#deselby

Their colloquy on “no” ends with the narrator trying to get Mathers to disclose the location of the cash box or give it to him using the “do you refuse trick.” Mathers refuses because the narrator no longer knows his name. As such, Mathers could not get a receipt to show who he gave the cash box to. The author is troubled by forgetting his name, but thinks he can always pick anyone he wants. He has a brief interior monologue about Signor Bari, and then he and Mathers move on to a dialogue about gowns.

Mathers posits that everyone is given a gown at birth by the policemen and another on each birthday. The subsequent gowns are worn on top of the others, stretching as the wearer grows, and residing beneath the rest of the wearer’s habiliments like Mormon undies. These gossamer garments vary in color depending on the direction of the wind at the recipient’s birth, but are so faintly colored as to be almost imperceptibly fine. Nonetheless, the darker the original tone, the sooner the later layers become totally opaque, at which time the wearer dies. So the lighter the original color, yellow, say, the longer you will live. Brown or maroon and you’re heading for an early grave. And you can see it coming with each new layer of under-garb.

This talk of lightly-colored robes is faintly interesting, but despite reflection, I don’t see the point besides folly. It is a fantastical and absurd notion, but doesn’t tie in to anything later in the novel. These digressions are not uncommon in TTP and I don’t begrudge this passage, except that it is not really funny either. Just strange. Were the book ever filmed, I could see this exchange being omitted except visually, with glimpses of the narrator’s robes, progressively darker, throughout the story. Perhaps the policemen would be shown sewing them. 

Or maybe this digression on wind and lightly-dyed gowns is a background story for a larger, never completed sequel or series of related books. It could provide color (so to speak) for a Third Policeman universe to be developed by Netflix or SyFy. I would love to see such a thing, with shows and movies about the narrator, the policemen, a young Mathers, Finnucane and his men, and all the rest of this terrifying splendor, but I fear I and anyone else who dared watch it would shortly be driven to suicide to escape the torment.

De Selbyiana

Some notes: This is where De Selby’s most famous theory, that of night as an accumulation of dark air, is first mentioned. (p. 32, n. 4) In that same footnote, oddly, De Selby’s work, A Memoir of Garcia, is first cited, but it short form (”Garcia”) as if it had been cited before. The work is cited in full for the first time six pages later. (Ch. III, p. 38, n.2) Whether this was an editing error, brought about by moving some footnotes around without revising them to ensure the full cite is made first and short cites only thereafter, or whether this is a purposeful gesture by the author as a nod to the absurdity and nihilism of TTP is unkown. I know as a former lawyer, that forgetting to correct short cites is very common when editing a brief under a deadline. You move the text with the first reference to a point after a subsequent short cite, or vice versa, and then when first reference is made, the reader doesn’t know what work you’re referring to. It is a pretty bad mistake because it is difficult for the reader to go ahead to try to find the full cite. But is also an easy mistake to make because editing for the propriety of short cites and long cites is a time consuming job often left until the end of editing and then often forgotten about.

In footnote 4 on page 32, we also see reference to a second commentary on De Selby from La Fournier, Homme ou Dieu (Man or God), the title of which refers, ridiculously, to De Selby.   

At the end of this exchange, Mathers tells the narrator that the police barracks is nearby, and identifies the policemen as Pluck, MacCruiskeen, and Fox (disappeared for 25 years). The narrator announces his intention to visit the police barracks, but decides to sleep at Mathers’s house for the night first because the sun has gone down during the conversation--gone down, BACK THE SAME WAY AS IT HAD COME UP!!! Spooky!

At the outset of Chapter II, the author expounds directly about De Selby’s theories for the first time. In particular, his views on residential architecture are discussed. These views are best exemplified in illustrations in De Selby’s Country Album of two types of houses: one with a roof and walls of loose tarpaulins that roll down from the gutters around large doors and windows, and another with one wall facing the prevailing wind and tarpaulins providing the remaining structure including the roof. These homes are built on masonry but surrounded by latrines.

You see, De Selby blames houses and living indoors generally for mankinds current softness and dissolution, so it seems he wants to make shelter as thin and rudimentary as possible. 

The author only briefly describes his stint at school. It is there that he discovers the enigmatic philosopher/pseudoscientist, De Selby. He steals a copy of Golden Hours, one of De Selby’s works, an act the narrator describes as his “first serious sin.” After school, aged 19, the author takes some time off to travel, trying to collect and/or learn about more of De Selby’s works and those of his critics and commentators. 

During this time, the narrator breaks his left leg in six places and it is amputated, being replaced by a wooden leg. It is easy to forget about this later in the book. I know I did.

Presumably, the narrator’s inheritance remained sufficient to support him during this time off after his graduation, but not for long. He returns to his farm, out of money, at age 20. I really enjoy the description of the narrator’s life with Divney at the farm  upon his return, but before the murder. It is quirky, original, and just plain strange. Yet it explains, in a bizarre way, how the author is possibly manipulated into committing the murder. Even if it is difficult to imagine any real person acting as the narrator does, it is brain tickling to read it happen.

Eine unzuverlässige Zusammenfassung des #SinnDesLebens nach deSelby.

GOTT zog das Manuskript unter der Kellertreppe hervor. Zwei selbsternannte Evangelisten hatten ihm den Text aus Ehrerbietung und zur Ansicht geschickt. Sie suchten nach der Antwort. Das hatten sie jedenfalls mit gelbem Filzstift auf dem Umschlag vermerkt – und darunter mit dunkelblauem Kugelschreiber ihr Konzept skizziert: Zwei Autoren – abwechselnd schreiben sie ein Kapitel nach dem anderen –…