ATDTDA (19): Simpletons at the fair, 550-556

[Mark Kohut]

Perhaps it is the promise of History--as well as the 'realist aesthetic' carried with that history---that is the Confidence Game?

Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:  Pugnax’s transformation into “a sophisticated defensive system” (550) has
brought a revision of on-board relations, “and the only member who
communicated with him much anymore was Miles Blundell”. Miles announces that
he has seen, and been recognised by, one of the Trespassers; and then goes
to meet Ryder Thorn, “descend[ing] in civilian dress as a ground-party of
one, to all appearances only another day-tripper ...” etc (552). He takes
his place among those “crowds along the Digue” who encouraged Randolph’s
“long-accustomed melancholy” (549). As they cycle south, there is the sense
of an ending, the “[h]arvest season ... rolling to a close” (552) juxtaposed
to “[y]oung tourists ... winding up their season of exemption from care ...”
etc.

Why “[y]oung tourists”? Because they are the ones Miles identifies with?

Cf. the ending to Ch30 (and Part 2) on 428: “... the Inconvenience rose over
Candlebrow, with every appearance of sullenness, into a windless and humid
day, and left the Mysteries of Time to those with enough of that commodity
to devote to its proper study”. Subsequently, looking upwards: “Somewhere up
in this sky was Miles’ home ...” etc (553), which is the reverse-shot to
Randolph’s “rubbernecking up at us in wonder” (549).

Thorn offers one kind of prediction (“Our people know what will happen here
...”, 553), and Miles claims to offer another kind (“I can look into the
eyes of dead fish at the market ...”); for Miles, this emphasises difference
(“I don’t foretell the future”), while Thorn sees it as a qualitative
judgement. By way of response, Miles insists: “I wouldn’t say anything is
going to happen here.” Following the disingenuous “I’m a mess cook ...” etc,
such a comment invites Thorn to give himself away. Hence: “The calmer Miles
got, the more worked up Thorn became.”

Thorn is “about to blurt a secret” (554) and offers a fairly detailed
description of, eg, “the mass grave of History”. When he speaks of “a scale
that has never yet been imagined” he acknowledges the difficulty of
representation; reference to Bosch and Brueghel predate realism. and perhaps
look ahead to Adorno’s ‘no poetry after Auschwitz’, not to mention the
author’s own warning. From the perspective of a novel that, among other
things, deals with the writing of history, realism is a phase long since
concluded, one that turns the reader into a tourist.

And then, as Thorn continues to condemn the naïve Enlightenment optimism
that has brought them to this point (“simpletons at the fair, gawking at
your Wonders of Science ...” etc), Miles achieves that clarity of vision
that Thorn has said is impossible, describing to Chick “the promise [that]
was nothing but a cruel confidence game”. Perhaps the "cruel confidence
game" is the promise of a realist aesthetic. Back at the airship, he remains
distanced from the others, his "brothers" (556), now described in terms that
suggest they have to be protected from such damaging knowledge.




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