On Preterition

The "first ancestor," author of the "Slothropite heresy" that seems to be a serious reading of Borges's story "Three Versions of Judas," might serve as a Counterforcing saint.  "William argues holiness for these 'second Shee[' without whom there would be no elect" (555).  He's a vision of "the fork in the road America never took" (556), and of course it's his hymn that "They never taught anyone to sing" that's ringing in our ears on the last page of the novel --

There is a Hand to turn the time,
Though thy Glass today be run,
Till the Light that hath brought the Towers low
Find the last poor Pret'rite one..
Till the Riders sleep by ev'ry road,
All through our crippl'd Zone,
With a face in every mountainside
And a Soul in ev'ry stone...


(Note the play with 18c spelling and punctuation here, to which we'll return in M&D.)


But even ol' Will (named for Shakespeare?) isn't fully free of the deep involvement of all of Us in the workings of the fallen world.  As old Tom says of the Counterforcers --


"They are as schizoid, as double-minded in the massive presence of money, as any of the rest of us, and that's the hard fact.  The Man has a branch office in each of our brains...  We know what's going on, and we let it go on" (712-13).

A fun ride through GR.  On to California!