Tracing Gould - oo6

Traveling, bouncing faster than can be perceived, echoing ahead of itself and backward again, the reflections finding purchase in the present.

The essayist sets his dogeared paperback aside.  The bookmark at the halfway point.  Page 127, the witness under cross-examination discusses printing leaflets with a mimeograph.  "We had a duplicating machine and produced a little news-sheet for distribution to members."  A spirit duplicator...

1968: Per Wahloo publishes 'The Steel Spring', chronicling an unnamed nation in the grips of a self-inflicted crisis, made possible by prohibition.  "Inspector Jensen gave a shake of his head.  He had always thought the plainclothes patrol slipshod & imprecise in its actions."   Was Dick Tracy being syndicated abroad, in Scandanavia, in 1968?  During the space period, was Dick Tracy translated into Swedish?  Why not.  The 1940s strips were being translated into Hungarian in the 90s...

Any influence is possible.  Passible.  Communicable.  If Dick Tracy (1933) contains Batman (1939), and Batman contains James Bond (1953), then Dick Tracy (o.g. G-man) contains James Bond (oo7).  Everything flowing from wartime, crosstime, informing points in a constellation which may only be read from without.  Every influence equal to pastiche.

Now.  Cut to then.

"But Kid," says Sam, frame slipping free from the Sunday page, freckles scintillating around his wry smile.  He pulls himself bodily from the two-dee space by the narrow black bar of ink, hauling up and out, into memory's atmosphere, thin as the moon, and stands there hands on knees, panting, cartoon cig clinging to the corner of his winded grin:  "You can't just draw any old constellation, if ya can't project what the myth is meant to encompass.  The story has to map true."

"True," The child echoes.  Setting his scissors aside.  Studying the fifty year old face he finds reflected in them.  "The story has to encompass the imaginary shape; the myth isn't cut to fit the story."

The essayist in his fourth-dimensional window winks, a glint off steel shears.  "Sure.  But what do you imagine the shape to be?  Forty years of dailies.  Forty years of work.  What kind of silhouette does that provide?  Is it flat?  Flat, hell: is it even opaque?  Can it shade, block, obfuscate?  Or is it only an outline, a profile, a précis?"   Eyeballing the diminutive Sam as he cocks his derby back with a derisive sniff.

"What's the topography of our myth," says Sam, giving the tip of the scissors a light kick, setting them spinning.  "Izzat what you're asking?  An implausible ask for an impossible question."

The scissors spin, spin, spin on their axis.  Images old and new flashing.  Forgotten to the child, immemorial to his quinquagenarian self.  Olden anew.