15 Words
I'm almost to page 200 of the Seven Types of Ambiguity. I went to the bookstore yesterday to buy the book but then didn't and when I was reading it last night, I decided I didn't like it that much. I'm in the third section/part/ambiguity. Empson says that this ambiguity "may profitably be divided into those which, once understood, remain an intelligible unit in the mind, those in which the pleasure belongs to the act of working out and understanding...and those in which the ambiguity works best if it is never discovered". Angela, in part 3, is telling her story but also trying to work out what happened with Simon. I think the reason that I don't like it as much is that it is really straight narrative (backstory) and I found part one more compelling in the way the story was told. I'm also not completely buying the "representation of the prostitute" in this book. It's a great plot device but...Maybe I'm being negative because I'm considering not finishing the book now - the fates are on the doorstep...the book is due back at the library...I didn't decide to buy it...Maybe I'll take it back to the library and check out again in a few days...
I've also been thinking about the two words from the brainstorming bag that I've left lying on my desk: Lair & Sigmoid. I have to move out of my office again soon...so they'll have to go back in the bag for the move. I may never find them again. Here are fifteen more words I may never find again. I'll see what I can do with them over the next week:
penguin
token
unicorn
moil
drop
corpse
bulkiness
attract
whisker
insistence
eyelash
bearded
spur
diagram
ice cream
Just typing them released some thoughts and associations (animals, facial hair, what D&G say about Willard, how I ate some ice cream recently and it wasn't so bad but wasn't that great and 'moil', what a word!) but I have to go driving now...
posted by Anne @ 8:32 AM
2 Comments:
Reached for the dictionary when i read Moil: "to paddle in mud."
Looked up sigmoid too.... Not crazy about that word. Found out the hard way the hairpin turn in my intestine is way too sharp for the GI specialist to drive his camera around in there. You know they give you a packet of Cracker Barrel cheese at the hospital in the GI ward?
I got D&G again from the library. There's a certain groove required in reading them. I have to keep putting the book down and go walk around. It's very stretched out.
And I kinda wish that Seven Types of Ambiguity (the novel) was more like that (the "who is that?" ambiguity-the 8th, perhaps). The novel then might be less readable, stretching beyond comprehension, more like D&G? No? Those layers and resonances and coincidences and intertextualities of DQ?
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