We’ve noted the intriguing structure in Mavis Gallant’s Voices Lost In Snow, how the story contains an apparently autobiographical narrator looking back to and showing childhood. Memory it would seem. ‘Kay. That is the illusion created by this marvelous tale. I stand by my comment from last week that it's more fiction than anything. George Woodcock, Canadian writer and savant, said in a rather fussy way, “Linnet Muir is about as near to Mavis Gallant as the namesake bird (a modest British singing bird) is to the Mavis, which is the Scottish name for the magnificent European song thrush.” What’s with all the bird references? By a guy whose name is Woodcock, no less. Well, he apparently knew Ms. Gallant and is affirming that the Linnet Muir stories are fiction. So, within the fictional world of the story, an older woman is looking back on her childhood, trying to solve a mystery—who were her parents? Not as parents, but as people. Now, it’s quite possible that the real person, Mavis Gallant, hoped to solve this mystery about her own parents—after all, it’s a common human experience to wonder who one’s parents really were. But Ms. Gallant was writing a story, perhaps one that expressed a personal issue, but still a story. She created a protagonist—ten-year-old Linnet Muir, growing up in Montreal, circa 1930—and she created a narrator—an unnamed older woman who tells the story about her younger self. There are two distinct times in the story, one is the narrator’s present, largely conveyed in simple present tense, and the past inhabited by Linnet, expressed in simple past. And its variations. Examples please. As noted, the story begins with a passage describing an older model of parenting in which children were discouraged from understanding their parents’ behavior. The verb tense used is primarily the simple past. “Dark riddles filled the corners of life…” “Asking questions was ‘being tiresome…’” Halfway through the first paragraph, there’s a shift to the present: “How much has changed? Observe the drift of words descending from adult to child…” A question and invitation to the reader to reflect on how much has changed and to observe. It could also be the author asking herself the question. There’s nothing like different verb tenses to indicate a shift in time. When is the “now” of the story? The use of the simple past tense in the passages about the child Linnet would seem to indicate they had already occurred, that the narrator is describing them after the fact. But here’s a different passage: “Two persons descend the street, stepping carefully. The child, reminded every day to keep her hands still, gesticulates wildly—there is the flash of a red mitten. I will never overtake this pair. Their voices are lost in snow.” Now the author could have written, “Two persons descended the street, stepping carefully. The child…gesticulated wildly—there was a flash of red mittens. I would never overtake this pair. Their voices were lost in snow.” Written this way, it would indicate that we the readers are being shown action in the past. As written, the narrator, writing in present tense, shows something else—a vision she has of the past. A little girl and her father “descending” a wintry street. But it is not the past; it is present as a vision. What about that lovely, “I will never overtake that pair. Their voices are lost in snow?” Well, it indicates the narrator in her future time commenting on the vision. She does not have the experience of moving past the father daughter pair. They are frozen in time, and there is no continuity—that is, this is not someone writing, “I remember the time my father and I walked down a street in Montreal. It must have been 1932." No, to the narrator, the past is not continuous with the present. They are speaking in the present, but their voices are lost in snow. Heavy stuff. Till next time. #VoicesLostInSnow #MavisGallant #AlanBray

Last week, I began a look at Mavis Gallant’s Voices Lost in Snow, remarking on how the theme of the story is that parents may be confusing to children and/or that children misinterpret their parents’ behavior. This week, let’s look at the prime example of this—Linette’s visit to her godmother, Georgie, accompanied by her father, Angus. “You didn’t say you were bringing Linette!” This is how the adult Linette recalls the visit beginning. Her father says, “Well, she is your godchild, and she has been ill.” There follows a description of how the adult Linette remembers her medical history, how her first doctor, Ward Mackey (great Canadian name) had told her parents she was “subject to bilious attacks”—this being, after all, in the late nineteen twenties. A new doctor, “Uncle Raoul” proclaimed that the young Linette “had a brush with consumption.” Ms. Gallant uses the French, “Votre fille a frôle la phtisie,” the French verb frôler meaning to brush or graze. So Uncle Raoul was not saying Linnet was tubercular, but that she perhaps had some weakness in the lungs. However, Linette’s parents, out of concern, moved to the country where the air was fresher, I suppose. Ms. Gallant writes: “’Frôler’ was the charmed word in that winter’s story; it was a hand brushing the edge of folded silk, a leaf escaping a spiderweb…I had been standing on one foot for months now, midway between ‘frôler’ and ‘falling into,’ propped up by a psychosomatic guardian angel.” ‘Kay. What does this mean? The child Linette had escaped tuberculosis but there is also a suggestion that she got attention—otherwise lacking—for being ill. Georgie observes that Linette is “smaller than she looks.” The narrator Linette observes, “This authentic godmother observation drives me to my only refuge, the insistence that she must have had something—he could not have been completely deaf and blind.” An interesting comment. The adult Linette is saying—because of this memory of Georgie’s comment that she was small for her age—that she must have had some illness, and that her father must have noticed—despite his seeming obliviousness. Georgie offers Linette some mints. “My father and Georgie talked for a while—she using people’s initials instead of their names, which my mother would not have done—and they drank what must have been sherry, if I think of the shape of the decanter.” Then Linette and her father leave. Angus doesn’t live much longer. “He was barely thirty-one and had a full winter to live after this one—little more.” Years later, when Linette is “about twenty,” she again encounters Dr. Ward Mackey, who tells her, “Georgie didn’t play her cards well where he (Angus) was concerned. There was a point where if she had made just one smart move, she could have had him. Not for long, of course, but none of us knew that.” The narrator realizes she was brought along that day to visit Georgie not because her father didn’t know what else to do with her but because her presence was significant to whatever relationship he had with Georgie. Linette was a reminder to Georgie that Angus was married, perhaps that he intended to stay married. The narrator writes, developing a beautiful card metaphor, “I saw only one move that Saturday: My father placed a card face-up on the table and watched to see what Georgie made of it. She shrugged, let it rest…What if she had picked it up, remarking in her smoky voice, ‘Yes, I can use that?…He took the card back and dropped his hand, and their long intermittent game came to an end. The card must have been the eight of clubs—a female child.” So the story ends. It’s interesting that the eight of clubs is believed to represent a casual relationship. A good omen for love as adventure, a bad one for marriage. More generally, it can mean compromises in love. Another source claims that it is known as the playboy card and connects with the needy child inside us and affirms our lovability. Huh, these meanings seem to connect with the story. The adult Linette realizes there was some attraction between her father and Georgie, an attraction the child Linette was unaware of, and that her father was not quite as remote and disengaged as she believed. Perhaps, she is suggesting that her father had made it clear to Georgie he would only pursue a casual relationship with her as he was married. Her mother too is recast—she is not so much the eccentric nut who turns on her friend Georgie but more the woman and wife who was defending her marriage. Let’s keep in mind that this story is more fiction than anything. It’s easy to read it as autobiography but there’s no evidence it really happened, no evidence that Georgie, Angus, Linette’s mother, Dr. Ward Mackey, Uncle Raoul, and Linette really existed. It’s a story, best beloved, a story that expresses truth about people. Till next time. #VoicesLostInSnow #MavisGallant #AlanBray

This week, a new story, a short story, Mavis Gallant’s Voices Lost In Snow, first published in the New Yorker in March of 1976. It is available in the collection Varieties of Exile. Is length the only difference between a short story and novel? Is a short story essentially a short novel? No, best beloved. Our friends at the Encyclopedia Britannica say this: “The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a “complete” or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.” So, a novel may have several subplots and deeply developed characters; a short story is not only shorter but must have focus. Mavis Gallant says, "Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait." By the way, Voices Lost In Snow comes in at roughly 3900 words, on the shorter side for a short story. It has been said that this story is more akin to literary non-fiction or even memoir then short fiction. It concerns a mature woman looking back on some events in her childhood in Montreal, the child and adult’s name being Linette Muir. Yes, Mavis Gallant grew up near Montreal, and, yes, as depicted in the story, her father died when she was ten. However, everyone’s names are different. I would say—and will say—that this story certainly has some auto-biographical/memoir-like elements but is a short story as defined above. At the time Voices Lost In Snow was written (it was part of a series of six, actually) Mavis Gallant was deeply involved in research and writing concerning the Dreyfus affair, that 1890s case of a French officer unfairly convicted of treason due to anti-Semitism. As she studied photographs and paintings of the period, “there began to be restored in some underground river of the mind a lost Montreal.” Forgotten images of her childhood were triggered. A half-remembered image of Sherbrooke Street at night, “more a sensation than a picture,” was the starting point. In writing of Linnet Muir, it is as if the adult Gallant needed to become a researcher into the alien culture in which her own childhood had taken place. She certainly could have chosen to write a memoir about the events she depicts, using her own name, and her father’s and mother’s identity. But she chose to fictionalize it. In fact, we don’t know if the events she describes—particularly the visit to her godmother, Georgie, accompanied by her father, Angus—really occurred. Perhaps the visit occurred, but Ms. Gallant fictionalized the details. We do not know. One of the significant features of Voices Lost In Snow is the narrational structure. We have a narrator telling the story of apparently ten-year old Linette from the vantage point of someone much older, an adult who identifies herself as “I.” “…the only authentic voices I have belong to the dead…” The story begins with the narrator’s voice in an expository mode: “Halfway between our two great wars, parents whose own early years had been shaped with Edwardian firmness were apt to lend a tone of finality to quite simple remarks: “Because I say so,” was the answer to “Why?” and a child’s response to “What did I just tell you?” could seldom be anything but “Not to,” —not to say, do, touch, remove, go out, argue, reject, eat, pick-up, open, shout, appear to sulk, appear to be cross…Observe the drift of words descending from adult to child—the fall of personal questions, personal observations, unnecessary instructions. Before long the listener seems blanketed. He must hear the voice as authority muffled, a hum through snow.” Here we have an immediate reference to the title, the image of voices lost in snow, a child unable to “hear” a parent, or to be able to question her/him. The way the past comes back to us through many filters, leaving us with fragments that lack meaning. There is as well, a clear distancing between the adult narrator looking back on the past and the parenting customs of an earlier generation. This creates sympathy for the young Linette as her mother and father hurt her emotionally but deny responsibility. The story eventually shows how her father uses her as a kind of shield against Georgie. The general theme is how adults can be confusing to children, and conversely, how children can mis-construe the adult world. Before the main event in the story—Linnet being taken by her father to visit Georgie—we are shown several short summary scenes that express this idea. Linnet’s mother tells her not to address other adults in the way her father does. (in a humorous scene, Linette addresses an older neighbor as “old cock” and is told to apologize because it is inappropriate). Linette accompanies her father to Montreal on Saturdays and has lunch with him. “It was my father’s custom if he took me with him to visit a friend on Saturday not to say where we were going. He was more taciturn than any man I have known since…being young, I was the last person anyone owed an explanation…I don’t know where my father spent his waking life: just elsewhere.” Perhaps the question this story poses and answers is why are Linette’s parents so taciturn and opaque? Why does she remember their voices as a hum through snow? The story begins with a provisional answer, that the reason is merely because of their “Edwardian” upbringing. Is this conclusive? No. Then: “Without saying where we were going, my father took me along to visit Georgie one Saturday afternoon.” Georgie is Linette’s godmother, a relation I’m not sure is very common any longer. I had one, although her efforts to mentor my religious education were blocked by my mother, who resented her. In a similar manner, Godmother Georgie and Linette’s mother Charlotte are described as having had a “falling out,” possibly due to Linette not being named after Georgie. However, despite this estrangement between the two women, Linette’s father, Angus, maintains a relationship with her. We will see next time how this Saturday afternoon visit goes, and how years later, Linette learns about what those mysterious adults were up to. Till then. #VoiceLostInSnow #MavisGallant #AlanBray

A lot of contemporary fiction can be viewed as a confluence of plot and character. An important concept is the character arc—the depiction of the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. Our old friend Aristotle talked about this. A classic story structure concerns a protagonist who begins as one sort of person, and as a result of conflict and developments in the story, transforms into someone different by the end. There are many variations on this as well as theories as to why these transformations are satisfying to readers. The classic coming of age tale shows the transformation of a character from adolescence to adulthood. A recent selection in this blog, Normal People, shows the transformation of a main character, Marianne, as she journeys from being a victim of abuse to an adult who can accept being esteemed by a partner. Perhaps the reason these stories satisfy us is because they present a message of hope, that, no matter how awful life is, we can change and grow into someone better. What about Primeval my dears? This story is a bit different as the main characters don’t transform much, or rather, they transform the same way that plants and trees do. What! Indeed, this story is about people in a community who must adapt to quite dramatic and horrific events—two world wars, the Holocaust, the rise of an authoritarian regime in Poland. They do change from birth to death but only in ordinary ways. A tree grows from a seed to a maturity but remains a tree. The same is true for the characters in Primeval. Let’s look at one such character, Genowefa, the first human presented. The “time” of Genowefa begins in 1914. She is the wife of Mical, who is drafted into the Russian army. Genowefa is pregnant and gives birth months later to Misia. What is Genowefa like at the beginning? “Genowefa knew no other world than Primeval, and no other wars but the brawls in the marketplace on Saturdays when the drunken men came out of Szlomo’s bar…So Genowefa imagined the war like a fight in the mud, puddles and litter, a fight in which everything is settled at once…” In Mical’s absence, she runs the flour mill. “Once…she saw the boys carrying the sacks. They were naked to the waist, and their upper bodies were coated in flour, like big pretzels…The naked torsos riveted her gaze and made her feel anxious. She had to turn and look away.” Genowefa takes a lover from among the young men working in the mill. “…from then on…the hunger that would awaken would be even more powerful than ever before.” ‘Kay. Genowefa ends the affair when Mical returns from the war and she has another baby, although there are complications. Time passes, her daughter Misia, becomes an adult and marries Pawel Boski, whom Genowefa approves of. Then, in 1939, WWII begins. Genowefa (who must be in her late forties at this time), observes the Nazis murdering her Jewish neighbors. “She thought of Misia and the children (grandchildren). Her mouth went dry as she went to fetch the bucket.” She prays for help from the Virgin Mary. “It was all happening so quickly that Genowefa couldn’t comprehend the events she was witnessing.” More murders occur. “Genowefa’s legs gave way beneath her, so she had to kneel down.” She sees the young man who was her lover, dead. “She sat down beside him and never stood on her own legs again.” My point in describing these passages is that Genowefa does change as she moves from young woman to a grandmother witnessing the Holocaust. Separated from her husband, she manages her sexuality by taking a lover. When she sees him killed, she develops what we would call psychosomatic symptoms—an inability to walk which necessitates considerable care and attention from her husband Mical. But these changes are fairly predictable ones for humans. She does not choose to have her husband drafted; she does not choose to witness the Nazis’ crimes. She can only react. Here's a description of trees from the book: “In the year of the apple, the trees draw from the earth the sour waters of underground rivers that have the power of change and motion. These waters contain the need to push, to grow and spread.…The time of the pear tree involves sucking sweet juices from the minerals…The trees come to a stop in their growing and relish the sweetness of pure existence, without moving, without developing.” Sort of like Genowefa—sometimes she grows, sometimes she just exists. Now, I don’t believe that Ms. Tokarchuk thinks Genowefa is a tree, but I do think she’s trying to show how humans are mostly creatures in the world, in the same way trees are. In much of contemporary fiction, human characters are generally treated as qualitatively different than plants and animals. They have a complex inner life which is shown in the story. In Primeval, we have situations like Cornspike having sex with a plant, and in this situation, no mention is made of what meaning Cornspike makes of this cross-species coupling. (is she surprised?) Likewise, Genowefa becomes unable to use her legs but there is no mention of what meaning she makes of this. How then does Genowefa end up? What is the character’s arc? The last we see of her, her husband has taken her chair outside—with her in it. “Then she looked at her own feet, knees, hips—they were just as far away and just as much not a part of her as the sand, fields, and garden. Her body was a broken figurine made of fragile, human material…I am a body, she said to herself…When she looked down the highway, she saw the dead returning…There were thousands of them. They were marching in uneven, broken ranks…She saw them all day, until evening, and the procession did not dwindle. They were still gliding past her when she closed her eyes. She knew God was watching them too. She could see His face—it was black, terrible, covered in scars.” ‘Kay. Adios Genowefa. I think the point is not so much that she transforms as a character but that she follows the human life cycle. The "arc" is predictable. More about trees: “Like all plants, the lime trees live an eternal dream, whose origin lies in the trees’ seeds. The dream does not grow or develop along with it but is always exactly the same. The trees are trapped in space, but not in time. They are liberated from them by their dream, which is eternal. Feelings do not grow in it, as in animals’ dreams. Nor do images appear in it, as they do in peoples’ dreams. When a tree dies, its dream that has no meaning or impression is taken over by another tree. That is why trees never die. In ignorance of their own existence, they are liberated from time and death.” I think this is a pretty good description of the human characters of Primeval, who are trapped in space but not time. They dream the book, or the book dreams them. Thank you, Ms. Tokarchuck. Next week, a new story. Till then. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes #OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

A strong thread in the episodic stream of threads in Primeval and Other Times concerns Squire Popielski and the Game. In mid-life, the Squire experiences a major emotional crisis after a painful love affair leaves him physically ill and bed ridden. Three questions occur to him as he struggles to recover: Where do I come from? What can a person actually know? How should a person live? His wife tells him there is a rabbi who is a healer and that she has asked the rabbi to come to see the Squire. (This is an example of the story showing the fortuitous mingling of Jewish and Christian people). When the rabbi arrives, the Squire asks him the three questions. The rabbi responds, “You collect questions. That’s good. I have one more final question for your collection: Where are we heading? What is the goal of time?” That’s two questions, actually. We should note that asking questions to spur insight and growth has a long rabbinical tradition, as well as a long philosophic tradition—our friend Plato as an example. Upon leaving, the rabbi, having answered questions with questions, adds, “I will give you something that should now become your property.” The Squire is puzzled but feels better. The next day, the rabbi’s assistant delivers a gift, a large wooden box. There are intriguing compartments within, and in one, an old book with a Latin title: Ignis fatuus, Or An Instructive Game For One Player. (Ignis fatuus translates to English as something deceptive or deluding). In another compartment, there is an octagonal die with a different number on each face, numbered from one to eight. The remaining compartments contain small brass figures of people, animals and objects. Underneath the compartments there is a piece of folded, frayed cloth. Unfolded, it covers “the entire empty space between his (the Squire’s) desk and the bookcases…It was a sort of game, a sort of ludo in the form of a huge, circular labyrinth.” (a ludo is a simple board game in which players advance counters by throwing dice). “Kay, this is mysterious as heck. Is this game supposed to be a metaphor of some kind, my dear? Does the Game tie the stories’ vignettes together? We shall see. “The labyrinth drawn on the cloth board consists of eight circles called Worlds. The closer to the middle, the denser the labyrinth seemed to be. The outer circles were more spacious and brighter. The circle in the middle, the darkest and most tangled, was called the first world. An arrow was drawn in a copyist’s pencil by the first circle and the word Primeval.” Why Primeval? The Squire wonders. Why indeed? “A complex system of little roads, intersections, forks and fields led to the second circle, called the Second World. Two exits led to the Third World. In each world, there were twice as many exits as in the previous one.” The Squire determines that there are 128 exits from the final circle of the labyrinth. The book is an instruction manual written in Polish and Latin, describing each possible result of throwing the die. (Kabballah, anyone?) The game itself is a map of escape. The player starts at the center of the labyrinth, and the aim is to pass through all the spheres and break free of the fetters of the Eight Worlds. “The player sees his journey like cracks in the ice—lines that split, turn, and change direction at a dizzy pace…The player who believes in God will say: divine judgement, the finger of God…But if he doesn’t believe in God, he will say coincidence, accident. Sometimes the player will use the words, my free choice, but he is sure to say this more quietly and without conviction.” So the Squire, a bored aristocrat, receives a game under mysterious circumstances. The game has the player begin at a point called Primeval and advance through a labyrinth by rolls of a die. Well, if this really happened, what would you do? I’d probably lock the doors. Of course, this being a work of fiction, the Squire begins to play—even though, he concludes that the Game is the work of a lunatic. What else does he have to do? He’s a Squire, after all. It’s of note that, at a time when the Squire is questioning his faith, he receives this enigmatic game from an enigmatic religious person. “God manifested himself to Squire Popielski through the Game the little rabbi had given him. The Squire tried over and over to start the Game, but he found it hard to understand all the bizarre instructions.” He plays the Game throughout WWII, during the period when German soldiers are billeted at his house. He keeps playing, moving to the different worlds, some of which have no God. His wife worries. What can we make of this? The story of the Game and Squire Popeilski’s playing of it is a significant thread, a recurring thread in a story made of recurring threads. The difference is that the other threads concern real people, the Game threads are more abstract. I’m going to say that, in the finest tradition of stories about games (Magister Ludi, Game of Thrones?) the Game that the Squire plays is an allegory for the lives shown in Primeval and Other Times. Whoa! The Game thread is the organizing theme in the book. “Games can symbolize winning and losing, life and death, secrecy and foolishness or strategy and randomness. The many lessons a character and, by association, the reader can learn from the many facets of these games make what might be a deep and complicated story more clear to the everyman reader.” The game is played by a player who moves by throws of a die (fate, coincidence) out of Primeval (the first place) into and through a maze of places, some of which have God, some no God. And this is what the book’s characters, Genowefa, Cornspike, Michal, Misia, do. Their lives pass through an extremely tumultuous and dangerous time in Poland, encompassing WWl, WWll and the Holocaust, and the establishment of the communist regime. And their lives as depicted provide answers to the questions posed by the Squire and the Rabbi. Wait, wait! Is the Game a mise en abyme? We should probably talk about that. In a sense—bear with me here—the game creates the world. This is a common theme in religion, that the world as we know it is an illusion, constructed randomly and/or by design. Heavy stuff. Till next time. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes #OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

The title—Primeval and Other Times—refers to a central concept in fiction, time, although the word can have more than one meaning. Each vignette in the book is entitled “The Time of (someone or something),” which seems to indicate time as a discrete period, not as a philosophical concept. These time periods follow a generally linear path in that they begin in the year 1914 and end around 1980—based on the ages of some of the characters, although, as we shall see, it is not a straight shot to the end. (actually the book begins in an imperfect tense time that could be any time, with its description of the village). How is the concept of time handled? Well, as a guide, I suppose we should look at verb tense. The first vignette is in the present tense, although as I have suggested, this is really “outside” of linear time. “Primeval is the place at the center of the universe.” The second vignette, shifts to simple past. “In the summer of 1914, two of the Tsar’s brightly uniformed soldiers came for Michal on horseback.” The third vignette gives us “The Time of Misia’s Angel,” Misia being the daughter of Genowefa, whose story is presented in the second vignette. Paying attention? Here, we have a shift to from simple past to simple present tense: “The angel saw Misia’s birth in a different way from Kumerka the midwife. An angel generally sees everything in a different way. Angels perceive the world not through the physical forms which it keeps producing and destroying, but through the meaning and soul of those forms.” ‘Kay. You could argue, how does Ms. Tokarchuk even know about angels? How can she write with so much authority about them? This is fiction, best beloved. She can write whatever she wants. What effect does this have? (this being, the use of different verb tenses). It marks a difference between the characters whom the storyteller is telling us about, and the storyteller itself who exists outside of time. Whoa! That’s the implication. Mortal and immortal beings vs. the narrator. Do angels make use of the simple past tense? I don’t know, my friend. I don’t know. Every time there is a shift to present tense in this book, we are cued that we are reading a commentary by the narrator. And the characters—including God—give no sign of being aware of the narrator. In “The Time of the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle,” we read, “Enclosed in the icon’s decorative frame, the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle had a limited view of the church.” Here, we’ve got a non-human entity presented in simple past. In “The Time of Misia’s Grinder,” which is a story about a treasured object that Misia has, we read: “People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things…Misia’s grinder came into being because of someone’s hands combining wood, china, and brass into a single object.” So, another verb tense shift in a story about a non-human object. Mr. Big Shot, so every time we read a passage in present tense, it’s the narrator’s voice? I supposes, best beloved. The narrator is making a comment about the characters who exist in time, and this comment is from a place out of time. Thanks, that’s really clear. Yes. Is the narrator an immortal being? For the purposes of this book, yes. “Grinders grind, and that is why they exist. But no one knows what the grinder means in general. Perhaps the grinder is a splinter off some total, fundamental law of transformation…” Yup, present tense, narrator speaking. Our theory checks out. Your theory. In “The Time of Dipper the Drowned Man,” we have a story about a dead person’s soul that hangs out around Primeval. It begins in simple past tense. “Trapped in his drunken body, his intoxicated soul, a soul that hadn’t been absolved, with no map of the road onwards to God, remained like a dog by the body going cold in the bushes.” Then a shift: “Such a body is blind and helpless:” another shift: “So in its confusion Dipper’s soul thought that it was still Dipper.” Hold up. This blog is in present tense, right? Yes. Does that mean it’s the narrator’s voice? Um, yes. It is. But you’re misunderstanding things. Not everything written in present tense is in a narrator’s voice, just in Primeval. And this blog. ‘Kay? Here’s an interesting case. “The Time of God” begins, “It is strange that God, who is beyond the limits of time, manifests himself within time and its transformations.” Then a shift: “In the summer of 1939, God was in everything all around, so rare and unusual things happened.” Huh, so God, who is beyond time, must manifest himself in the simple past tense. At least in this book. Till next time, my dears. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes #OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

This week, a new story, Olga Tokarchuk’s 1996 Primeval and Other Times, originally written in Polish and translated to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones in 2010. It is set in the fictitious Polish village of Prawiek—translated as Primeval. Primeval—of or resembling the earliest ages in the history of the world. The novel tells the story of the inhabitants of Primeval over eight decades, beginning in 1914. Ms. Tokarchuk has said that the story is based on tales her maternal grandmother told her when she was a child. Primeval has been described as a fragmentary novel in that it’s made up of some sixty vignettes that could be read as complete unto themselves or as parts of a bigger whole—a chronicle of a particular place—Primeval—during particular times. There are many notable fragmentary novels, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, to name two. Each vignette in Primeval is entitled The Time of (a character’s name), so the novel begins with The Time of Primeval. The first sentence is “Primeval is the place at the center of the universe.” This first section presents a geographical description of the town and its two rivers, along with a naming of the four archangels who guard the four directions of the town. Yes, you read that right. Archangels. Four of them. Rapheal, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel. Archangels appear in most western religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and are generally regarded as the highest order of angels. It is perhaps significant that these fellows guard the borders of the town of Primeval. What is their purpose—to keep out evil? We shall see. Other vignettes in the book concern the Virgin Mary and God, both of whom appear as characters, so the archangels are in good company. But you say, does the presence of archangels mean that Ms. Tokarchuk has written a religious novel, that she wants us to accept literally that heavenly beings are guarding the town? Is she proselytizing? Uh, I don’t think so, best beloved. Well, then, you counter, are we talking allegory? An allegory is a “story, picture, or other piece of art that uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one.” In its most simple and concise definition, an allegory is when a piece of visual or narrative media uses one thing to “stand in for” another. Yeah but, you complain, then what’s the difference between allegory and metaphor? Sounds like a metaphor. ‘Kay. Metaphor is a rhetorical device, like simile…or metonymy. Allegory can be loosely defined as a sustained metaphor used in film, the visual arts, or literature. It is often used to give abstract ideals (Truth, Beauty, etc) a concrete form, sometimes by personifying these ideals as characters within a story. Allegories are systems of metaphors. In Primeval, one of the first metaphors the reader encounters concerns the confluence of the two rivers in the village, the White and the Black. They flow separately but join together at a point where the mill is located, an important site in the story. Two separate streams, joined. This is a nice expression of one of the book’s major themes, the intermingling of Jewish and Christian people. There is an unnamed narrator who tells the stories in Primeval. The characters are not aware of this entity, who knows a lot about them. Even our friends the archangels don’t know who the narrator is. An example, please. In a vignette entitled, “The Time of Cornspike,” we are presented with a tale of one of the major characters, Cornspike, who lives alone and is regarded by the other villagers as a wanton woman. “In the spring of 1927 a sprig of masterwort grew in front of Cornspike’s cottage. Cornspike observed it from the moment it put a thick, fat, stiff shoot out of the earth…What now, my fine fellow, Cornspike said to it ironically. You’ve pushed yourself so far, you’ve climbed so high into the sky that now your seeds are going to germinate in the thatch, not in the ground.” I know, I know, what’s masterwort? A genus of herbaceous plants in the family Apiaceae, endemic to Central, Eastern and Southern Europe and the Caucasus. There are several species, which have aromatic roots, palmate leaves, and decorative flowers. Mebbe you’re wondering but are too shy to say, is this masterwort plant a phallic symbol? Well, yeah. “And one night, when Cornspike had finally fallen asleep, a young man stood before her. He was tall and powerfully built. His arms and thighs looked as if they were made from polished wood. The glow of the moon illuminated him. “I’ve been watching you through the window,” he said. “I know. The smell of you disturbs the senses.” The young man came into the room and stretched out both hands to Cornspike. She snuggled in between them and pressed her face to the hard, powerful chest. He lifted her slightly so that their mouths could find each other. From under half closed eyelids, Cornspike saw his face—it was rough like the stem of a plant.” Adult readers can guess what occurs with Cornspike and the plant man. The point, my dears, is the role of the narrator. No, the point is they’re having sex. A narrator is telling this story, it is unnamed and Cornspike is unaware of it. (Not sure about the plant guy). The narrator sets the scene. It’s the spring of 1927, a sprig of masterwort grows in front of her cottage. Then a “young man” appears before her—after she falls asleep. Is this a dream? Some dream. My point is that the narrator is the storyteller. It shows what the characters said and did—a selection of course. The narrator slices and dices “reality,” picking out certain elements to show a story. What is the story in this case? Cornspike cultivates a robust flowering plant in her garden, then dreams (?) that the plant becomes a man who has sex with her. What happens? “…when the sky became gray and the birds began to sing. Then a shudder shook the masterwort, and his hard body froze still, like timber. The canopies began to rustle, and dry, prickly seeds showered down on Cornspike’s naked, exhausted body. Then the fair-haired youth went back outside, and Cornspike spent all day picking the aromatic grains from her hair.” If Primeval were a realist novel, maybe this vignette could be framed as a dream. A lonely woman thinks a flowering plant is very attractive. She dreams that the plant becomes a handsome man who makes love to her. She wakes and perhaps through her open window, aromatic grains from the plant have become entangled in her hair. But this is no realist novel. Cornspike turns up pregnant by the plant guy.. Till next time. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes @OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

Coincidence plays a significant role in Station Eleven. We’ve talked about coincidence before in regard to other novels—let’s plunge in again. A coincidence is a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection. The film Casablanca provides a great example. Rick, on the run from an unhappy love affair (and from the entire Third Reich) runs a bar in Casablanca, Morocco. Everything is just great till his partner in the unhappy love affair, Ilsa Lund, shows up (along with a bunch of Nazis and a husband). Rick delivers the immortal line: Of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine. It’s a coincidence that creates the story. But it’s not unbelievable. Casablanca was the major transit point for people in Europe trying to escape the Nazis, and Ilsa and her husband are trying to escape the Nazis. And in Casablanca, everyone goes to Rick’s. So should Rick be shocked? He doesn’t seem to be. Of course, without this plot device, there’d be no story, and this is as true in Station Eleven. An interesting observation about coincidence is that “as a literary device, coincidence is the presence of the author in the novel acting like an ancient Greek god directing events.” Is this our eternal friend, the implied author? Yes, best beloved. Oh yes. There was a lot of coincidence in ancient Greek drama. Oedipus, for example. There’s no causal connection between there being a prophecy that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother and the fact that he does, without being aware of course. The audience makes meaning of this by concluding that the gods were the ones who arranged this fate. In Station Eleven, Ms. St. John Mandel is the god who arranges the characters’ fates. But—a big but—it is not the flesh and blood author who does this but her creature, the implied author. What are these coincidences in Station Eleven? In the first scene, three important characters are introduced and connected: Arthur, Kirsten, and Jeevan, who goes to try to help Arthur when he collapses on stage. Miranda is also introduced early on. She is not only the ex-wife of Arthur but also the creator of the Dr. Eleven graphic novel. Then we have the adult Kirsten and the members of the Traveling Symphony, and Kirsten’s fixation on the Dr. Eleven graphic novel, an artifact from twenty years before given to her by Arthur that I mentioned last week. We know at this point that Arthur and Miranda are dead; we don’t know about Jeevan. We learn about the otherwise unnamed Prophet, a mysterious and malevolent figure who menaces the Traveling Symphony and Kirsten. Going back to an earlier time period, we are shown Arthur’s life, how he met and married Miranda. We learn about the genesis of the Dr. Eleven comics. And we learn that Arthur will divorce Miranda and marry Elizabeth Colton and have a child with her, a child named Tyler. Another important character is introduced, Clark, a friend of Arthur’s who also meets Miranda. Clark knows Elizabeth and knows that Arthur has had a son. We learn that Miranda gives Arthur two copies of Dr. Eleven, one of which he presents to his son, Tyler, and one which he gives to Kirsten. Then Kirsten meets Arthur’s son, Tyler, who is of course now the Prophet. Clark takes a last plane away from the pandemic and finds that Elizabeth and Tyler are aboard. They wind up at the Severn City Airport together. Elizabeth eventually leaves the airport, and Tyler displays increasingly bizarre behavior. (Reading the Book of Revelations in the Bible—often a bad sign). Jeevan is the only main character who doesn’t die or encounter the others. He escapes Toronto after the death of his brother and heads south, where he eventually marries and has children. Charlie and Jeremy, the couple who left the Traveling Symphony and who Kirsten is searching for, are eventually re-united with her at the Severn City Airport. Clark—who has seen Kirsten before as a child (she doesn’t remember this) shows her a miraculous sight from the airport control tower: a far-off grid of electric lights. Electricity becomes hope. Someone has figured out how to generate and harness it again. Maybe civilization is coming back. So, a lot of coincidental connection, a web that is the story. Imagine how different it would be if the surviving characters just went off on their own (like Jeevan). It’s much more satisfying in this fine novel that most of the main characters are inevitably drawn together. It’s ironic too (homage to Jordan Catalano). Next week, a new story, very different. Olga Tokarchuk’s Primeval and Other Times. Till then. #StationEleven #EmilySt.JohnMandel #AlanBray

Narrative Magazine has agreed to publish my story "The Vaccination" as part of their story of the week series. It's a story set during the pandemic. I'm honored, thanks to Tom Jenks. I'm told it will appear sometime this fall. I will let everyone know.

Last time, I said that the Dr. Eleven graphic comic, created by Miranda, is so central to Station Eleven that it deserves its own post. So… Let’s review the meaning of mise en abime. We’ve talked about this concept before regarding other novels. The literal French translation is “put in the abyss,” and originally referred to heraldry where an image on a shield or pennant would appear again in a smaller version on the shield or pennant. So you could have, say, a picture of a squirrel with a smaller image of the same squirrel in one corner and on this smaller image, there’d be an even smaller image of a squirrel, and so on. Infinite regression. Another example is the original Quaker Oats logo which featured a man holding a Quaker Oats packet, and that showed a man holding a Quaker Oats packet, etc. Quaker Oats? The point is that mise en abymes are pretty common. A good activity for you would be to hunt them down. I’m sure. In narrative, it’s a little different from imagery in that you probably won’t have the exact same story repeated in a briefer version. But one can refer to mise en abyme if an embedded story shares plot elements, structural features or themes with the main story and this makes it possible to correlate plot and subplot. It gives a narrative a multi-dimensional feel, an abyss, if you will, of context. Help! I’ve fallen into an abyss of context! So, you say, what about in Station Eleven? Roughly nine years before the Collapse, the onset of the pandemic, Miranda created the Dr. Eleven graphic comics. She was lonely, in an unhappy relationship and working at a job where she had a lot of down time. All of this left an emptiness she filled with the creation of a magical pretend universe. Sort of like writing a novel, eh? The story is that, a thousand years in the future, a hostile civilization from a nearby galaxy has taken control of Earth and enslaved Earth’s population, but a few hundred rebels have managed to steal a space station and escape. It’s called Station Eleven and was designed to resemble a small planet. There are deep blue seas and rocky islands linked by bridges, an illusion of orange and crimson skies with two moons on the horizon. However, on the station, there are people who, after fifteen years of perpetual twilight, long only to go home, to return to Earth and beg for amnesty, to take their chances under alien rule. They live in the Undersea, an interlinked network of vast fallout shelters under Station Eleven’s oceans. Dr. Eleven is a physicist who lives on Station Eleven. He has a dog named Luli—and this is significant as the story develops. Miranda escapes her life by creating a fictional world. “You don’t have to understand it,” she says to her husband. “It’s mine.” Her inspiration was the Calvin and Hobbes comics, specifically Spaceman Spiff, a favorite of mine. “…she invented the beautiful wreckage of Station Eleven.” In a prophetic moment, the narrator comments that Station Eleven is all around them (Miranda and Elizabeth). Section 4 of the book is called The Starship—an obvious reference to Station Eleven. Obviously. The section is about Kirsten in the Symphony, how they get Alexandra and are hunted by the Prophet. Kristen and August become separated from the others and head for the Severn City Airport. I think it’s probably clear by now that Dr. Eleven is a smaller version of Station Eleven. A band of humans have survived a catastrophe and are trying to survive while being assailed by bad guys. The inclusion of this mise en abyme would be enough to deepen context, let’s say if we just had the story of Miranda creating the comic. The connections would be clear. However, Ms. St. John Mandel does more. Miranda sends her ex-husband, Arthur Leander, two copies of Dr. Eleven, which she has never published. She sends him Dr. Eleven, Vol 1, No. 1: Station Eleven and Dr, Eleven, Vol 1, No. 2 The Pursuit. Just before the pandemic, Arthur gives one set to the young Kirsten Raymonde, and she keeps them throughout all the long years of her escape from the pandemic, years of violence and loss that lead twenty years later to her being part of the Traveling Symphony. She keeps the comics in a zip-lock bag and has them memorized, treating them with almost religious awe. At one point, she wishes she could live in a parallel universe “where my comics are real…where we boarded Station Eleven and escaped before the world ended.” However, she is not shown making a direct connection between the comics and the state of things post-pandemic. For her, as for Miranda, the comics fill an inner void, an abyss, best beloved. So our intrepid mise en abyme provides a link between life pre and post pandemic. Kirsten discovers this link when she learns that the Prophet’s dog is named Luli—which is the name of Dr. Eleven’s dog. This mystery is solved when the Prophet is killed, and Kirsten finds a fragment of the Dr. Eleven comic in the Prophet’s copy of the New Testament. The answer to this riddle—which I don’t believe Kirsten learns—is that the Prophet, the villain of the book, is actually Tyler, Arthur Leander’s son who received the other copy of Dr. Eleven from him. At the end of the book, we have the narrator telling us: “In Dr. Eleven, Vol 1 No. 1: The Pursuit, Dr. Eleven is visited by the ghost of his mentor, Captain Lonagan, recently killed by an Undersea assassin… Dr. Eleven: What was it like for you, at the end? Captain Lonagan: It was exactly like waking up from a dream. This is after a scene showing Arthur’s death from his perspective, the event that begins the book but is first shown from Jeevan’s. Then Kirsten gives Clark, another important character, one of the Dr. Eleven comics, and he reads it later in privacy. He recognizes a scene showing a real dinner party he attended with Miranda and Arthur years ago. He thinks: “Perhaps vessels are setting out even now, traveling toward or away from him, steered by sailors armed with maps and knowledge of the stars, driven by need or perhaps simply by curiosity: whatever became of the countries on the other side? If nothing else, it’s pleasant to consider the possibility. He likes the thought of ships moving over the water, toward another world just out of sight.” A beautiful ending to a story about hope amidst disaster, all connected by an earnest little mise en abyme. Till next time. #StationEleven #EmilySt.JohnMandel #AlanBray

Narratives are a balance of mimetic, thematic, and synthetic threads. Mimetic threads are those that present convincing characters and plots, life-like representations that help the reader to suspend the sense of reading a made-up story. Thematic threads are those that represent larger abstract ideas, such as good triumphing over evil or honesty being the best policy—those examples are kind of trite, but you get the idea. Synthetic threads in a novel are those that have to do with the author (implied author) manipulating the story to produce writerly affects. I think Station Eleven is weighted with these, and the second section of the book, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a fine example. Come to think of it, the previous chapter is also a good example. This chapter appears at the end of the first section and outlines all the things that have been lost since the pandemic: “An incomplete list: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights…” There is no attribution here, so I’m assuming it’s the narrator ‘splaining to the narratee. I suppose it could be one of the characters who survives the pandemic, Kirsten or Clark, but it doesn’t say this, so— It’s a strong reminder that you’re reading a book and that your experience of reading has been structured by—wait for it—the implied author. The mimetic illusion would be greater, I think, if the story stayed with one character’s experience of the events—at this point, it would have to be Kristen. But she cannot ”see” most of the events shown in the first section. She and Javeen intersect at the theater but not after he leaves. She has met Miranda before but is not with her in Asia. And she is with Arthur when he dies and of course knows him, but he dies on the second page. At the point in the book, just before this section outlining loss occurs, no character has the knowledge of the effects of the pandemic. It is only the narrator who can “step back” and list the lost things. In fact, the characters are unaware of the narrator’s existence. Then, in creating the second section, the implied author intervenes forcefully again by jumping ahead in time by twenty years. The time between is gradually filled in, particularly when the story gets to Clark’s experience of living in the Severn City Airport. But at this earlier point, we have an abrupt leap with the narrator showing the survivors’ experience of life twenty years after the pandemic, or “Collapse,” as they call it. A nice link connects the Traveling Symphony rehearsing Shakespeare’s King Lear with Arthur’s beginning performance of King Lear. In addition to the leaps in time and the narrator’s voice listing losses, there are other synthetic devices used in Station Eleven that create texture, as well as communicating to the reader that this is a creatively structured work, that a storyteller is telling you the story. What are they, please? Towards the middle of the book, the text produces letters written by a younger Arthur Leander to a childhood friend. Then there is an interview conducted by a journalist of the adult Kristen, wherein she is questioned about what she remembers of time before the Collapse, and about the Traveling Symphony. There is also considerable connection between the central characters—not always within the same time period. The motif of the Station Eleven graphic novel connects Kristen with its author Miranda, even though Kristen’s main involvement with the graphic novel occurs well after Miranda’s death. This graphic novel is so central to the story; it provides the title and is an excellent mis en abime, my friends. It deserves its own post, and that will be forthcoming. Certainly, mimetic and thematic threads are substantial, but I still maintain that synthetic elements are prominent in the book. And this manipulation of the text gives the book a somewhat cold, science-fiction feel. I don’t mean this as a negative. But I believe the characters are secondary to the way the story is told, and in some ways, the impersonal Georgian Flu is the book’s main character. A different story might concern an evil mad man who kills off most of humanity in a war—a sort of Hitler or Stalin. Or a disaster story could be about selfish humanity causing a catastrophe that eliminates most people (global warming, anyone?). But Station Eleven presents a third model, an impersonal plague being the villain. There is no one to blame, and this contributes strongly to the survivors’ shock and disarray. There is no one to be angry at, to struggle against. Because they have learned to rely so much on the internet and mass communication, its loss leads to a collapse of civilization. The characters wonder if there’s life on other continents but don’t really know. They turn in on themselves in a way that is opposite to our existence now with its expansion of science, communication, space exploration, etc. ‘Kay. Till next time. #StationEleven #EmilySt.JohnMandel #AlanBray

How is time handled in Station Eleven? I can say straight off that time is discontinuous and episodic, two terms we’ve looked at before. (You’re saying it’s “just like” something else?) Settle down. Discontinuous narrative, or nonlinear narrative, is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, hypertext websites and other narratives, where events are portrayed, for example, out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line. Most of the time it is used to mimic the structure and recall of a character but has been used for other reasons as well. Episodic storytelling is a genre of narrative that is divided into a fixed set of episodes. Multiple episodes are usually grouped together into a series through a unifying story arc, with the option to view immediately (rather than waiting for the release of each episode). Episodes may not always contain the same characters, but each episode draws from a broader group of characters, or cast, all of whom exist in the same story world. It is one of the most common forms of storytelling in tv film. Interesting, no? I think it’s fair to say that most modern writing is both discontinuous and episodic. The contrast would be a story that tried to show continuous time—pretty hard to do and not terribly interesting. Umberto Eco made the humorous observation that pornography is like this—if someone goes to the refrigerator for a beer, the story shows each step of the way—walking to the refrigerator, opening the door, etc. And of course, sex acts are traditionally presented in continuous fashion. (How do you know? Why do you keep bringing this up? You must like it.) Oh, stop. Let’s say Chapter One begins with Time 1. This is a threshold time just before the characters become aware of the pandemic. But the scene is about the death of a main character, Arthur Leander, which is a prescient touch in a book about a devastating plague. This Time 1 scene plays out in continuous time—not that each instant is shown, but time moves forward, anchored to a particular place and time—“a winter night at the Elgin Theater in Toronto.” Jeevan is introduced and tries unsuccessfully to revive Arthur. Kristen is introduced, as a child. The perspective remains Jeevan’s, albeit shown through the auspices of the narrator. There is minimal digression as far as Jeevan and/or the narrator bringing in memories or comments about the past or future. Then a paragraph break, and Jeevan leaves the theater—still on the same night. Let’s call this Time 2 as it’s a direct continuation of the initial scene. However, Jeevan’s memories begin to be shown. He encounters a group of paparazzi, and we learn that he had been a paparazzo himself. The guys know him, and question him about his new vocation—studying to be an EMT—and about Arthur Leander’s death (as they were gathered to try to photograph him). Jeevan breaks away from his old friends, walks on, ruminating over the events of Time 1 (Arthur’s death). We learn a bit more about him in terms of his feeling badly over not being able to save Arthur. Probably an hour or two have elapsed since page 1. The chapter closes with Jeevan heading for a park, not ready to go home. Chapter 2 continues in Time 2, but the characters and perspective have changed. “There are few people left in the Elgin Theater now,” it begins. There’s a paragraph of description about the aftermath of Arthur’s death, and then the scene goes to a bar off the theater lobby where several characters are discussing the death. In the context of talking about whom to notify, the characters present some background information about Arthur’s multiple marriages and family, and this will be significant later, although the reader doesn’t have a sense of it yet. The chapter ends with the first foreshadowing of the pandemic, the information that of all those in the bar, the bartender will survive the longest. The narrator shows all this without going “inside” any of the characters’ heads. It’s all dialogue, like a theatrical play. Chapter 3 returns to Jeevan walking in the park, a continuation of Time 2. He gets two phone calls from his friend Hua, a doctor in a city hospital, who warns him about the Georgian Flu. Jeevan realizes the seriousness of the threat and begins to gather supplies to take to his disabled brother’s apartment. Chapter 4 is short. It collapses a Time 2 night with the next morning. The narrator shows the executive producer of Arthur’s play thinking about and calling Arthur’s lawyer, who calls Arthur’s closest friend with the news. The next morning, the friend “began calling Arthur’s ex-wives.” This morning (in a different time zone) may be called Time 3. A famous literary example of collapsing time is in Flaubert’s Sentimental Journey. “He traveled…He came home…He went into society…Years passed and he came to terms with his mental stagnation and the numbness in his heart.” (Why’d you even bring that up? Pretentious bully!. Talk about mental stagnation.) Chapter 5 shows one of the ex-wives (and an increasingly significant character) getting the news of Arthur’s death. The chapter is showing the ex-wife, Miranda’s perspective but at the end, the narrator comments, “This was during the final month of the era when it was possible to press a series of buttons on a telephone and speak with someone on the far side of the earth.” Chapter 6 is a different time altogether, let’s call it Time 4. The narrator is speaking, telling the reader about an “incomplete list” of all the things lost in the pandemic. This has been nicely foreshadowed, but it is not filtered through the consciousness of any of the characters. It is a different order because it’s not continuous time, it’s narrative time from a distance, the narrator who sees from the perspective of the whole story, the whole book. So, we have a story that jumps around in time, and is told through the perspective of more than one related character. The narrator is not bound to one time period but can flit about, commenting on the characters. However, there is a firm boundary between the narrator and the characters—the narrator is not an “I” who is some kind of buddy to the characters. They are unaware of it (the narrator). Get ready for a big leap next time, best beloved. Till then. #StationEleven #EmilySt.JohnMandel #AlanBray