V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case

[Michael Bailey]

 alice wellintown  wrote:
> Grant sez to check out Alaine Robbe-Grillet. Makes sense to me.
>

I was just trying to think of his name.

Also the confessional angle: a bird, or maybe a gargoyle, has perched
on my shoulder and keeps telling me this is an important theme in the
book: Godolphin, Stencil, Eigenvalue, and now poor Fausto.

Not being brought up Catholic, it's always held a certain amount of
fascination for me.  I remember asking one of my buddies as a teenager
about it.  He didn't seem nearly as interested in it as I was: he said
you just say something like "forgive me Father, I have sinned," and
they tell you to say some Hail Marys.

Then of course I got into riffing on blessed is the Fruit of the Loom,
and I think he was, not exactly offended, but put off.

But I still imagine sitting in a confessional and telling all the
stuff I feel bad about, and what would the priest do?  I guess it's a
little more formalized than that, and there are people waiting in line
behind you.

But I think there is a fundamental need for something like confession.
 You can get sanity checks from your friends and family, and that's
valuable.  If you're in school, the feedback from your teachers helps
you figure out some of the tough questions and so forth.

So the formal church confession could be a prototype of this sort of
action - deconstructed to a form of primate grooming even, if we are
into that sort of not-very-flattering analogy.

Stencil's father confessed into his journal, I guess - and there's
some kind of mutuality intended.  My friend's feeling about it sounded
to me (although I realize he was probably downplaying it) like the
interplay of gravity between a person and the earth: I jump up and the
earth's gravity pulls me down/he confesses and feels better - in
return, when I land, the earth is jogged a zillionth of a
centimeter/and the Church feels a minuscule outpouring of grace (about
as much as the world is moved by my mass when I jump) -- or so I
pictured it and maybe still do...

Whereas, Fausto confesses to Paola and I think that is actually
efficacious upon her to some degree, causing her to act differently
going forward.

But, again, this is a long, detailed confession.

And written, if that makes a difference...???