ATD...had forgotten...narrator on the Chums later ...getting free.

[Michael Bailey]

"as it did shortly" refers to ???
I remember wondering about this

which of their actions later could be construed that way?
They're out in the Pacific, and from there they receive urgent
orders to dissuade the Vormance Expedition, explicitly with the use
of force not "off the table"

the next thing they do is fail to dissuade the Vormance Expedition,
and we don't even see them trying very hard, do we?
But where is the escape from the secular in that?

Their biggest dereliction as I see it is the harmonica school,,
but that's more of a deviation or swerving under the influence
of the orderly musical life's pull - they are grasped rather than grasping

They do sort of "grasp" at Meatman's map, and while under the
desert sands find themselves grasping or at least coveting the
oil-wealth and concurring in the abandonment of "pilgrimage"
in favor of "crusade"

Perhaps the narrator is getting carried away, or foreshadowing
something that doesn't actually happen...or maybe there is something
going on steadily, and the "shortly" is only meant as short-seeming
to the prolific storyteller, as "at the end of this short tale they
fly towards grace" (which still lacks the element of "grasping", though)

what do you think, Mark?  is the narrator getting even
for the bad reception of his previous tale, Chums in the Bowels
of the Earth, by sowing false foreshadowings?





On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> had forgotten:
> "Was it any wonder that when the opportunity did arise, as it would
> shortly, the boys would grasp unreflectively at a chance to transcend "the
> secular,"
> even at the cost of betraying their organization, their country, even
> humankind itself?"----AtD, page 113
> --after the bickering over the new figurehead for The
> Inconvenience...'contamination by the secular', sez Noseworthy
>
> Anyone, anyone?
>
>
>
>
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