What is the cause of the narrator's mood? An Irish politician who, we happen to know, was disgraced by an adultery scandal, asks him:
"'Woman trouble?'" (p. 110)
- and he, the narrator, responds:
"'In a way... Not as simple as I wish it were.'" (ibid.)
That puts him in the same category as Olaf Stapledon's narrator. (See the above link from "mood.")
Villon proposes to recount a story from his own recent experience involving a woman but pauses, considers the narrator and suggests that that might:
"'...salt the wound, eh?'
"He was too perceptive. In his kind of life, you have to be." (p. 113)
Perceptive? Almost telepathic.
Where does Chesterton come into it, you may well ask. The narrator, describing Villon's "...old nasal French...," (ibid.) quotes Chesterton and a character in Gaiman's The Sandman models himself on Chesterton. Parallels hold.
Turning the page, we find Villon singing about, among others, Harald Hardrada, the title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy. "Losers' Night" pulls together a lot.
4 comments:
Chesterton was an odd mix of high intelligence and willful blindness. For example, when he was in the US and saw a Ford factory, he praised the Model T as a 'people's car'... but then suggested it be made in small shops by dedicated craftsmen.
That would have put its price vastly beyond ordinary working people's budgets.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Alas, when it came to practical, real-world economics, Chesterton was at his weakest. There's a reason why the fanciest, most high-end cars are expensive, because they get a lot of hand on work by dedicated craftsmen.
Even so, because of economies of scale, my current car, which I purchased factory new in 2018 for a relatively cheap $16,000 (a Honda FIT), had many of the amenities once limited to swanky cars.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: right. Chesterton hated factories and urbanization, but they were what freed us from the animalistic filth, starvation and misery of preindustrial existence.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! It was free enterprise economics and the limited State, in no matter what form, which made that possible. And many of the worst defects of industrialization were gradually eliminated in the most advanced nations.
Hmmm, when I got my current car in 2018, I did note it has no cigarette lighter and ash tray. A sign of how changes in "socially approved" customs affects the designs of cars!
Ad astra! Sean
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