I thought I would touch on something that hasn’t been talked about yet–the two characters whose words can’t be read. \u00a0I am fascinated as to why Plascencia would include big blocks of black texts or\u00a0binary\u00a0codes in the novel. \u00a0While the latter may actually translate into words or images, the black boxes are destined to go\u00a0untranslated. \u00a0Certainly this makes the novel look and feel postmodern to the reader. \u00a0(However, I would argue that it still is postmodern even without these characters.)<\/p>\n
I initially wrote off Baby Nostradamus as a (humorous) allusion to the prophetic 16th century seer and nothing more–a gimmick\u00a0of sorts that Plascencia used to be provocative in style, but maybe not in meaning. \u00a0Baby N. first appears on the bus with his mother. Little Merced makes an inquiry about him and his mother says, “At first I thought that he was brain dead; the doctors said that he was as dumb as a turnip” (23). \u00a0On the same page, the solid black box appears under Baby N’s name. As a reader, I zipped passed each of these boxes assuming the baby had no thoughts. \u00a0 However, it wasn’t until chapter 23 \u00a0that my reading of Baby Nostradamus changed. \u00a0In this chapter, Baby N’s thoughts are written as he instructs Little Merced in how to conceal her thoughts. \u00a0Ironically, even as he instructing her ,it is not done through spoken words, but “through telepathic lessons” (159). \u00a0The reader sees Little Merced trying to use the concealment technique to varying degrees of success throughout the rest of the novel. \u00a0Her examples are normally partially obscured by a circle, such as on page 209. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Now the black boxes have changed for me. \u00a0It didn’t mean Baby N. didn’t have any thoughts, but rather it was that he was concealing his thoughts from Saturn\/ Plascencia and the reader. \u00a0I wonder if Plascencia wrote out the passages from Baby N while writing the book and then concealed them later on? \u00a0It would make for a good creative writing exercise. Yet, the concealment strategy is destroyed on page 218 when there is an image of Saturn superimposed over the top of the black box. \u00a0Is it a mistake on his part? \u00a0Does he mean to conceal his thoughts about Saturn? \u00a0Or is initially making the “mistake” Little Merced did when she is learning how to conceal her thoughts and ends up highlighting them instead. \u00a0 I keep returning to the question: what is his role in the novel? \u00a0Is he more than just a soothsayer? \u00a0At times he is humorous, foreseeing the last lines of the novel on page 166. \u00a0But at other times Baby N. feels like a\u00a0convenient\u00a0way for Plascencia to incorporate the non-traditional structure. \u00a0<\/p>\n
I don’t have as much to say about the mechanical tortoises. Since the author never translates their “words” for the reader, they go largely misunderstood. With that said, on page 156, the escaped mechanical tortoise’s purpose is brought to light–when we discover that he is working against the desire of the mechanics and bringing Tijuana and LA closer together by moving the earth. \u00a0Saturn goes on to say, “This is what machines did–they bridged the distance between cities” (156). A nice summary of the role of technology in the 21st century. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Alana mentioned Plascencia’s choice of Saturn, and I wonder if it has anything to do about the myth of Saturn eating his children so that they wouldn’t overthrow him. \u00a0Seems to fit with Saturn’s\/Plascencia’s fears about the characters taking over the story. \u00a0I too wonder if there are further connections in Latin American culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I thought I would touch on something that hasn’t been talked about yet–the two characters whose words can’t be read. \u00a0I am fascinated as to why Plascencia would include big blocks of black texts or\u00a0binary\u00a0codes in the novel. \u00a0While the latter may actually translate into words or images, the black boxes are destined to go\u00a0untranslated. … Continue reading Baby Nostradamus and the Mechanical Tortoise<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[86,22,96,13],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-14-people-of-paper","tag-children","tag-humor","tag-saturn","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}