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WANDERING_PURPOSE

                                              February 11-12, 2005


From the first dialog of Delany's Dhalgren:

  "You have no purpose?"

  "I want to get to Bellona and --"
  He chuckled.  "Mine's the same as everybody
  else's; in real life, anyway: to get through
  the next second, consciousness intact."

  The next second passed.

  "Really?" she asked, real enough to make
  him realize the artificiality of what he'd      FUNCTION_OF_WORD_PATTERNS
  said (thinking: It is in danger with the
  passing of each one).  "Then be glad you're
  not just a character scrawled in the margins
  of somebody else's lost notebook: you'd be
  deadly dull.  Don't you have *any* reason
  for going there?"





                                 Why "a character scrawled in
                                 the margins of somebody
                                 elses's lost notebook" and
                                 not just "a character in a
                                 story"?

                                 Later in the novel, the main character
                                 finds such a notebook, and begins writing
       And Delany                in the margins of it.  So this quip by
       indulges in               this woman appears to be a self-    
       some silly                referential forward reference.  It can
       two column                make no sense to a reader the first time
       text to                   through.
       represent                    
       marginal                  Further it *only* works as a        
       writing.                  metafictional device -- the woman    
                                 appears to have foreknowledge of    
   (That has to be               things she couldn't possibly know.    
   a pun.  Delany                Almost any fictional explanations    
   regards himself               (as opposed to metafictional) that    
   as a marginal                 we might try to devise (such as     
   writer...  or at              coincidence or implanted suggestion)    
   least a                       just don't seem work -- it's far too    
   marginalized                  clumsy a thing to say without a very    
   one.)                         good reason.                        
                                 
                                             
                                       Maybe: she does know him,   
                                       and the notebook he picks up 
                                       later is his own, forgotten 
                                       notebook, and she's seen him 
         Q: Did the notebook           with it before. So he's been 
         have *any* writing            inside Bellona before?      
         in the margins                                       
         before he finds it?               (But no one there seems
                                           to recognize him!  How 
         Check.  If not, we're             long could he have been
         stuck with this as                there?)                
         the first purely
         metafictional device
         in the novel, the
         place where the hand    And in my                     
         is tipped --            opinion,       
                                 it's a         
     But: the phrase             false note.     (Can I mix 
     can't work on even                          'em, or what?)     
     this level, for the                                       
     first reading.               
     
                   
     It's strictly there
     for the second time
     through.



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