Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers Part II, Obedience, p. 231 – 278, and Part III, Our Daily Bread, p. 279 – 308


Vollmann gives us a lengthy tale of Saint Ignatius for this week’s reading before bringing us back to Canada for more adventures with the Black-gowns. Argall claims Acadia for the English and razes Port-Royal. Born Underwater takes possession of her Power.


To avoid spoilers, please restrict comments to p. 1 - 308

Hoping to get back up to speed on this one. Temporarily detained by Omensetter's Luck

James wrote: "Hoping to get back up to speed on this one. Temporarily detained by Omensetter's Luck"

Damn that Jethro Furber!!

See you when you get here...

Plot-wise, Fathers and Crows is even more of a mess than The Ice-Shirt already was - the action is all over the place, Vollmann wildly jumps between characters, places and times, then returns to previous characters for a bit, only to immediately afterwards introduce new ones we're never going to hear from again. He seems hellbent on violating every single rule anybody ever taught in a writing class - and yet, it all makes sense.

For what we get in the end is very much like a map, a map of a river and all the many at first independent brooks and rivulets, that flow without touching each other only to finally run into a single, big stream. Which is of course one of the central images and themes of the novel. And like his protagonist Champlain, Vollman is an obsessive map-maker that leaves no white spot unexplored and gives the reader pretty much everything that could possibly contribute in whatever small way to his narrative main-stream.

I haven't gotten past the introduction to Loyola's Exercises yet, but I wonder ow prevalent the river metaphor is in that work. In any case, I love the way Vollmann's superimposes metaphorical, spiritual and actual landscape in this novel.

I'm way behind the action here, but I also like how the meandering of the story is following the streams of time theme. I enjoyed the tale of Ignatious and was pretty excited to see the Argall cameo. It made me wonder if Vollmann always had plans for that book and was foreshadowing, or if he just picked up on something from his notes and went for it.