Say What, Now?
This entire book is really not much more than a persistent exercise in the crafting of imagery. Within that imagery is metaphor and simile piled on top of metaphor and simile. What separates this imagery from the norm is the introduction of the stream-of-consciousness technique. The result is a plethora of metaphor, the comparisons of which are more puzzling than logical:
“Cold coffee with a corn a corn yellow and green mass is a gem.”
Absurd
Many of the metaphorical images verge on the absurd. Or, for that matter, take a flying leap across the divide and land upside down on their head in the middle of absurdity:
“A shawl is a wedding, a piece of wax a little build.”
A Self-Aware Simile?
One of the bizarre constructions of metaphor almost seems like a self-aware commentary on its own quality of strangeness. Probably it isn’t but it is kind of interesting to consider if the author is making a commentary of awareness about what the reading experience must be like for others:
“A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison.”
Three for the Price of One
Sometimes readers get an extra: more than one metaphorical image in a single line. And sometimes the imagery engages the practicality of metaphor not for the purpose of making a comparison, but for the purpose of denying a comparison exists. More doesn’t necessarily translate into greater clarity of purpose, however:
“An excuse is not dreariness, a single plate is not butter, a single weight is not excitement”
Best. Ending. Ever.
This strange, fascinating, maddening work of literature comes to a close on yet another absurdly bizarre metaphorical image. It is absolutely appropriate considering everything that has come before. Meaning it makes no sense, but somehow its non-sensical aspects are even more excessively peculiar than what preceded it:
“The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain.”
