Mo's Reflections on the first half of "Concise Dictionary"

First things first. I majored in English. I was a huge nerd, I spoke too much in class, I was clever, wrote pretty good papers, despite my spelling and grammar mishaps. Perhaps I was a smarty-pants sycophant- but I loved a good story- and I loved the theoretical aspect to how I approached the story. Technical terms, names, arguments, psychoanalytical, psycholinguistic, Marxist, Dereidian deconstruction, feminist, historical, reader response, all of that is a fog to me now- (might have been a fog ten years ago while sitting in a class learning these things for the first time as well) What has remained is my obsession with how the author uses the narrative structure to convey a story to his or her audience. How the author establishes a relationship between the plot and the reader. This is why I will read and re read Heart of Darkness-- all those layers of story telling, why I thought Paradise Lost was so good. Milton hit you with Paradise Lost from different points in time, Conrad as well- but he also adds different levels or what I call "frames" of narration. If you haven't read Heart of Darkness- ask me I'll tell you what you need to know.

I sat down with the book for the first time last night. I had been forcing myself to wait on it until more people had their copies, and I am glad I waited. I made it halfway through the book in one sitting- I certainly don't want to give anything away about the book- but thought I would use that Degree I earned in Literature and put some things out there that I'm mulling over.

1) Paratext What?? This is a term (I think) for text outside the direct narrative- so in this book we see paratext in the definitions she lists, the prologue- the bits in Italics that appear on their own , These are elements that the author include in her work- but not in the story. Why? I am such a nerd that I have books on this sort of thing- I started, but dropped a class on this exact subject at Queens College. I bet I'll have notes on this for the March 1 meeting.

2) Every now and again we have shifts in time- we are reading a diary- but she has some moments of retrospective commentary- I'll check the page number- this commentary is also paratextual.

3) Natural metaphors used in sex scenes- cave, garden, etc... Using metaphors across cultures and language.. Is there some sort of archetype going on?