Discussion - Week One - Op Oloop - pg. 5 - 90

[Jim]

This discussion covers Page 5 – 90, begins “10:00 A.M.”

[Nicole]

Okay, the thing I'm not understanding is the whole scene in italics inside the heads of our two lovers in some kind of shared allegorical space. I think it's an allegorical space, anyway, but I'm not entirely sure what it's mapping onto. Can it really be a simple as chaste and sexless love that transcends the body? I think I would be disappointed by that.

I'm hoping for a return to the police investigation, though. That seemed quite promising.

[Jim]

Nicole wrote: "Okay, the thing I'm not understanding is the whole scene in italics inside the heads of our two lovers in some kind of shared allegorical space. I think it's an allegorical space, anyway, but I'm n..."

Think of it as a PTAP scenario - Post-Traumatic Astral Projection - where the two lovers, after suffering trauma at the hands of the consul, meet on another dimension. Or more simply, it's an imaginary dialogue between two unconscious lovers, communicating on an alternative plane of reality... or something like that...

Removed from the constraints of regular reality, they are able to communicate in a whole new way.

[Nicole]

This much, yes, okay. But what's the point of it in terms of narrative structure? In particular, that their environment is corrupted by the body, by penises and breasts and thighs, that they must avoid Descartes and take the phallus-labeled road out, that they must shed their bodies and strive for purity and selflessness in love....is the allegory here really just about how the body corrupts?

[Jim]

Nicole wrote: "This much, yes, okay. But what's the point of it in terms of narrative structure? In particular, that their environment is corrupted by the body, by penises and breasts and thighs, that they must a..."

In terms of narrative structure, it's a convenient device for his two characters to express their feelings. Is that what you're asking?

As for allegory, I think Filloy has a twisted sense of humor and is joking with the reader throughout, so interpret it as you will.

Filloy is not a particularly graceful fiction writer. He does a bit too much name-checking, philosophical-asiding, obscure-word-choices-just-for-the-fuk-of-it, and showing off the contents of his big brain's researches. And he's funny...

[Jonathan]

I'm fifty pages in at the moment and I'm enjoying it. It's a very playful book and reminds me of early Beckett such as Watt (a favourite of mine) and A Confederacy of Dunces (another favourite). There are so many quotable sentences.

I didn't realise the main character was going to collapse so early in the book.

[mkfs]

Nicole wrote: "This much, yes, okay. But what's the point of it in terms of narrative structure? ..."

I thought it was a nice dig at platonic love. Here is this couple, in an unconsummated relationship, meeting on a higher plane: the plane of the mind/spirit/whathaveyou.

Denial of their physicality leads them to -- where else? -- a landscape of genitalia (and boobs and butts and all that).

Filloy already made some overtures to Freud (nice pairing btw, Jim) with some-people-have-their-heads-in-their-anuses remark; here he takes the Freudian bull by the, er, horns and, uh, runs me out of metaphor.

It'll be fun to see where Filloy goes with this.