ATDTDA fizzling out?

[Mark Kohut]

I like this obs from LK...
  a-and Mike,
   
  Yes re Chums and Them but I ask this: When TRP steadily if infrequently has the Chums encounter harsher 'reality" , may it be TRP commenting on the unreality of "daylit fictions"
  and fiction in general for us, readers???
   
  We know from GR that TRP has something against 'words on paper" [despite writing them]
  vs. "reality".
   
  MK

kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
  Your discussion of the Vormance/Endurance/Inconvenience going off on their adventures heedless (or as a distraction from/to) what's going on behind or beneath them, reminded me of the story of the last Soviet Cosmonauts orbiting the earth while the Soviet Union was breaking up beneath them. One of them purportedly asked "Are we for sale now?" It seems a good simile for the Chums: above it all, disconnected, but still controlled by what's happening beneath.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: mikebailey at speakeasy.net

>
>finally gritted my teeth and looked up nunatak, saw the pictures in Wikipedia, noticed a caption referring to Shackleton's Endurance expedition (Endur-ance, Vorm-ance) and noticed the time frame, 1914-1916, smack dab in WWI, they had their adventure, probably somewhat oblivious as we are all quick to castigate the Chums for being, wrapped up in their own trip...but what a trip...just leads me to some speculation on what kind of person would keep going on those crazy expeditions - and being able to get support from Them; gives me some hope of Them being able to get behind something besides war and destruction - the morality of being somebody like, say, Rockefeller's art curator: well, at least while Rocky is buying paintings he isn't actively increasing his exploitation of the worker; or the phenomenon of explorers being able to get funding for their adventures, from governments or the wealthy or even sometimes from public fundraising drives - and as some have noted, there
 a!
r!
> e some drivers in the text toward seeing the Chums as ourselves (in the role of readers) in that, reading, we are exercising elaborate and punctilious skillsets not of the common run, like the crew of the Inconvenience, or the Endurance, or the Malus, and in the service of a different vision than that which inspired world war or "hot gates", but just as exciting, and one in which we might even distract "Them" from destruction to cheer us on, as we run our dogsled race to the Pole...or, rather, ride our airship toward the southern entry point of the interior...
>the Chums suspended in air as our disbelief is suspended in the text -- the Chums's tale not being a tragic one, like those on the ground, nor admittedly an angelic or totally pure one like that of the White Wings would be; their limitations are similar to ours as readers...
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