ATDTDA (5): Scientific objectivity, 138-139

[Paul Nightingale]

Ch12 in its entirely is in the form of extracts from Fleetwood Vibe's
Journals: ostensibly 'reflective', such a text has no immediate readership
in mind. The first of two sections records the expedition. This is worth
taking into account, given that the nature of representation, and even the
impossibility of fully representing the absent signified, is prominent in
the novel. FV writes as the anthropologist seeking mastery of an alien
culture, and frequently attempts to record every detail exhaustively (eg,
aboard the Inconvenience, 140-141).

At the outset, a note of foreboding (not a "Rapture of the North") recalls
the sailors' song and rumour (126-127); and the first line (of the Journal)
refers the reader, for corroboration, to "anybody who was there" (138). Yet
"anybody" seems not to include the crew: "They shared their picnic baskets
..." etc. Any crew-members who are present are evidently invisible as
members of the servant class. Also notable, as first paragraph gives way to
second: the transition from "they" to "we", which might undermine FV's view
that "the first thing that has to be ruled out is collective dementia" (as
well as his claim to write "for the sake of scientific objectivity").

The language of the song contrasts to FV's own usage: if anything, this
recalls the conflict, at the opening of the novel, between Lindsay's very
'proper' way of speaking and the "informality of speech" for which he
criticises Darby (4). The intrusion into the text (ie Journal) of vernacular
speech (a "witless chorale", 138) must be allowed "[i]f only for the sake of
scientific objectivity".