Atdtda36: Watch your step, everyone, 1018-1021 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

Ch67 ends with the anticipation of survival, some kind of future. The new
chapter begins with a backward glance ('summer had been memorable .'etc),
while also showing us what might be thought the lesser of two options
('grapes turned on the vine to raisins overnight'). The grapes/raisins or
'hay . burst[ing] spontaneously into flame', or '[w]ildfires . crossing
borders', might be seen as nature reimposing itself on the culture that
would masquerade as nature. That the natural cycle, what is considered
natural, has been affected by an early summer might be taken as fateful
('Naturist cults were overcome with a terrible fear .' etc), even though the
first line's backward glance suggests that the anticipated end of the world
has not occurred. The reader is therefore positioned at a distance from
those (ie '[n]aturist cults') who have detected some kind of grand design
(or, of course, metalanguage), culture imposing itself on nature. Then,
betrayal by 'the luminary they worshipped' (first paragraph) is succeeded by
the break-up of the Chums of Chance organisation, now 'a loose collective of
independent operators' with 'no repercussions from above' (third paragraph).
But then note the 'sinister luminary' that appears as the Chums' journey
unfolds with a loss of agency, 'the ship . seized and borne downslope .' etc
(bottom of 1019).

The 'cults' of the first paragraph are replaced in the second by
Inconvenience, its crew engaged by 'an updraft over the deserts of Northern
Africa unprecedented in size and intensity'. Free but not free. Here is a
different kind of anticipation, in some respects, even if we see a
destructive nature taking the role of the previous chapter's class war.