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From: Susan Wenger 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? 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 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!
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 5:48 PM
From: u1c04803
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 6:50 PM
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 11:48 AM
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