O'Pinions & O'Bservations O' O'Bscure O'Briania


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The Clockmender

From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 5:48 PM

The Clockmender - Some initial thoughts for discussion: Yet another weird, nightmarish tale. Who is this man?

Suddenly he was awake. Suddenly WHO was awake? We get the name of an entirely minor character who visited the house - Dr. Provis, but we never identify the mechanical clockwork man this story is about.

He wakes up three hours earlier than he intended - it is a very terrible thing for a clock-like man to have his routine disturbed, either by earliness or lateness. At the end of the story, the clock that becomes the focal point of his life strikes five when it should strike six - just as the man woke up too early, the clock sounds an earlier time than it is supposed to strike.

In most stories, it is a terrible thing to wake up three hours late - a person could lose everything by being late. In this story, he wakes up three hours early, and it is described as: "It was a tragedy." This is not going to be a normal short story about a normal man pursuing a normal life.

He remembers his earlier life when he was younger - "he had dressed then: selecting, buttoning, tying, turning right-side out, doing-up; every day he had accepted the series of motions that would have to be reversed at night. At that time he had been able to accept the drill of left arm - right arm, left leg - right leg, left foot - right foot, and its perpetual repetition." A very blatant clock metaphor.

He remembers his garden, but it is not the garden he remembers at all, but the sequence of planning for his garden, mentally laying it out - shades of Jack Aubrey - parallelograms of drilled rows of potatoes and cabbages, "and he would lie fighting against sleep while he carried out the mental arithmetic designed to show the total yield of his thirty-five rows of maincrop potatoes, if each plant yielded an average of three and a quarter pounds."

There is the shutting off of the man's life - everything he valued he deliberately excised from his life. Why? Why? Why?

"What do fleas do when they are not biting? He wondered."

According to Dean King's biography, O'Brian was a clock collector. "HE" collected and repaired clocks, tinkering, perfecting. "I suppose it is a harmless way of killing time," said Dr. Provis. An Aubreyesque joke, isn't it? But once he mastered the techniques of clockwork, his pleasure had contracted, as his life itself contracted.

The story ends with the Tompion clock mis-striking, and now "he" was up, his fingers twitching with activity. He threw the dressing-gown over his shoulders and shuffled quickly to the door: and as he opened it he lowered his head to conceal the pale smile on his face.

"Tompion" is part of my O'Brian lexicon - it is the plug placed in the muzzle of a cannon to keep out dampness. Is this exactly the clock that should NOT have failed?

Any thoughts or help on this story?


From: u1c04803
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 6:50 PM

In this case, Tompion is a clockmaker (thank you, Google), 1639-1713

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,74746+1,00.html

http://store.yahoo.com/memaries/thomtommancl.html

http://www.datacomm.ch/rbu/TOMPION.html

Lois


From: Peter Mackay
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 11:48 AM

At 05:48 PM 31/05/00 -0700, Susan Wenger wrote:

He wakes up three hours earlier than he intended - it is a very terrible thing for a clock-like man to have his routine disturbed, either by earliness or lateness. At the end of the story, the clock that becomes the focal point of his life strikes five when it should strike six - just as the man woke up too early, the clock sounds an earlier time than it is supposed to strike.

Seinfeld imitates O'Brian!


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