Hey guys, I went through the podcast once on Saturday, and yesterday after re-reading the first 15 or so pages for the nth time, I listened to your podcast again, and first things first as you have mentioned, this book is really crazy, and the first few pages are just the start I think, there are going to be a lot of rabbit holes in this book, and we are going to fall into it, let's hope we are able to come back from them.
You made some really great points in the podcast, and at the start only we have both of you reading this book in a different way, I am leaning towards a kind of middle read, because there is definitely some kind of time dilation going on with Weer, because he can't remember even his age in present, but he can remember, the spring day of his birthday exactly to the color of the cake.
Also another strange thing which Weer does at doctor's is he plays with Life magazines, and his exact words are he has a pair of Life's before him, and he tries to arrange them chronologically based on their condition but fails, if we replace the word Life's with memory, then we have some strange hypothesis coming from this, because Weer seems so sure of his age at his memories.
Also when he goes to doctor he says that he's dying but the nurse tells him that he has to follow line, so if we take her exact words, does that mean that all the people which he is seeing in the waiting room all of them are dead ? or are they going to die before him ?
Another point which you guys made was that how Weer notices, the eye color and the hair color of all the women he has met in his life, and this the thing which he keeps on repeating, even the nurse he meets, he first notices her hair, and says to us that she may be Swedish. He tells us about his Aunt and the circle of friends they had, but he never gives description of his mother, instead he sort of feels like more connection to Hannah, and it is the only women we have met so far, for whom he gives us her description of arms, he says that her arms were red.
Also during his birthday, although he is having a stand off with bobby black in the house, he gives us the conversation which the ladies will be having in the lawn, it's like he's able to be physically present over there, even though he's not there.
Also when I read the first few paras, there definitely seems to be a pattern, where one thing reminds of another, as you guys stated in the podcast.
He definitely seems to be a wealthy man, because he says to doctor that he won't speak to any worker in his plant, like the way doctor speaks to him, so does he own a factory of some kind ? because the way he's living alone in his house, does not seem to suggest anything at all of that kind.
We also get a lot about Aunt Olivia, but what about Aunt Arabella.
There so may strange things going with Weer, that it's very hard to conclude anything as of now, because is he having hallucinations ? is he losing the sense of reality ? is he talking to dead people ? so many questions to answer.
On pages 7- 8 (of the e-book version I have), Weer says there are two people reading Life, he and Margaret Lorn. "There is (as a matter of fact) a whole pile of Lifes before me, and I play the old game of trying to arrange them chronologically without looking at the dates, and lose." Which is a one sentence description of the whole book.
What a marvelous observation about the Life magazines! He's literally trying to arrange Life in chronological order and failing to do it ... which is a metaphor for the entire novel. So awesome!
Also a brilliant point about the conversation about the treaty. He can't have heard that if he's inside, so it's not exactly a memory then.