quote:

He found that he was imagining himself as Tom Sawyer, Brown as Huckleberry Finn, and these rooms in the New Yorker, and in the other hotels they kept returning to, as their raft, with Manhattan as their chilly Mississippi, down which they floated-

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Originally posted by Gustave:
So what's your take on this passage in "The Source" (Chapter 12)?

quote:

He found that he was imagining himself as Tom Sawyer, Brown as Huckleberry Finn, and these rooms in the New Yorker, and in the other hotels they kept returning to, as their raft, with Manhattan as their chilly Mississippi, down which they floated-

This bit really stuck out for me... in an incongruous and further irritating manner. What manner of pearl might be cultured from this irritation? A square one perhaps...

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Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by Gustave:
So what's your take on this passage in "The Source" (Chapter 12)?

quote:

He found that he was imagining himself as Tom Sawyer, Brown as Huckleberry Finn, and these rooms in the New Yorker, and in the other hotels they kept returning to, as their raft, with Manhattan as their chilly Mississippi, down which they floated-

This bit really stuck out for me... in an incongruous and further irritating manner. What manner of pearl might be cultured from this irritation? A square one perhaps...

I'm pretty sure, if anything, this comes from too places. A certain wide eyed innocence that Milgrim gets when high coupled with his perspective of Brown's simpler, more traditionally America America which is gone, which is lost. Just like Huck's innocence as he comes of age and learns about injustice, just as all those days are gone. In the same tangential rooms off old Georgian hallways, rooms that contain large eyed Eagles, that contain old Navy Sports jackets, that contain a boyhood very much like the one that America seems to be trying to reinvent. When things were simpler and one could act out as a impetuous child, feel entitled and act with impunity.

Brown and his ilk are naieve, they are child-like. They take complex affairs and distill them into colloquial notions of morality. They believe in an America that never was. Like Huck, until he learns how bad it is for Jim, sees the America that really exists, under the veneer of pride, idiotic optimism and excusable cruelty.

He compares them to children when he writes about the time when the grown ups used to be in charge.

But Tom and Huck are now, down the Mississippi, just like Milgrim, who isn't a grown up but recognizes it while Brown and Co. are kids who think they're adult.

That is what the passage gets at for me, though I think Gibson would shrug and move on to the next query after saying something about liking the imagery.