Atdtda37: Each year's face tumbling upon the next in a breathtaking fall, 1059-1061 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

On 1045 Merle's phone calls disrupt the pursuit of Jardine; the narrative
shift here is serendipitous insofar as the Merle/Roswell magic on 1049 leads
him eventually to Carefree Court and the meeting with Jardine on 1058. The
new section begins with Merle again taking Lew away from Jardine, repetition
('something occurred to him', 1048) provided by the photograph of Troth. 

In the previous section Lew has finally met Jardine, her presence and 'old
publicity-still glaze' (1059) replacing the photograph on 1042 ('Technically
she was smiling ...' etc); here, he meets, after a fashion, Troth
'continu[ing] to live ...' etc (1060). Jardine was associated with the
earlier section's discussion of the writing and rewriting of history: from
the allusion to Hollywood ('some biblical extravaganza', 1057), through
'reveries of when the land was free' (1058), to Jardine's version of what
happened to Encarnacion (1059). Here, Troth's photograph allows that
discussion to continue. However, rather than revealing some transparent
truth, the photograph is inseparable from Lew's own trajectory, given that
Jardine's account of the case shows Lew to have been sidetracked.

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