[ilds] At about the three fourths mark

[Kennedy Gammage]

I am remembering the flow of the entire Revolt at a distance, and I think
I’ve found some interesting foreshadowing: Felix’s hands ‘riffled the
colored pages of a weekly magazine which dealt with Iolanthe’s new conjugal
life in a turreted Hollywood mansion bearing a fair resemblance to
“Cathay.”’

Along with “…the emptiness of the mirror world.”

I hesitate to make the statement because many of you will say “Of course!”
Like anything is necessarily obvious about these two neglected Durrell
masterpieces, or that they have been discussed at length on the listserv
like the Quartet! So I will say it: the mirrors make me think of a very
powerful, deeply unhinged scene which is coming up very soon, before the
end of Tunc. And Felix is comparing Io’s Hollywood mansion with his own
tragic Gothic pile deep in the English countryside. Of course he’s already
quarreled on the ship with Benedicta about Io.

So these are the two women Felix is tied to. Their triangle (ongoing in the
next book) is at the core and broken heart of this strange tale.

Cheers - Ken

P.S.  My God how D puts his own words into the mouths of his characters!
Not just Felix’s dense Gromboolian narration – but now this letter from Io
to Graphos that Hippo has intercepted, about “the sex act misses fire if
there is no psychic click: a membrane has to be broken of which the hymen
is only a parody, a mental hymen.” Pure Durrell along with all these
remembered gnomic utterances from Koepgen. “The only thing that does not
wear out is time.” Om!

P.P.S. At last I understand the significance of the recording machine: so D
can put more of his words into the characters’ mouths verbatim! Like
Marchant: “I threw myself into this delicious amnesia which only wholesale
bloodspilling can give. Thirsty Gods! What hecatombs of oxen. Hurrah!” Yes,
Felix is listening to ‘prints of recent voices,’ and Marchant is talking
about ‘the war.’ That would be WWII I believe, so there goes my thesis that
Durrell doesn’t mention it at all in these books. But compared to the
Quartet and the Quintet, the relative absence is notable.

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