is not only the geographical Iceland"
(134); and another "all-important ninety-degree twist" allows the Hidden
People to "exist alongside our own world but not be seen". Again, one thinks
of the Chums and their relationship to Reality/the Non-Fictional; one might
even think of Lew's experiences (38ff).