The Aesthetics of Compilation
Few people often consider the aesthetic quality that must go into creating compilations of like form or substance. It is not the easiest concept to put into the words, but the power of metaphor is revealed to be an efficient mechanism of conveyance:
“There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.”
The Imagination of the Stage
An obsession with the aesthetic quality of all things in life runs throughout the novel. In the process, it creates a multitude of possibilities and potentialities for the introduction of metaphorical imagery:
“if I have my way, all the tasteful furniture which makes the stage like an airless mirror of daily life would be whisked lightly up—sofas like flying elephants, tables galloping into the wings like wild ponies—and we should see through the looking glass into the world of dream and story. The stage doesn’t have to reproduce drawing rooms with false balconies and unreal windows. We can put anything on the stage.”
The Carpenters of Dreamland
What happens when psychoanalysts are given “timid dreams” about cows or nuts to pry apart for hidden meaning? Not much if they only view horrific dreams about dragons and snakes as worthy of interpretation. And if a psychoanalyst really wants you to dream about dragons and snakes, then snakes and dragons you will dream about. Of course, in the process that very same therapy will serve to create the psychosis:
“No man has a right to dictate another man's inner life - the furniture inside his skull.”
Oscar Wilde
A number of famous historical figures appear in the novel. J.M. Barrie and creation Peter Pan play a significant role. Even noted anarchist Emma Goldman crosses paths with some of the fictional creations. Then there is Oscar Wilde, who shows up near the end of his life when he was at his most pathetic, drained of the spirit which had made him a legend by the hypocrisy of the Victorian Age:
“`He smelled horrible,’ Humphry later told Olive.`I gave him what was in my pocket, because he smelled so bad that I felt guilty of his stink. There he stood, foul, in front of the Gates of Hell. He shuffled off—receiving embarrassed him horribly—muttering about sipping mint tea. His mouth itself is a Gate of Hell.’”
Historical Situationis
The novel is set against the backdrop of the approaching madness and horror of the first World War. Part and parcel of the military engagement among bordering nations is another war taking place among economic theories and political ideologies. The commingling of historical and fictional personas come together not just in the fictionalized discourse between the real and unreal, but the historical discourse of the real to which the unreal must apply. Among the actual historical quotes to be found in the novel is a famous metaphorical comparison by British labor union leader and political agitator, Benjamin Tillett:
“Capitalism is capitalism as a tiger is a tiger and both are savage and pitiless towards the weak.”
