First of all: WHOA. The blogger site looks completely different than it did the last time I posted something and now I am slightly discombobulated.
Anyways, I'd like to revisit a passage from Libra that we read kind of a while ago, but at the time I couldn't write about it because I was out of the country without a computer:
Finally, the passage also reminds me a little bit of the Tralfamadorian idea of a moment being structured a certain way (I feel like I keep coming back to this concept, but it's so interesting and fits so well with the books we read!). The notion that we're all just "characters in plots," whether we know it or not, makes it seem like we have no real say in how our lives play out, but rather that the story of our world has already been written and we're all just playing our parts. I can't decide if I find this concept plain old creepy or, in a weird way, sort of comforting; I think it's a little of both.
Anyways, I'd like to revisit a passage from Libra that we read kind of a while ago, but at the time I couldn't write about it because I was out of the country without a computer:
We lead more interesting lives than we think. We are characters in plots, without the compression and numinous sheen. Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely. He [Win Everett] would show the secret symettries in a non-descript life. (DeLillo 78)This passage originally struck me because it really rang true with the work I've been doing on my semester project, linking unrelated events and people to create a plot and "show[ing] the secret symettries in a non-descript life." It amazes me how many coincidences you can find in history, how suspicious events seem when you look at them out of their original contex, and how well life lends itself to crazy conspiracy theories. In fact, DeLillo touches on this earlier in the novel as well:
It was all so curiously funny. It was rich, that's what it was. Everyone was a spook or dupe or asset, a double, courier, cutout or defector, or was related to one. We were all linked in a vast and rhythmic coincidence, a daisy chain of rumor, suspicion and secret wish. (DeLillo 57)Beyond this, though, it's also interesting to think that there are "themes and involute turnings" in our lives that "we have not allowed ourselves to see completely." To me, it suggests that all of our actions are somehow important in the overall history of things, just in ways we can't ever hope to really see because as individuals we have such a limited perspective of the world. It's almost like any small thing we do could end up setting into motion a change of events that we might never even know about, which is really unsettling, but also kind of cool, to think about.
Finally, the passage also reminds me a little bit of the Tralfamadorian idea of a moment being structured a certain way (I feel like I keep coming back to this concept, but it's so interesting and fits so well with the books we read!). The notion that we're all just "characters in plots," whether we know it or not, makes it seem like we have no real say in how our lives play out, but rather that the story of our world has already been written and we're all just playing our parts. I can't decide if I find this concept plain old creepy or, in a weird way, sort of comforting; I think it's a little of both.
And things get really blurry once Everett realizes that the "hidden symmetries" he wants to *plant* in Lee's "life" (the paper version of his life that the investigation will later reveal) are in many ways already there: he--or the character Everett wants him to play--is "real." And on the other side, Lee is forever waiting for his life to "merge with the tide of history." Will this make him an unwitting agent in someone else's plot, or an active participant/plotter himself? (DeLillo's novel is tightly plotted on a number of different levels!)
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