V-2nd - Chapter 8 - Section IV - Not part of the pattern

[Michael Bailey]

"Stencil fell outside the pattern."

see it could be the narrator or it could be old Stencil himself here,
since he habitually refers to himself in the 3rd person...so,
"becoming-Stencil" does seem apropos for who's talking here; and the
passage gets more Stencil-ish, as maybe the actual author, as he
thinks *about* a character, begins to think *like* the character...

Stencil fell outside the pattern.  Which would be a bell curve.

If we're talking about a distribution of types which is causing
history and the "great" not psychologically different from people en
masse, and then we place Stencil outside that, then of course we are
going beyond the realm of "his-story" and suggesting there might be a
"Her-story" completely different in character...

But at this point, Stencil is still "waiting for Paola to reveal how
she fitted into this grand Gothic pile of inferences he was hard at
work creating."  Why does he do that?  Because although he doesn't
think the normal distribution of types includes a place for him, he
still thinks of himself as the builder, the organizer of what the
various V.s and now Paola are revealing to him.

Ineluctable subjectivity: what the becoming-Stencil in the previous
(lead-up) paragraph called a "rathouse" is now, for the
more-closely-approaching-Stencil in this paragraph, a Gothic pile of
inferences; and he doesn't consider himself part of the pattern...

but this is actually good: he's outside the Pattern and looking to
discover a different pattern; and going unarmed, on "pilgrimage"
rather than "crusade"; and although his rathouse is a rathouse viewed
from outside like anybody else's, it's a cathedral to him!  Like one
of those places in M&D or AtD that's bigger inside than out...



and that could make a difference: you act differently in a cathedral
than in a rathouse...





-- 
- But you can wade in the water
and never get wet
if you keep on doin' that rag (Grateful Dead, "Doin' That Rag")