TLD Part 1 Chapter 6..Promises Old and New
Posted: Fri May 30, 2014 1:38 am
Andre Breton, the " God Father" of Surrealism, put together an "Anthology of Humor Noir", back in 1935. He renews the idea of gallows humor, modernizes it with examples from Swift to Carroll and calls it " Black Humor". As some have put it about the darkest , thus greatest humor, it is the humor that has us seeing ..that which we rather would Not be or see, about ourselves. Chapter 6,Promises Old and New, is by parable , a great Black Humor exposition, that Linden gets to be the brunt of the joke and thus the most enlightened by it.
The setting of the chapter begins in harsh grey,,proceeds to darkest night and ends with a hint of sunrise that never comes; Dark Humor indeed. If Humor is based in irony, Linden begins the chapter conflicted by all the irony. There is no Sun, no way to tell Time,,but that her heart keeps beating tells her her life continues. " Blurred terrain" as movement , tells her "Time endures." Metaphors turn dark for Linden;" Accentuated by dull light, the bloodstains that darkened the bottoms of Jeremiah's pajamas seemed to creep higher, opening like jaws to swallow him." A great line there imho..the alliteration is excellent, there is simile inside of metaphor and the poetic contrasts between, blood stains ,pajamas, light and dark and then the dark, deathly chill of,," creep higher , opening like jaws to swallow him,," YAAHAA!
The irony , contrasts continue to mess up Linden's mind..the hope of crepuscular blight, versus Kevins Dirt..the stamina and will of the Ranyhyn versus the physical limitations of even the Giants. In the middle of this irony ,the Land becomes the Surreal of a Dali painting, the Perspective of Time and Space blending into each other becoming one…" Now they measured out the leagues across a hammered plain that appeared to stretch endlessly into an obscured future." The author paints the Surreal with his own alliteration. Okay, how about any body who has driven across the middle plains of America; they would know the sensation. The author/ storyteller again reinforces the Dark , the Noir , with , " Gloaming effaced the details of the landscape, rendered it effectively featureless in every direction." …But Linden still clings to the things anchored in linear logic of Time and Space,,," Still the eaten chart of the stars and Linden's tarnished health-sense confirmed that the horses had not altered their heading. They reached for the northeast with every stride, never hesitating." hhhmm..the Great Horses are already Time and Space unified..Intuition, And there is the set up for the dark humor joke of the rest of this chapter.
First..get rid of the Giants. Seems odd to rid the telling of the very characterizations of jovial wit and bawdy shennanigans..Their exit is another way of saying ,,its funny that what follows while of humor , isn't " funny" as in , say,,"another fine mess you've gotten me into" Laurel and Hardy slapstick routine. No, what follows is the incongruent flavor of comedy..the kind of humor that shows us what we rather Not be or see, but still are..the kind of humor than could possibly motivate , possibly change us..the humor of Jonathan Swift in his Gulliver's Travels for an example. Thanks to Mahrtiir for pointing out the obvious and planting the seed the bears much fruit in later chapters. But to this chapter,,its narrowed down to Linden, Jerry, Stave, the Ranyhyn, , and a few surprise guests. Let the Comedy of Errors proceed. Down the rabbit hole we go.
Jerry's inexperience at this begins with a punch line …that is so hackneyed,,well it heralds the Comedy of Errors.." Thats easy for you to say.." its the classic retort when some one mangles their line..we are not perfect,,can we laff at ourselves? oh..btw,,before I go any further,,yes , I invoke the Woodster's great observation.."a great joke dissected , dies on the operating table. " But,,Humor Noir , Gallows Humor, is very familiar with death and will survive this dissect as a result.. This chapter is actually a work of Art therefore it will survive. Anyway,,do I sense a little Weill/Brecht Alabama Song in Jerry's hunger?…" Oh show me, the way, to the next aliantha bush..oh don't ask why. Oh don't ask why….Well,
Lindens lack of nourishment has her drifting off into paranoia. Her darkness takes over as she spirals down the rabbit hole. Words like frustration, reluctance, appalled, loathed describe her mental state as she clings to her necessity for Time to remain intact.
Then Stave drops the incongruent, inexplicable, complete ironic,,," yet now our path tends towards the Sarangrave." The comedy of errors begins in the blackness of her fears. Asked " why", which is clear signal as to ..the wrong question to ask,,( should have been, "How is it ?") and anyway, Stave with his great stoic ability to deduce and reason, logically, surmises,,horses require fodder..Yes folks..that is Black Humor..Humor Noir..its Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland..Its Alice saying.." I've seen cat with a smile, but I've never seen a smile without a cat. "..The Ranyhyn don't fear much..but they sure as whinny have a collective fear of The Lurker..for good reason..But the simple..horses need fodder..why heck, sure as shooting, that must be the answer.(said with great sarcasm).The comedy is in how Stave and Linden justify to themselves with their own PRETENSE , what is taking place. And they are all wrong.
WE know they are all wrong. The author in his good graces and fellowship towards all of mankind,,has already included us in the know. We know there is to be a rendezvous between Linden and the feroce and their God even,,and why and how it is..but Linden does not. From that WE Can See,,how Fears, and prejudices guide Linden's thoughts and actions. Her Pretense,,believing the Bullschitt her dark fears have taught her..and putting it forward as truth..Pretense..is darkly humorous here. And by the way of her..we can see our selves.
And to make it painfully clear, this humor Noir, Linden makes a deal with Stave..to not let the Lurker get the burnt stick,,and not let the feroce have their way with Linden's inner sanctum. Amazingly,,the story teller is going along with all this as if it hadn't ever told the tale of the lurker/ Worm encounter. I love it!!
The author drops the little parable of the dirty tasting tubers in to the story. Jerry gets to the center of it… pretty good if you can pretend you don't taste them..He has become Alice.
How much of our …that which we would rather not be or not see of ourselves..do we just pretend we are not or see not, and with that, smooth over our uncomfortableness when its made clear our fears and prejudices are still with us..still allowed to be part of who we are? Fascinating, later in the chapter, at its conclusion..the mass of hard to digest tubers in Lindens gut..causes her discomfiture to the degree that she forgoes any more..She learns the hard way about a load of crap. She has no more appetite for Pretense. Fascinating, much later in the Tale, the author revisits the idea of Pretense,,and its Jerry 's turn, possibly being wiser from the lesson of this chapter.
But Linden ate a Stave knuckle sandwich. It was agreed on. That was the deal and Stave , like his Choice Challenged brothers was unable to see beyond that. Linden is too slow to put the clues together,,to confined by her own fears and prejudices to figure why the Ranyhyn left the 3 behind,, why only 3 feroce approached. And she puts up a false front and is immediately felled by it. The jaws of irony, deep, black, humor noir,open up and swallows her whole . Forbidding…DOH!..Just Say No..And just as it all connects, the beauty is hers..its POW! ZOOM! A Trip to the Moon! One of these days, Alice, becomes Now!.
The Comedy of Errors continues. Jerry gets it wrong with his immaturity, " did you have to hit her so hard?…..Stave is too strong"…aaahhhmm..howabout not hitting her at all? Challenged Stave can only say ..hey, i'm not psychic, she looked like she was under the glamor..and uhhh..if I hurt you that much..you can heal yourself,,with this stick I saved from the lurker..here…What a load of crap. But..kinda like TC's getting the Evil lurker to do a Good Thing with the Worm..Linden sees the error of her State of Mind, thank you very much Ranyhyn,,and is left with the realization of what she must inevitably do..To keep the promise made to Wildwood, she would return to that time and place with an answer, that would save the day from the monster Worm.She knows by doing that, she will inevitably have to leave her son, abandon him to his own will and abilities; Every mothers rendezvous with Life. She also knows..the Truth of the Tubers and what other rendezvous that points to in the future. By getting the Pretense knocked out of her she sees clearly and is overwhelmed by what she sees. Thats Humor Noir.
Linden comes to,,with the luker giving her the equivalent of a high 5. And there is Jerry glomming in on the event and Stave,,still missing what has transpired, in his Challenged State..warning Jerry that the lurker is malevolent and then telling Linden to spill the beans so,,now get this,,so WE can interpret the lurkers intent …Linden surveys the after effects of Staves punch to her forehead and decides to lay a bit of her own humor noir on Stave.." Well, I know one thing, anyway, This is what the Ranyhyn were hoping for.." Stave continues to press Linden as she attempts to dodge the reveal of her understandings. Jerry jumps in and forces her to obfuscate.,half truths.Like Alice,,Jerry replies..That makes sense..I guess…Stave says naught..and the faux sun rise begins…Its no laughing matter, now that Linden has been brought to the real, honest and actual changes required of her .
So now both TC and Linden have their relationship with the lurker and feroce and are changed by it as is the lurker and the feroce changed. More to come. Interesting it is that there seems a promise of the future for both feroce and lurker from all this Covenant Avery deal making…As well,,an understanding of how Stave , as much as he tries,,is still a prisoner of his …heritage.
..Here is a quote in the second section upon dismounting at the Sarangrave, " If I discern water which we may drink without harm, I will guide you to it.."…well thats mitey nice of you Stave…and of course,,if he doesn't discern any drinkable water, he won't be guiding any one to it. point being..Stave can only be Stave..with logic like that..yeeooow..Seems to me another Alice in Wonderland surrealness there. Now , for the Real Joke..Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Dodgson,,was a mediocre mathematician but did contribute to binary Logic problems and definitely played with Logic in Wonderland and Looking Glass. The early surrealists loved Carrolls mockery of ill used logic. So Donaldson continues to beat the crap out of the black and white non feeling Haruchai as a fate they created for themselves. Makes perfect sense to me.
What really gets me here..is that I am made to feel but ain't too sure what it is I am feeling..a pathos for Stave for being kinda stupid or Linden for not seeing what she created..or for the situation that the author created , that is cause and effect for all the wrong reasons..The failure of logic is obvious but quite reasonable in its cause. Its Alice in Wonderland .And, perhaps in the most Surreal manner..the Lurker salutes her …whatthehell!!!!.Linden takes one for the Surreal!! .Linden realizes its the Ranyhyn she was to be trusting, the Instinctual! They knew what was to go on here long before any one else did.And poor reasonable Stave is still guarding against the Lurker at end of chapter. One more drink of the water tho..to help swallow the changes brought to Linden in this chapter. Its all of a comedy level..dark..befitting the lack of sunrise. Its funny, its sad, its all wrong , a comedy of errors, but it ends right. As Jerry puts it as if he was Alice…." that makes sense, i guess"
Promises Old Is the promise Linden made to Wildwood in Gallows Howe. Promises New exemplifies the Trust that Wildwood placed in Linden back then, that would take millennia for Linden to come back and fulfill. Wow, a trust that extends outside the strictures of Time…beauty. The new promise also means for Linden..that she will have to break an earlier promise to never leave Jeremiah again. Ouch..thats pretense for you.
This chapter is a demonstration in subtlety. At first not much of a blip on the radar screen of drama, especially after the incredible of the TC centered chapters preceding. But there is masterful writing in this chapter . The author takes us in on the trip to the Saragrave,,hook line and sinker and before we know it..Linden is on the ground knocked out by Stave..Its then,,I realized, the author was showing me a bit of my own pretense. The author was telling a parable about pretense and I didn't realize it until Linden got punched out by Stave. It was then the little side story of the dirty tasting tubers demanded some thought. If not by now, certainly by now..I am starting to realize that this Donaldson guy, in the LC and even more so in TLD,,is exceeding my expectations and I'm needing some help to grasp it all. Its easy to get "points" on the high drama stuff but garnering appreciation for your masterly subtle within a chapter ,to across books ,to across volumes ,is no easy feat. The author demands adjustments to ones own perspective. Yea,,taking a salute from the lurker!
In any case, the lurker and feroce now have Hope thanks to TC and Linden. That makes much of the second half possible. The "other reality" of our Memory is played masterfully in this chapter. Linden is punched out by her memory of the feroce and lurker..yet led to salvation for the Land and herself with longest term Memory. Yea, memory is subjective,but its still part of our experience and being. It can get you punched out as well as saved. It depends on your own state of mind.
The setting of the chapter begins in harsh grey,,proceeds to darkest night and ends with a hint of sunrise that never comes; Dark Humor indeed. If Humor is based in irony, Linden begins the chapter conflicted by all the irony. There is no Sun, no way to tell Time,,but that her heart keeps beating tells her her life continues. " Blurred terrain" as movement , tells her "Time endures." Metaphors turn dark for Linden;" Accentuated by dull light, the bloodstains that darkened the bottoms of Jeremiah's pajamas seemed to creep higher, opening like jaws to swallow him." A great line there imho..the alliteration is excellent, there is simile inside of metaphor and the poetic contrasts between, blood stains ,pajamas, light and dark and then the dark, deathly chill of,," creep higher , opening like jaws to swallow him,," YAAHAA!
The irony , contrasts continue to mess up Linden's mind..the hope of crepuscular blight, versus Kevins Dirt..the stamina and will of the Ranyhyn versus the physical limitations of even the Giants. In the middle of this irony ,the Land becomes the Surreal of a Dali painting, the Perspective of Time and Space blending into each other becoming one…" Now they measured out the leagues across a hammered plain that appeared to stretch endlessly into an obscured future." The author paints the Surreal with his own alliteration. Okay, how about any body who has driven across the middle plains of America; they would know the sensation. The author/ storyteller again reinforces the Dark , the Noir , with , " Gloaming effaced the details of the landscape, rendered it effectively featureless in every direction." …But Linden still clings to the things anchored in linear logic of Time and Space,,," Still the eaten chart of the stars and Linden's tarnished health-sense confirmed that the horses had not altered their heading. They reached for the northeast with every stride, never hesitating." hhhmm..the Great Horses are already Time and Space unified..Intuition, And there is the set up for the dark humor joke of the rest of this chapter.
First..get rid of the Giants. Seems odd to rid the telling of the very characterizations of jovial wit and bawdy shennanigans..Their exit is another way of saying ,,its funny that what follows while of humor , isn't " funny" as in , say,,"another fine mess you've gotten me into" Laurel and Hardy slapstick routine. No, what follows is the incongruent flavor of comedy..the kind of humor that shows us what we rather Not be or see, but still are..the kind of humor than could possibly motivate , possibly change us..the humor of Jonathan Swift in his Gulliver's Travels for an example. Thanks to Mahrtiir for pointing out the obvious and planting the seed the bears much fruit in later chapters. But to this chapter,,its narrowed down to Linden, Jerry, Stave, the Ranyhyn, , and a few surprise guests. Let the Comedy of Errors proceed. Down the rabbit hole we go.
Jerry's inexperience at this begins with a punch line …that is so hackneyed,,well it heralds the Comedy of Errors.." Thats easy for you to say.." its the classic retort when some one mangles their line..we are not perfect,,can we laff at ourselves? oh..btw,,before I go any further,,yes , I invoke the Woodster's great observation.."a great joke dissected , dies on the operating table. " But,,Humor Noir , Gallows Humor, is very familiar with death and will survive this dissect as a result.. This chapter is actually a work of Art therefore it will survive. Anyway,,do I sense a little Weill/Brecht Alabama Song in Jerry's hunger?…" Oh show me, the way, to the next aliantha bush..oh don't ask why. Oh don't ask why….Well,
Lindens lack of nourishment has her drifting off into paranoia. Her darkness takes over as she spirals down the rabbit hole. Words like frustration, reluctance, appalled, loathed describe her mental state as she clings to her necessity for Time to remain intact.
Then Stave drops the incongruent, inexplicable, complete ironic,,," yet now our path tends towards the Sarangrave." The comedy of errors begins in the blackness of her fears. Asked " why", which is clear signal as to ..the wrong question to ask,,( should have been, "How is it ?") and anyway, Stave with his great stoic ability to deduce and reason, logically, surmises,,horses require fodder..Yes folks..that is Black Humor..Humor Noir..its Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland..Its Alice saying.." I've seen cat with a smile, but I've never seen a smile without a cat. "..The Ranyhyn don't fear much..but they sure as whinny have a collective fear of The Lurker..for good reason..But the simple..horses need fodder..why heck, sure as shooting, that must be the answer.(said with great sarcasm).The comedy is in how Stave and Linden justify to themselves with their own PRETENSE , what is taking place. And they are all wrong.
WE know they are all wrong. The author in his good graces and fellowship towards all of mankind,,has already included us in the know. We know there is to be a rendezvous between Linden and the feroce and their God even,,and why and how it is..but Linden does not. From that WE Can See,,how Fears, and prejudices guide Linden's thoughts and actions. Her Pretense,,believing the Bullschitt her dark fears have taught her..and putting it forward as truth..Pretense..is darkly humorous here. And by the way of her..we can see our selves.
And to make it painfully clear, this humor Noir, Linden makes a deal with Stave..to not let the Lurker get the burnt stick,,and not let the feroce have their way with Linden's inner sanctum. Amazingly,,the story teller is going along with all this as if it hadn't ever told the tale of the lurker/ Worm encounter. I love it!!
The author drops the little parable of the dirty tasting tubers in to the story. Jerry gets to the center of it… pretty good if you can pretend you don't taste them..He has become Alice.
How much of our …that which we would rather not be or not see of ourselves..do we just pretend we are not or see not, and with that, smooth over our uncomfortableness when its made clear our fears and prejudices are still with us..still allowed to be part of who we are? Fascinating, later in the chapter, at its conclusion..the mass of hard to digest tubers in Lindens gut..causes her discomfiture to the degree that she forgoes any more..She learns the hard way about a load of crap. She has no more appetite for Pretense. Fascinating, much later in the Tale, the author revisits the idea of Pretense,,and its Jerry 's turn, possibly being wiser from the lesson of this chapter.
But Linden ate a Stave knuckle sandwich. It was agreed on. That was the deal and Stave , like his Choice Challenged brothers was unable to see beyond that. Linden is too slow to put the clues together,,to confined by her own fears and prejudices to figure why the Ranyhyn left the 3 behind,, why only 3 feroce approached. And she puts up a false front and is immediately felled by it. The jaws of irony, deep, black, humor noir,open up and swallows her whole . Forbidding…DOH!..Just Say No..And just as it all connects, the beauty is hers..its POW! ZOOM! A Trip to the Moon! One of these days, Alice, becomes Now!.
The Comedy of Errors continues. Jerry gets it wrong with his immaturity, " did you have to hit her so hard?…..Stave is too strong"…aaahhhmm..howabout not hitting her at all? Challenged Stave can only say ..hey, i'm not psychic, she looked like she was under the glamor..and uhhh..if I hurt you that much..you can heal yourself,,with this stick I saved from the lurker..here…What a load of crap. But..kinda like TC's getting the Evil lurker to do a Good Thing with the Worm..Linden sees the error of her State of Mind, thank you very much Ranyhyn,,and is left with the realization of what she must inevitably do..To keep the promise made to Wildwood, she would return to that time and place with an answer, that would save the day from the monster Worm.She knows by doing that, she will inevitably have to leave her son, abandon him to his own will and abilities; Every mothers rendezvous with Life. She also knows..the Truth of the Tubers and what other rendezvous that points to in the future. By getting the Pretense knocked out of her she sees clearly and is overwhelmed by what she sees. Thats Humor Noir.
Linden comes to,,with the luker giving her the equivalent of a high 5. And there is Jerry glomming in on the event and Stave,,still missing what has transpired, in his Challenged State..warning Jerry that the lurker is malevolent and then telling Linden to spill the beans so,,now get this,,so WE can interpret the lurkers intent …Linden surveys the after effects of Staves punch to her forehead and decides to lay a bit of her own humor noir on Stave.." Well, I know one thing, anyway, This is what the Ranyhyn were hoping for.." Stave continues to press Linden as she attempts to dodge the reveal of her understandings. Jerry jumps in and forces her to obfuscate.,half truths.Like Alice,,Jerry replies..That makes sense..I guess…Stave says naught..and the faux sun rise begins…Its no laughing matter, now that Linden has been brought to the real, honest and actual changes required of her .
So now both TC and Linden have their relationship with the lurker and feroce and are changed by it as is the lurker and the feroce changed. More to come. Interesting it is that there seems a promise of the future for both feroce and lurker from all this Covenant Avery deal making…As well,,an understanding of how Stave , as much as he tries,,is still a prisoner of his …heritage.
..Here is a quote in the second section upon dismounting at the Sarangrave, " If I discern water which we may drink without harm, I will guide you to it.."…well thats mitey nice of you Stave…and of course,,if he doesn't discern any drinkable water, he won't be guiding any one to it. point being..Stave can only be Stave..with logic like that..yeeooow..Seems to me another Alice in Wonderland surrealness there. Now , for the Real Joke..Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Dodgson,,was a mediocre mathematician but did contribute to binary Logic problems and definitely played with Logic in Wonderland and Looking Glass. The early surrealists loved Carrolls mockery of ill used logic. So Donaldson continues to beat the crap out of the black and white non feeling Haruchai as a fate they created for themselves. Makes perfect sense to me.
What really gets me here..is that I am made to feel but ain't too sure what it is I am feeling..a pathos for Stave for being kinda stupid or Linden for not seeing what she created..or for the situation that the author created , that is cause and effect for all the wrong reasons..The failure of logic is obvious but quite reasonable in its cause. Its Alice in Wonderland .And, perhaps in the most Surreal manner..the Lurker salutes her …whatthehell!!!!.Linden takes one for the Surreal!! .Linden realizes its the Ranyhyn she was to be trusting, the Instinctual! They knew what was to go on here long before any one else did.And poor reasonable Stave is still guarding against the Lurker at end of chapter. One more drink of the water tho..to help swallow the changes brought to Linden in this chapter. Its all of a comedy level..dark..befitting the lack of sunrise. Its funny, its sad, its all wrong , a comedy of errors, but it ends right. As Jerry puts it as if he was Alice…." that makes sense, i guess"
Promises Old Is the promise Linden made to Wildwood in Gallows Howe. Promises New exemplifies the Trust that Wildwood placed in Linden back then, that would take millennia for Linden to come back and fulfill. Wow, a trust that extends outside the strictures of Time…beauty. The new promise also means for Linden..that she will have to break an earlier promise to never leave Jeremiah again. Ouch..thats pretense for you.
This chapter is a demonstration in subtlety. At first not much of a blip on the radar screen of drama, especially after the incredible of the TC centered chapters preceding. But there is masterful writing in this chapter . The author takes us in on the trip to the Saragrave,,hook line and sinker and before we know it..Linden is on the ground knocked out by Stave..Its then,,I realized, the author was showing me a bit of my own pretense. The author was telling a parable about pretense and I didn't realize it until Linden got punched out by Stave. It was then the little side story of the dirty tasting tubers demanded some thought. If not by now, certainly by now..I am starting to realize that this Donaldson guy, in the LC and even more so in TLD,,is exceeding my expectations and I'm needing some help to grasp it all. Its easy to get "points" on the high drama stuff but garnering appreciation for your masterly subtle within a chapter ,to across books ,to across volumes ,is no easy feat. The author demands adjustments to ones own perspective. Yea,,taking a salute from the lurker!
In any case, the lurker and feroce now have Hope thanks to TC and Linden. That makes much of the second half possible. The "other reality" of our Memory is played masterfully in this chapter. Linden is punched out by her memory of the feroce and lurker..yet led to salvation for the Land and herself with longest term Memory. Yea, memory is subjective,but its still part of our experience and being. It can get you punched out as well as saved. It depends on your own state of mind.