"Lodestar." (here)
Falkayn's moment of realization completes our fadeout from his perceptions and thoughts. His silence and tension tell us that something has come into his mind but nothing in the text tells us what it is. In a screen adaptation, the camera should recede from Falkayn, where he is seated in Muddlin' Through, then from Muddlin' Through.
After that, the text divides into four sections, pov(point of view)-wise, although they are unequal in length and and are not all clearly demarcated as such. First, in the page-long passage beginning:
"This happened shortly after the Satan episode..." (p. 639)
- an omniscient, or at least a very well informed, narrator summarizes several years of Nicholas van Rijn's life, describing the merchant unflatteringly:
"...his thick neck..." (ibid.)
This is not quite van Rijn's pov but close:
"Returned home, he swore by all that was holy and much that was not: Never again!" (ibid.)
Our narrator knows his man. This passage ends with van Rijn's competitors hoping that he is slowing down. Then, without any pause or gap in the text, it segues into Coya Conyon's pov:
"I can't say I like most of those money-machine merchant princes, Coya reflected..." (p. 640)
Coya remains our viewpoint character until she strides aft to confront her grandfather in his stateroom. Then, after three asterisks, the scene changes to that stateroom where a conversation between van Rijn and Captain Hirharouk is narrated from neither of their povs. But Coya enters and we return to her pov where we remain until the end when she:
"...saw that [van Rijn] was indeed old." (p. 680)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And that's the way it should be, a good author or director does not reveal too soon what was Falkayn's insight.
You might have quoted as well how Coya, a kindly young lady, did not really want those "money machine merchant princes" suffering heart attacks from apoplectic rage at being outwitted by Old Nick yet again.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment