Progress: I am on page 116. I dropped the metaphysical questioning for a while to indulge in power struggles, murder and torture, and, most importantly, dragons and direwolves. Yes, Game of Thrones. There are wolves in The People's Act of Love. But the interplay of good and evil that the direwolves represent is a touch more... endearing... comforting... just not crisis inducing. Also, I would really like a dragon.
Yes, I'm avoiding the topic.
Unnamed, uncreated, no medium or size. Renamed A Simulacrum I by a voyeur
We (the crowd of readers I represent) haven't engaged with Samarin since I picked up the book again, except in the third person. Instead, we have been immersed in the melodrama of the Czechoslovakian lieutenant Mutz and the village hottie Anna Petrovna.
But all their melodrama has done is reinforce one of the themes: we are all alone; fantastically, miserably alone. No surprise there. The plot dangles the impossible in front of the characters: companionship. We suspect a trick but it draws us in, convincing us of its sincerity, and then - we all know what happens next. The companion turns, disappointing and thrilling us, because (as per previous post) it is easier to look down than to look up.
During this interlude, the narrator adopts a more familiar voice as he details the private lives of these two characters, helping us to understand their motivations. He does it without losing that sense of distance, though - the emotional action that is happening is as opaque to us, the voyeurs, as it is to the characters.
And so he develops some of the themes, somewhat obviously (which again makes you expect a trick) by repeating words, descriptions and commentaries. Ok, so we're all lost in the crowd, and we can't tell monsters from angels, and we're disorientated by the setting and some of the more bizarre things alluded to, and we know that something is being hidden from us and dammit that is really, really frustrating.
And Samarin is always in the background, butting into conversations and generally unsettling the familiarity of the interlude.
Now, we always read what we are most preoccupied with onto books (onto most things, I would argue). Plot summary: my subconscious and I were oblivious to one another for a long, long time. Then we became more and more aware of a force pushing back against us, like a Cape Town wind when you're running. We fought (my subconscious was winning) until we realised that the real fight was with the outside. We drew up a peace treaty and then realised there was nothing and no one to fight. (Which, honestly, was a little demotivating.) So now we're negotiating the terms of a new treaty, but we're (I am) doing it slowly because, yes, I suspect a trick.
That dissociation between our street-facing and rooftop-overlooking parts of ourselves interests me. Or, alternatively, the lack of, which is possible. I could be (I am) dissociated myself, dividing my inner life into slices that I can consume and those that I can't.
The narrator is omniscient, but he is holding back. In a sense, we are seeing the characters through similar but not the same glasses as themselves - we see what they want to see. The same is not true of Samarin, and perhaps that is why he always hanging around. Not that we see through the opaqueness of his mental walls, but that he doesn't seem to have any. We're not privy to his internal life, but behind those gates, the two are one, and so he lives alone and not alone.
It's enough to make me suspect that he is the narrator. But that's silly, right?
And there we go! Metaphysical conundrums abound: at heart, are we all amoral? If we could throw away our peace treaties and blinkers, would we choose to? Whose story are we telling? Is union the way to companionship? Ah, here be wolves.
A Simulacrum II
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