AtDTDA: (8) 226 Renfrew and Werfner

[Monte Davis]

Mark Kohut wrote:

> Do other readers feel that one point to these two is
> to say that they are not really different at all, just mirrored
> images of each other, so to speak....


Notice this juxtaposition: Yashmeen on p. 224

"...'all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than 
strings of text cleverly encrypted. Nothing beyond. Any who may come to 
feel betrayed by them, insulted, even hurt, even grievously, are simply 
'taking it too seriously.' The English exercise their eyebrows and smile 
and tell you it's 'irony' or 'a bit of fun'..."

And on p. 231, the end of Nookshaft's hop skip & jump through the 
Alternate Victorian Age*

"Lew was dismayed. 'Cohen, man, that's horrible.'
  The Grand Cohen shrugged. 'Only a bit of fun. You Yanks are so serious.' "

I think that for all AtD's apparatus of twists in time, we're being told 
six ways from Sunday not to get all misty-wistful about paths not taken 
-- not least because they may be "not really different at all."

The alternative is heartbreak like Ernest Pudding''s thirty years later 
as he labored over _Things That Can Happen in European Poltics_. Oh, 
dodgy -- very dodgy. 

* (or should we call it the Age of V ?... :"the Victoria we think we 
know and revere is really a sort of ghostly stand-in, for another who is 
impervious to the passage of Time in all its forms". I think we know the 
lady in question)
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