Perspective (Zane Mandell)

After my preliminary reading I am not sure what to reflect on. It seems we are undertaking a chronological (at least this is chronological to our narrator Tony Webster) memory that is being told for some important purpose to the narrator. I enjoy the topics that the narrator is covering, jumping around searching for something. That is what I have seen to become evident at this point; the narrator is searching, looking for something in his past.

But I find myself coming back to Adrian Finn. He intrigues me as a key to what the narrator is searching for. The narrator states that he is not fond of his school days, but there must be something important that happened in his life then that he is drawn to. I feel like whatever it is the narrator is trying to find is related to Finn, but for now it is just a theory.

I would like to focus the rest of this post of a quote from Finn, one that leads me to believe that I will enjoy the rest of this short novel. “History is the certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” (18) I find this to be highly important in understanding who this Adrian Finn is. It not only shows his wittiness and high aptitude but it also shows that he reads to learn; in other words he wants to know. On the subject of what the quote is saying itself I find myself pondering this viewpoint on how things are. It is essentially discrediting the process by which we record our past. It says, to put it simply, history is the product of false memories and wrong documents. And the reasoning is because we have nothing else to go by. I personally love history and this has changed my thought behind how we record what has happened in the past. I have heard the cliché that history is written by those who have won but never a thought that has these deep connotations. Humph! Guess I will just have to continue to find out more.