Atdtda37: Each year's face tumbling upon the next in a breathtaking fall, 1059-1061 #2

[Mark Kohut]

Also some Proustian 'transcending time" allusion, commenting and contrasting, going on......maybe Nabokovian [ADA] too? 
On Monday, April 21, 2014 10:37 AM, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
  
At the start of the section he goes to Carefree Court '[a] day or two later'
(1057), ie following his visit to Lake/Deuce, that scene taking place only
after the detour to meet Merle and Roswell (1048-1051): 'It was late
afternoon by the time Lew motored over to the address Emilio had given him'
(1051). On 1059 Encarnacion has reappeared 'just long enough to testify'
against Deuce ('[a] little runt of a studio cop'); and suddenly the case
appears closed (cf 'the investigators [who] ... only wanted to ask him "a
few questions"' on 1055). Hence, Lew (reintroduced at the start of the
chapter as a successful operative and 'one more old goat of the region with
a deep suntan', 1041; more recently 'an old LA hand', 1057) is taken all the
way back to his earlier life with Troth. Importantly, he now wants Merle to
show him alternatives to what did happen, eg, in Ch5, 'different tracks .
other possibilities ...' (1060). Cf Lew's interest, initially, in
'watch[ing] who did the deed, catch[ing] them in the act' before 'finally
remember[ing] bilocation' (1049). If Jardine's account at the end of 69.12
(1059) provides closure for that particular narrative, Lew now wants a
narrative that remains open. 

However, if the alternatives he seeks are available, they remain elusive:
Troth is, here, 'almost too young for the woman he remembered' (1061) and
the section ends on questions that cannot be answered. If Lew has hoped for
some kind of contact he has been frustrated because he remains outside the
Troth-narrative that has been revealed. Cf the previous section, where
'[t]he light rested on [Virgil Maraca] in an unaccustomed way, as if he were
somewhere else, lending his image to the gathering' (1058). Here, Lew
'imagined himself reaching out to her through dust-crowded shafts of light,
not optical so much as temporal light' (1061).Earlier, Virgil appears as a
film character on the screen, much as Troth does; and each is associated
with a truth that is elusive because the subject (Lew) can only ever be
here. The 'temporal light' passage, then, is juxtaposed to the earlier
reference to the possibility, not just of transcending time, but of Lew the
reading subject's mastery of her image. This is as much a denial of
metanarrative as disputes over meaning throughout the previous section.


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