I’d love to hear your thoughts on:
(1) So the narrator was Jack Egan – does that mean that the first chapter was written from HIS perspective, or from Gilligan’s?
(2) What was up with “the black dot” – it was mentioned in the Skipper’s and Professor’s story, and I’m convinced it was in another one, but I can’t remember.
(3) It was obvious a clever exercise in puns and allusions. But some time in Chapter 3 (Thurston) – I started to care. His story started out actually funny, and then got really touching, and then I was invested. Was that your experience?
(4) In the context of the book, was the “author” Jack Egan? Or was he just another fictional stand in?
(5) Anything else beyond “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it”?
by revdj
2 Comments
Thread title had me thinking this was a wonderfullly absent-minded example of a sort of malapropism, like Marconi and cheese. OP though had me actually looking it up. (To me, yer man missed a trick by using that apostrophe in the title.) Good idea if either 1) novel itself in any way references the Joyce book (not that anyone would ever know) or 2) Gilligan dies and everyone proceeds to drink a lot.
Sorry, I know that’s of no help. Fwiw now that you’ve mentioned the novel–and because line of NYT review can’t be bettered: ‘Not as good as Finnegans Wake but better than Gilligan’s Island’–I’ll take a long look if I come across it, so thanks for the post. Which of course reminded me of the islanders’ memorable mashup of Shakespeare and Bizet.
Shot in the dark but could Egan be there simply to narrate a framing story?
I loved that book so much but don’t remember enough about those particular points to talk much about it.