Atdtda30: Among the labyrinths, 854

[Paul Nightingale]

>From a "quaint native artifact, with its colorful yet indecipherable
visions" (853) to cinema, albeit a location "traditionally said to be the
site of Marco Polo's house" (854), that "traditionally" suggesting the claim
is made repeatedly, just as "they had gotten in the habit" offers repetitive
behaviour. Cf. Reef, "drift[ing] round Nice for a while" (849) as the
chapter opens: these characters are asked to mark time, waiting for what?

Previously, a "sketch of a mindscape whose layers emerged one on another as
from a mist, a distant country of painful complexity ..." etc (853). Here,
the manufactured tracking shot ("from a gondola") "in dreaming glide ..."
etc (854).  From "workshops full of caligraphers and illustrators" (853) to
a "[film] crew from Lumiere of Paris" (954).

Different kinds of text, from the "all but unmappable flow of letters and
numbers that passed into and out of the guise of the other, not to mention
images, from faint and spidery sketches to a full spectrum of inks and
pastels" (853) to "uncountable brown canalsides ..." etc (854). And so to
Vlado's "pitch of apprehension", Yashmeen reading his reading of a reading:
previously, "the secret lore he'd been sworn never to reveal" (853). One
does identify with the camera, not the action.