The most intriguing mysteries are often the ones, which really don’t offer the one word answers we often seek. After finishing Byatt’s book, I felt stuck in a kind of spiral, cycle: mystery, sight of truth, truth present (for maybe a second) then separation or absence from truth back to mystery. It reminded me of an awful Chutes and Ladders game I played once (I haven’t really played since), where I never reached the end, but got close each time only to fall back to the beginning.
Nanson is revolving around the mystery or his own identity during the whole book. He searches for purpose and meaning, without even knowing it, by investigating the life of D-S. He’s doing a Lacan, learning how and what he wants by “identifying” with the desires of others. Or maybe not identifying as much as consuming.
I got a strong vibe of a kind of cannibalism in this book. Everything related to D-S had been eaten up. “Holme and Holly had been subsumed into Deodar Books, which had been swallowed by Hachs &Shaw.” And then Nanson’s research leads him to look through D-S into the lives of four men. D-S had basically finished with Bole’s life, and Nanson’s interest is piqued by his consumption of Bole’s life and D-S’s self in telling that life. Nanson has eaten some forbidden fruit in a way and can’t seem to stop gobbling down other people’s lives in pursuit of D-S’. What he doesn’t realize is that D-S does not have an identity. I think it is Lacan again when we are talking about amorphous souls? I don’t remember. But D-S’ identity is especially hard to pin down, because he is also an addict of consuming other peoples’ lives, which are also changing shapes. So, Nanson moves around, not knowing where he is going. He sees a lead, which takes him down a path he doesn’t expect, but it gives him a discovery. But that discovery is only a small part of the overall “truth” he is looking for, and then he drifts back to where he started.
Shape shifting moves me along to names. “Naming is a difficult art” (62). Naming is my mystery, I think. I felt something click when I read that “(Vera) said it was not arbitrary, each marble had been carefully and uniquely named.” I think it must be an art of sorts to be able to look at something and just instinctively know what its core being is. Like people’s names. Sometimes, I look at someone, and I know she must be named, “Hailey.” She just looks like one, but instead, I find out her name is Allison. Names carry a lot of weight in most cultures (probably all). I cannot decide if they are important because they reveal something of our identities or if we have given them meaning with language, but that train of thought takes me to lists.
Lists seem important in this text, and others, because they are names of things, and this book (and this class) seems to be stuck on “things.” “Do you think everyone collects things when little?” (246). We must have had an easier time understanding these kind of mysteries when we were younger, because I used to do tons of things, I don’t get know. I made lists: to-do lists inspired by Toad and Frog, lists of things I wanted, lists of favorite things, lists of friends. I named things and would line them up/order them. My favorites would be closest to my head at night, while the least favored were nearer to my feet and more likely to get kicked off. Harold, Butterscotch, Beth, Penny, Kitty, Bride and Groom bears (I wasn’t too imaginative when I inherited those), Arwen, Chocolate, Chewy and Pinky Mouse. I did this almost every night. I read names out of a phone book once for kicks and giggles. My best friend and I were bored, talking on the telephone. We were probably 9, waiting for parents to come home. I forget who, but one of us pulled out the phone book and started to read names. We made it a game to find the most ridiculous, hardest to pronounce names to say. Simpler times, I guess. I think the name game, lists are bridges, synapses in our brain, to not only make us aware of all the “things” that exist or did exist, but also how we can make sense of it all in an order. They are witnesses to forgotten things we sometimes always forget and then come back to. I think.
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