V2nd Ch 7 toehold

[Michael Bailey]

- that might be the fate
- lying in wait
- for a schlemihl, to eventually grow old and have eyes like Mantissa's?

because in the very next paragraph, at the bottom of page 169 (Harper
Perennial, that is)
"All his reversals had occurred, had been registered; he had assigned
each one equal weight, had learned nothing from any of them except
that they would happen again."

The name mantissa, which in math is the significand,
the part of a floating-point number that contains its significant digits,
is suitable for the diminutive gentleman...that is, it's easy enough
to think of him as an Everyman of Failure - his abbreviated stature
being appended to all the capers he tries and fails at...

Another mathematical meaning is a little more complex, but leads back
from numbers into letters:
(paring deeply from a Wikipedia article on common logarithms)
a mantissa is...
—the fractional part of a logarithm ... (This stems from an older,
non-numerical, meaning of the word mantissa: a minor addition or
supplement, e.g. to a text.)...

So if we set the elder Godolphin's quest for Vheissu and the younger
Godolphin's disbelief, changing to belief...
against the younger Stencil's quest for V. and his lack of closure
with the elder Stencil --

That is, the emotional center of Chapter 7 is old Godolphin and young
"Gadrulfi" with V., isn't it?  Stencil of course is imagining this
entire escapade, or building it on a foundation as shaky as the 8th
flight of stairs in the hotel...

and just as the Godolphins have a friend, Mantissa the failure, so
Stencil takes up with Benny and enlists him...sort of...

And old Godolphin's Conradesque horror at Vheissu - as Mantissa
explains, it isn't something that can be shared with his son, it needs
to be shared with someone of his own generation, because what a man
wants to do for his son is to pass something down that can be used,
but young Godolphin hasn't an inkling of the horror at that point in
his life, he's expecting something completely different, isn't he?

A-and, young Benny is somehow quite old in his schlemihl-hood,
expecting nothing from life but misery, as we see from that very first
folk song Paola sings, and somehow this links him to Mantissa in my
mind.

At least, I don't think Mantissa's "not learning anything" is coincidental.

But this is a Gargantuan chapter with lots happening!  I have to reread it.



-- 
"I have left my book,
I have left my room,
For I heard your voice
singing through the gloom" - James Joyce