ST(a)G(ge)R chap 39 revisited

[Michael Bailey]

I forge on … doggedly (woof woof) … ruthlessly (I wonder where Ruth is?)

- the 3 segments in chapter 39 made me think of “A clean Well-Lit Place” with Bruno as the old dude, Hicks as the medium dude, and Skeet as the young guy.

Or as an envoi, like, here’s 3 states of mind - maybe not age-based, but like Chaucer’s “sentence and solas” give you something to take with you…

1) Bruno

makes me wonder if I too am the Al Capone of a certain amount and type of cheese, riding on a purloined U-boat and being fed a dystopian vision of America

- the alternate statue Stuffy posits (after a narratorial description) is a militaristic transformation of the vision of the original statue along the Eigenvalues (or something) created by the violent warping of American foreign policy.

Having Bruno specifically be the one to endure this sight and this explanation centers his greed and “realpolitik”, his eagerness to copy Al Capone’s praxis, as the ideas behind his being the villain of the story.

Bruno’s captivity at the hands of Stuffy - when you think of “stuffy”, you think of longwinded explanations - like the one of the anti-statue which begins the Chapter
- for “man of action” Bruno, it’s all so much stuffiness.

But if we identify with Stuffy, and look for “sentence and solas” in the long-winded explanations, we may find them there; Stuffy and the U-boat are a nexus of control to which, at least in thought, we can remand Bruno and his ilk.



2) Hicks out there fighting the good fight, making it up as he goes along…Terike seems to like him…what’s that literary term, he’s like a (arrgghh) fricken — I’ll look it up tomorrow, okay?

3) Skeet writing, “about to learn” -  suggesting writing as a way of keeping in touch with pals while working on one’s own thoughts as well