I wanted to put this recap post in the company of the many enthusiastic readers who were willing to give this a go!

I learned something important from David C. and from Scott. Something that took me a long time to admit. Both readers insisted frequently on how strange (Scott’s word for it is “odd”) it seemed that Sibylla would keep watching The Seven Samurai, and only certain sections of SS — the screeing process especially. I wondered why I didn’t feel the oddness of this. And I had a lot of ill feeling toward David for playing the psychiatric nurse in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Of course I’m the cuckoo this fall.

There is a scene in the Szegeti section, page 465 of the American edition. Szegeti describes what it was like for him to be sitting next to a woman and trying to watch The Seven Samurai. He was after a kiss, and perhaps too the midnight equilibrium of a one-night stand, but this was not to be. The film was too engrossing! And Szegeti was not engrossed. Onto the screen of the projectin of Kurosawa’s vision, we read (we almost see) the projections of Szegeti’s obsessions, almost totally blocking out the former.

I’m now willing to admit that something similar happened to Sib each time she sat down to watch the movie. Something parallel to the descriptions I have given of the impact of cinema on a viewing consciousness. Recently, David, after having graciously accepted to publish 7 final posts, posted one talking about how silent Sib had become in the second half of the novel. This time, instead of getting angry, I realised that he was right, except for the typo of mistaking the second part of the novel with its inception. Sib is indeed silent about the most significant and traumatic thing that has happened to her: her attempt on her own life. This is part of the secret clamp the movie has on her. These men accept to try their best to save the village, and Sib will try her best to save her skin, but the after-images of her acting out are as vivid as those of Szegeti in his own obsessive world of bridge.

This is an aspect of novel writing that brings David Foster Wallace into proximiy with Helen DeWitt’s work. They both leave important, crucial matters outside the ken of the novel. Sib never gives voice to the originating act of the novel. Many of us have stomped on that decision and that posture, prefering to write that “she’s not very good with people.” Instead of getting my gander up, I now prefer, thanks to these exchanges, to wonder why it’s easier for me to stomach this posture and to feel some sort of empathy with such a decision. Full Disclosure in the next life. I was a news vendor for many years, and I remember losing all presence of mind when Michel Foucault wrote in “Le Gai Pied” that wonderful article about how natural it was to put an end to one’s life. That was many years ago. It makes me an old man now. Unfortunately not a sage. But someone still in the screening process. Many thanks to you all.

If Scott could provide me with the last sentence of each week’s reading and the first sentence of the next i’ll be able to match those up to the UK pages and provide page numbers for that. email me or message here, thanks.