Paula’s Comments (group member since Jun 18, 2025)

Paula’s comments from the Reading the Chunksters group.

Ok, on the very first page we read: "When other people spoke about their rare, unsettling spells of deja vu he'd frown and feel that he was missing something, not because he'd never known such feelings, but because he'd never known anything else."

We have encountered this theme time and time again. Does anyone know if Moore has any kind of theory or philosophy of time? Does he think that all of us are kind of fated to live our lives over and over again?

Just wondering if anyone knew. I haven't read much about Moore and this is my first exposure to his writing.

Just rereading "Do as you Darn Well Pleasey". I googled that phrase and found out it is part of the lyrics to a song called The Lambeth Walk, a familiar place we've read about in prior chapters and now this one.

And of course there is the standard definition someone doing as they darn well please.

Clever.

Zulfiya wrote: "Hey, Sorry for a delayed schedule, but so far, my professional life has dominated my existence.

Here is how see the schedule. It looks like it is going to be a lengthy journey, if you find my ide..."

Has the 08/06 thread been opened yet?

Drew wrote: "Atlantis was the first chapter where I felt bogged down with geographical details. Ben's rambling and wallowing in nostalgia were mildly interesting and, of course, provided more links to other sto..."

You and me both. And there are some things you just can't unsee. Like Ben draping his genitals in the sink to wash. Ugh and ick.

Most of it was, as you say, mildly interesting as Ben wanders around in a drunken haze, encountering some of the characters and places we've already met. Ironic that we met Charlie the actor, whose current role is The Inebriate, and now we meet one in real life. The son of Jem, who we met earlier, as a ghost, in Freddy's chapter.

Some of the geographical details were helpful, especially since we find out what Peter the monk carried in his sack and where it, and, he, ended up. But now the mystery is: where is that artifact now since that church is referred to in the past tense? And the reference to the billiard hall and The Boroughs being knee-deep in angels. Indeed it is.

And interesting to find out that the patron saint is the Archangel Michael, who we met in the billiard hall. Ben refers to him as one of God's four lieutenants. All four are referenced in Freddy's chapter although only two are named.

A lot of the streets Ben wanders seem to be tantalizingly out of range of Moore's map. The location where Peter first entered the town (St. Peter's Way), the old Billiards Hall, etc. And again, references to maps and the flatlands perspective as if viewing from an alternate perspective. And I'd like to know where that paper shop on Drum Lanes corner is/was. The place of Alma's childhood dream. And interesting that Ben refers to the Counsel House where taxes are paid, feels like a place of execution. Re-evokes those concepts of Judgment, and Justice meted out.

I did appreciate Moore describing how our past is kind of like our own personal Atlantis. Something that is over, but submerged, so that we have to dive deep down into ourselves to find it. And obviously, there is a very deep, mysterious Atlantis submerged within Northampton.

And it sounds as if we get another thread of what happened to Marla.

Oh, and that odd house is mentioned again. I want to know more about it.

I'm trying to catch up. Hopefully, now that I finished The Weight of Ink - which was excellent - I will make better progress.

I watched a Charlie Chaplin movie a couple of weeks ago, got interested in him. Went to Wikipedia and found a trove of stuff Moore put in his character. Complete happenstance that I stumbled over it.

Drew wrote: "Paula wrote: "BTW, I posted in an earlier thread asking if anyone had realized just who in real life Moore based his character Sir Francis Drake on."

I didn't guess so perhaps you'd care to enligh..."

Looks like it didn't post.

The actor Sir Francis Drake - Charles - well, he is Charlie Chaplin. Google Charlie Chaplin, especially with regard to his early years and you will see it. His brother Sydney, where he was born and grew up. His parents and what happened to them. That scene in the pub with his father. Farno. All of it. :)

Hi Karen, I'm glad you're ahead of me and can confirm that there is significance to some of the themes and threads that are so fascinating to me.

BTW, I posted in an earlier thread asking if anyone had realized just who in real life Moore based his character Sir Francis Drake on. I don't think it has any real relevance, but it was cool to discover :).

"Blind but Now I See"

This chapter took more than 2 reads to get anything from. I found my eyes glazing over more than once. And it seems surprising because the events of Henry's life included many that were interesting, moving, and certainly turbulent. Born and branded a slave, part of the Great Emancipation, part of the exodus to Kansas. He knew Bill Hickok, Bill Cody and Elvira Conely (who became close friends with both of the Bill's). She also knew Britton Johnson, a famous African-American cowboy who apparently was the best shot in the West. Then, travels to New York, then to Great Britain on the Pride of Bethlehem (a cool tie to our book), sheep driving, meeting a beautiful white girl, falling instantly in love and settling in Northampton because they knew it was the place for them.

Whoosh - makes me tired just typing it. What an incredible journey. But so dully told. I know that Moore is relating this journey through the mind and words of Henry - such a quiet and humble man. But the chapter suffered for it. I did enjoy looking up information about the Kansas Exodus, Elvira Conely and Britton Johnson.

The threads we've been discussing are there though:

"The walls and corners of Northampton fell away behind like weights form off his back": again, those almost geometric references to walls and, most especially, corners. Plus the inference that Northampton's atmosphere is almost tangible, if only when one feels the effects of its absence.

I'm intrigued about the references to Northampton's trees and especially the one that had such significance to Henry and Selina.

There is another reference to viewing things from a great height:

"From up above he figured how he must bear a resemblance to one of them tin novelties he'd seen, them where you cranked the handle and a little feller sitting on a bicycle rode inch by inch on a straight wire with only his knees moving, going up and down there on the pedals."

It makes me think about how from a great height, or a greater, more powerful perspective, we might be viewed like toys...or puppets...or chess pieces...or billiard balls.

Another reference to the peculiarities of Northampton itself (mentioned several times in "X Marks the Spot"):

"It was as if the folks what writ them history books just couldn't see Northampton somehow, like it had a veil across it or like they was horses wearing blinkers with the whole town on they blind side.

Reference to the bad places in the Boroughs:

"sometimes it would seem to him as if the Boroughs was built crooked specially so's it could harbor all the gloom and hunts up in its corners" (again, a reference to corners). "Sweet in the mornings, lazy in the afternoons, come dark this was another place entire."

"Unearthly, that was what it was after the daylight went, the daylight what was holding back another world where anything might just about be possible."

It isn't until the end of the chapter that we find out why Henry has been scratching his left shoulder during some of his reminiscences - it's his brand. "There was two hills, looked like they got a bridge between 'em, else like they was pans hung on a scale for weighing gold." I found the reference to scales (a symbol of Justice) very intriguing. I'm hoping there's something to all of this.

Cindy wrote: "We finally had two chapters in a row that were both in the same time period! I'm still enjoying the book. It has definitely become a quest for clues and connecting threads as well as the unfolding ..."

I like how you phrased it - "a quest for clues". That's exactly the frame of mind I'm in. I hope it lasts!

"Modern Times": The motifs introduced in the earlier chapters continue as we meet Charles (Sir Francis Drake). Pigeons make another appearance. Of course, pigeons are everywhere, but I think Moore continues to give them special relevance, again associated with time, crossroads, destiny:

"...it was a pity that you couldn't tell beforehand how your life was going to be, and never mind about your death. Things could go either way for him at present and it was as unpredictable and random as the movements of those roosting pigeons, how events would finally fall out."

He meets Henry (for the 2nd time since his boyhood) and then, of course, the encounter is reprised from Henry's perspective in the next chapter. Time and events continuing to fold in upon themselves.

Predestination, the idea that there is a greater, inevitable "plan" (which can fill one with excitement and hope - or total horror) is a major theme that continues throughout this chapter. The idea that everything is foreordained, that we are all just actors in some grand "play".

"What it was with death that worried him was that it made him feel like he was trapped upon a tramline that was only going to one place, that the iron rail was set already in the road in front of him, that it was all inevitable, although actually that was the thing that worried him with life as well, upon consideration. It was how life seemed sometimes like a skit that had been written out beforehand, with a punch line that was set up in advance. All you could do was try and keep up with its twists and turns while the momentum of the story dragged you through it, one scene following another."

And then shortly thereafter: "It was as if life were some great big impersonal piece of machinery...".

Synchronicity surfaces yet again (after meeting Henry again), when Charles meets May (Vernall) Warren, who happened to know him back in South London when they were children. Charles is struck by the coincidences he has been presented with while standing on a street corner: "It made him think gain about his previously held opinions as regards predestination and if people ever really had a inkling of the path ahead of them."

Of course, as we are discovering, there are/have been quite a few people associated with Northhampton who have had strong inklings indeed.

Something is definitely converging upon this place. Or been there all along and, if so, what is the catalyst for the convergence?

"There was always the suggestion of a pattern in the way things worked that you could almost understand, but when you tried to pin down what the meaning or significance might be it all just fizzled out and you were left no clearer than you were before."

The strange, submerged, peculiarity of Northampton (strongly felt and heard of by Peter the Monk) is picked up on by Charlie as well:

"he had a sense of wonderment at what had just occurred, at the whole atmosphere of this peculiar place where it would seem that such things happened all the time".

Indeed.

When I first read this chapter, I didn't have much sympathy for Charles, but reading it again made him more real to me. His powers of self-observation are pretty honed and honest. Like when he talks about people who thought of him as a climber, when in reality:

"What kept him on the move, he knew, was not the destiny that he was chasing but the fate that he was running from. What people saw as a climbing was no more than him attempting to arrest his fall."

And of course, those last, poignant paragraphs in the dressing room, as he does his makeup and prepares himself for his role as The Inebriate.

Just one stroke of makeup and pretense from sharing the fate of his father.

I'm going to write more in a bit but I've been bursting to ask if anyone realizes who Charles (Sir Francis Drake) really is. I've been dying to tell.

The only way I knew this was because I watched a movie a couple of weeks ago, got interested in the actors and did some reading. It blew my mind when I connected the dots to Oatsie :).

Karen wrote: "The following observations all contributed to my hypothesis.

The characters apparently see each other and this seems to be during the events that have been previously been described. For example i..."

Thanks for sharing. I like how you phrase it when you say that people are linked to places and how places can become compressed.

The synchronicities are very strong to me. I am so struck by how time and place seem to fold in upon themselves and then kind of flap open so that we can glimpse the world inside. And yes, so compressed and interwoven by people and events that they bleed or melt into each other to the point that boundaries become uncertain. The geometry of it is fascinating to me.

I don't have a hypothesis; rather, I have the impression of the themes running through the chapters so far: Justice, Redemption, Good, Evil. But more than just themes...more like archetypes. Much, much bigger than themes.

I like that you mentioned the dimensional aspects. It runs through so much of the chapters; seeing something as if from a great height where, because of this overarching perspective, the observer can sometimes see what is going to happen before it does (Ern in the cathedral again). To someone "on the ground", such predictions would seem magical or miraculous; but in actuality it's just the perspective from which those events are observed.

I didn't think of that flattened perspective so much as two dimensional as three dimensional, with that higher view/power as a fourth dimension (the Angels/Angles, the Destructor). But we're on the same page I think.

However, again, you actually have a hypothesis while I'm still just still down in the weeds with the trees - unable to see the forest yet :).

Karen wrote: "The connective links that I have noticed are that the main character in each chapter is seen by the characters in previous chapters. The concept of fate is also a prominent theme so far; as is the ..."

I'm rereading these chapters right now, but Karen, I'm dying to know more about your theory. You should scatter some hints :).

Karen wrote: "Paula, what an excellent oveview and analysis of this chapter. It has made me want to reread it more closely.
On thinking about the chapter I recalled the episode at the well when Peter is terribly..."

Karen, reading your comments gave me chills. I remember well the passage that reads "and on this rock, I will build my church", but not the rest of it. The apostle Peter did come to mind when I read the chapter, but I didn't fully appreciate the association until you expanded the idea. It gives so much more depth - thank you for that. And it does set the stage, as it were, for what exactly Peter has established by bringing his artifact/relic to Hamtun.

I was horrified initially by the well episode and how Moore set up that single sentence "It was blood." It was its own paragraph. So shocking. And then later, after Peter's discovery, again a single sentence that was it's own paragraph: "It was dye."

I also really appreciated your bit of history about the Crusades. All of your comments enrich the chapter for me. I look forward to more of them!

Ok. I went back and reread "X Marks the Spot". To be honest, on the first reading, it was a bit of a yawner for me; however, the rereads of these early chapters has made me more aware of the small undercurrents connecting the various narratives.

It reminds me a bit of the old science books in school (I'm dating myself here), where you had those transparent overlays. Each overlay had a piece of the whole. As you laid each overlay on top of the earlier one/s, more and more of the total picture would emerge. It wasn't until the last transparency had been placed that you finally saw the entire picture. I think this is one of the things I've been enjoying the most so far. How much longer it continues - and how long Moore can keep it up without jumping the rails and losing that connectivity - remains to be seen. I hope he can do it. But it's a long book.

Anyway, in this chapter, we meet Peter, the Monk, who carries an unknown artifact given to him (we find out later), by someone he met in Jerusalem, who tasked him with delivering it "to the centre of your land". Peter has determined that the centre of his land is Mercia and the centre of that is Hamtun, and now needs to find the centre of Hamtun.

Those little connecting threads we have talked about appear almost immediately. The "dream" of the old woman who wants to know if Peter has "brung et" and describes it as "what thing there is by all four corners as yet marks the middle". A reference, again, to corners (which we've read in earlier chapters, and the "middle". It gives a flavor of sacred geometry (reference back to Ern).

Hamtun appears to be a kind of Brigadoon, a town that few have been to, no one speaks of, remote, yet bustling with energy and enterprise - "remarkable only in that it never was remarked upon". And queer as well, what with the reference to how it is easy to get to, but difficult as murder to get out of. And the description of it early in the chapter:

"In the country's ancient heart, this curious essential nature hid and made itself a secret, slyly marvelous and dangerous in its caprice as if it did not realize its frightening strength or else pretended it did not. Behind the madman glitter of its eye behind its rotted smile, he thought, there was a knowledge it had chosen to conceal with mischiefs, frights and phantoms. At once monstrous and playful, antic even in its horrors, there was something in its nature Peter found he might admire or fear, yet all the while still chuckling in wonderment at its defiant queerness."

There's an elaborate description of Peter's exploration of Hamtun, which, personally, was overdone, and made it more difficult to retain the atmosphere and "vibe" of the town. I think Moore loses his threads in all of the cascade of words. But they do surface again. There's a deeply pagan, very old, aspect to Hamtun. The woman who wears a Thor stone...she speaks of an old temple.

A thread surfaces when Peter muses: "Were all of England's tangling lines met here, he wondered, tied into a knot at Hamtun by some giant midwife as it were the country's umbilicus?"

Again, these references to the center, the heart - and Peter has been tasked with finding, as it were, the center of the center.

The thread capturing the idea of a larger perspective, only to be seen at a greater height (reference again Ern looking down from a great height and seeing the cathedral from a different perspective) surfaces as Peter muses: "this was not so unlike his own faith in a life that was beyond this brief span and in some means over it, at a superior height from which the traps and snares of the world were more clearly seen and understood".

I enjoyed the explanation of Peter's faith, and his differentiation between faith and belief. His meeting with angels.

References again to pigeons, which are clustered around the ruin of the old church/temple. He passes through a bad place, one that has the quality of harm and malice (which has been described several times in earlier chapters). Reference to a single dwelling set apart from others (also referenced in earlier chapters).

I found his experience of a life relived over and over fascinating, but very disturbing as well. As if life is an endless loop replaying itself. The effect this abandoned dwelling has on him is very strong.

"What had unnerved him mostly at the croft-house was the notion that his passing of it was no sole-event, but only one within a line of repetitions, so that there was called unto his mind an image that was like an endless row of him, his separate selves all passing by the same forsaken nook but many times repeated, all of them within that instant made aware of one another and the queer affair of their recurrence, that the world and times about them were recurring also. It was a ghostly sentiment he had about him, as though he were one already dead who was reviewing the adventures of his life...".

This reminded me of Freddy and the other ghosts, who had all of those trailing images of themselves. Not a surprise that he meets Freddy and asks for the "center" (we learn this in Freddy's chapter). And he knows that Freddy is a ghost. Indeed, he understands Freddy and, in a few words, really captures the poignancy of Freddy's essence and his plight: "Perhaps it was a lost soul, neither blessed nor else condemned and so residing in another state, here in its haunts of old. He wondered if it were eternally required to wander thus, or if the spirit knew some further destination...". And, of course, we know that yes, Freddy does know of a better "destination", but his shame holds him back.

As he watches Freddy go on his way, again he is struck by a feeling that all of this is due to some master plan, preordained: "he now thought it more like a plan on parchment that a carpenter had made". This reference to a carpenter, is of course, very striking and resonates through our earlier reading. The implications of that are there for us to interpret.

He saves a young girl from harm, and one wonders if, by doing so, some significant series of events will result.

The final pages are very moving - and my favorite section. Peter, although he doesn't know it yet, is dying. He is in the deepest despair, wondering if this journey will ever end. Will he find this center? "He knew that he had once or many times before arrived here to find nothing. He was ever in the action of arriving here and finding nothing". But at that very end, he sees his friend, the one who set him upon his long and arduous journey, who throws his arms joyfully aloft (and there is that suggestion of opening wings - referencing back to the descriptions in the celestial billiard game). And he says "Yes! Yes! Yes, it is I!. I exist! Yes, it is here in this place of excess that with a cross the centre shall be marked. Yes it is here where is the exit of your journey, where both ye and I are come together. Yes, yes, yes, unto the very limits of existence, yes!"

And his friend, this angel, points to the church behind him, St. Gregory's. Peter just manages to stumble towards it, encounters two monks, describes his journey to them, gives them the sack with the relic inside (maddening that we don't know what it is), and has a final dying vision, as his soul rises from his body, and again with references to unfolding corners "he noticed for a first time how the corners of a building were made cleverly, that they could be unfolded in a manner whereby the inside of them was out".

I appreciated this chapter a whole lot more upon a second reading. The poignancy of a faith briefly shaken, but then restored, Freddy, the sense that existence can overlap and repeat itself until some kind of great ending is achieved.

I have no idea what the heck it all means, but there is much to chew on so far. I don't know if Moore can keep it up, but I hope so. As I said, my feeling was that this chapter really needed a reread in order to see the forest itself, instead of all trees.

Ok, I'm back and ready to talk about my favorite part of the book so far - that cosmic game of billiards. The biblical, mystical, apocryphal awesomeness of it all.

It begins as Freddy when he mounts the Jacob Flight. My first reading, I passed right over it, but picked it up in a reread when I was more attuned to mystical aspects of the novel and the billiards game played by the Builders (angels). Jacob Flight is capitalized. Which to me means significant. And it's called a ladder. Jacob's Ladder. Right out of the Bible. A connector between Heaven and Earth with an angel at each rung. It reminded me of an old religious song "We are Climbing Jacob's Ladder" meaning we are working to be worthy of returning to the presence of the Divine. Or God.

So Freddy climbs Jacob's Ladder to the billiard room, where he sees that the Builders playing tonight are the four Master Builders. When he mentions Mighty Mike, it was another jolt for me. The Master Builders are Archangels. Mighty Mike is the Archangel Michael. And Yuri must be the Archangel Uriel. Archangels aren't sweet gentle spirits, like how other angels are described. Archangels are powerful. They are warriors, direct conduits of the Great I Am. Depending upon which religious school of thought you subscribe to (if any), there is a belief that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Revelations) are archangels.

The images of light that look like wings, the references to pigeon wings (for the 3rd time) really creates a striking atmosphere. And then when "Mighty Mike" makes direct eye contact with Freddy as he rescues the ball that Freddy knows represents Marla, that was a wow moment. Freddy has been noticed, seen, by the Divine. Where this is leading, I have no idea. And we also know that Marla survives her encounter with Fate.

This chapter was absolutely masterful.

I feel like I'm in the minority here because I think "Rough Sleepers" is so awesome, I've read it four times now. First, I was so blown away by how deftly Moore handled introducing us to Freddy. Did anyone realize he was what we would call a ghost. I didn't. I can't remember when I finally realized something was off...when I went back, started over, and there it was, on the very first page of the chapter. That was well done indeed.

And then, the talk about being "up there in the twenty-fives". Or "you're better off down in the forty-eights and forty-nines". Being an urban person, my brain automatically assumed the references pertained to streets. But no, it turns out they are talking about years. And the waitress in the pub, the impression is that the waitress is ignoring them, but no, she can't see them. At this point, I was still thinking that I'm being introduced to a couple more living, breathing characters. Yes Moore kept me clueless for quite a while.

In my rereads, the slender, delicate threads continue to surface, which is something I'm loving about this book and which I hope continues. I enjoy the puzzle box aspects.

For example, when Freddy talks about lying next to other rough sleepers, you think back to Marla seeing two sets of feet, and then just one. Of course, she does see two sets, but Freddy notices that she sees him, and he gets up and leaves. The same during the sexual encounter. Somehow Marla and Freddy can connect in some kind of ephemeral recognition.

Another: When Freddy thinks about how no one was to blame about how he had lived his life and that there was justice in the way he had ended up. "Justice above the streets". This is a phrase we've read before...when Ern has his communication with the Angel.

He meets the monk, who we meet later in the next chapter. He senses a bad place, in the same area that Mick does.

He talks of The Destructor, which we see on the map. To me, I'm thinking, is that some sort of Hell? It's not far from where that poor kids runs into Mick and describes his experience "up the pub". I want to know more about it.

It's during his conversation with his old friend, that we truly feel some of the poignancy of Freddy's heart and mind. He knows he could "move up". That it's not impossible. That there is hope in that progression. But Freddy refuses. Not because he thinks it's impossible for him, but because he feels unworthy; that nothing he can do now will truly atone for his past life; that what he has is what he deserves. In other words, his shame keeps him exactly where he is, in this almost Dante like Limbo.

I want to know more about the Pucks Hats and the association with Mick eating fairies. He must be talking about a Pucks Hat. At the time when, as a little child, he died from choking on a cough drop. Dead far longer than it should have been possible for him to revive.

I'm writing on an iPad, so I'm going to break up my long-winded comments because I really want to talk about that celestial game of billiard, which is another of my favorite parts.

I read it first when I was in my 20's. I often find that books I read at that age that I didn't like were books I loved as I matured and gained more life experience. So, I thought I might have felt differently 30+ years later. I still disliked the book, but my reasons were more developed.

And it's not like it's a hard read, so it goes pretty fast.

I've read it twice...once years ago and then again last year? It's not a hard read. Just long. It didn't reasonate with me, just meh.