Going Slow

I am plowing along in The War, but it is slow going. I still like it. I like the wheels within wheels of the political maneuvering within all parties. I imagine that Llosa is doing the same to the reader, but I don't feel as obviously and as ham-handily manipulated as I have in other novels. I am not looking for transparency where the dream that is the text takes over and I am lost in the text, because I enjoy the break down of language and the archaelolgical work of reading into the craft of the writer. I find much of the meaning in a text can be created in this manner. The repetition of patterns from the story or stories in the novel appearing in the over arching structure of the text. Where the telling of the novel by the author through the telling of the stories in the novel by the narrator becomes yet another layer of storytelling told by the reader to herself as she makes meaning in and with the text.

(I liked that last sentence; I sure hope some of you guys read this blog still).