a metaphor.... but for whom?

[Dee Kilroy]

Heyo, friends.  Fancy meeting you-all fancy pants again.

Couple months back I finished my annual re-read of CoL49.  Chased it w/
Bleeding Edge (another annual habit), then decided what the hell, let's
finish Against The Day, for once, instead of getting a third through &
drifting out.

One of the things I enjoyed most about previous exposures to ATD was how
comfy the book is with its metafictional nature.  It accepts itself, which
is more than can be said for many postmodern texts.  It leans on that fouth
wall & smiles, goofily, when the wall seems to bend because P knows it
won't break.  ATD is meta and it's not: because certain of the characters
seem perfectly aware of their nature-- some of the Chums --and some don't--
like other Chums.  The self-awareness seems to fluctuate, depending on
where the reader is in the book, and where the book is in relation to the
reader.  It all trembles on a very familiar threshold.

Occurred to me, a couple days ago, how THAT is the nature of the epileptic
Word Oed sought.  That P was writing Oed experiencing his own
transcendent.taste of existing within the Logosphere.  Seeing himself in
the grander context of the story that is history, of being writ by, & being
moved on from, by the Great Finger.  Oed never quite breaks on through, and
in a curious way, that makes her more honest than many-- hell, most! --of
P's protrags, doesn't it?  P knew he couldn't write his way free of being
complicit in this marvelous, terrible thing we're all mired in... and by
the time of the Crying, Oed knew it, knows it, will know, too.

"She knew that the sailor had seen worlds no other man had seen if only
because there was that high magic to low puns, because DT’s must give
access to dt’s of spectra beyond the known sun, music made purely of
Antarctic loneliness and fright."

That Sailor could very well have been a Chum, couldn't he.