V2nd - chapter 11 - more examples

[Michael Bailey]

alice wellintown  wrote:

> Fausto moves me not, for unlike Stencil the elder's fragments and
> ambiguous allusions, Fausto's Confessions are a closed system.
>

wow, thanks for the literary references!  beadsman.  "Venerable Bede"!

Fausto's daughter is luckier in her choice of fathers than V., whose
father wrote her off after the first showing of her adventurous
nature, Paolo quite likely cruising toward those same waters that V.
was riding around in the Andrea Doria in - having basically her choice
of lovers, Roony, Pig, Sphere at her feet, ripe for the plucking, she
could ride that pear tree full of perdidos like V. did...

whereas, Fausto, having the gift of introspection and not being in a
position or of a mind to exile her from his "pool of light" in
Baedeker Land the way V.'s pop did - which, even though his room isn't
technically part of Baedeker Land, still his writing skills are an
entree thereto, potentially, and probably one of these NNE or SSW
facing windows of his room faces a British Consulate or American
Express or an accredited institution of the educational sort or a
scholarly journal, someplace where they could cash that type of
cheque...

Fausto is to Paola as Wren senior is to V., obviously.

His acceptance is a good sign, a hopeful note that the class of '57,
as far as adventurous, globe-trotting young ladies are concerned,
might be going out under better auspices than the class of '98 (1898,
that is)

One pictures old Wren just "writing her off" because she didn't meet
his expectations of being a conventional Victorian gal, right?  And
he's got the other daughter, and whatever engineering or politics or
religion gave him the substance to travel the world himself, and he
never has to inhabit the Vheissu implied by his colonialism, and he
certainly never felt the need to explain himself to his daughter,
despite the fact that his own robust peregrinations (one might infer,
or at least those of England's power elite) inspired Victoria's
adventurism (I'd like to know where, you got the notion, oh I'd like
to know where, you got the notion) and she is - in her own way -
recapping his program

Whereas wordy old Fausto bares his breast, beats his breast, and
(Paola must think, since she wasn't going back, was she, until she
read his missive) shows himself interested, worthy, interesting enough
to actively have a daughter...
by showing the stuff he's made of rather than detailing her itinerary




-- 
"Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a
violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural
liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the
whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all
governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical." -
Adam Smith