Clearly, this is a much different Binx than Binx at the end of Chapter 5.
Query: what happens inside Binx to produce Binx of the Epilogue? Why
does WP bypass any narrating of that transformation? Why does he require
the reader to "write" across that space?
BTW, I take my notion of "ghost chapter," as many of you probably realize,
from Umberto Eco's _The Role of the Reader_: "Frequently, given a series
of causally and linearily connected events ... a text tells the reader
about event "a" and, after a while, about the event "e", taking for
granted that the reader has already anticipated the dependent events "b,"
"c," "d" (of which "e" is the consequence, according to many intertextual
frames). Thus the text implicitly validates a "ghost chapter,"
tentatively written by the reader.
Finally, I think the transformation of Binx bears importantly on the
issue of essential versus created "self" that has been a recent topic on
the list.
Marcus Smith
Department of English
Loyola University
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118
Office: 504-865-2481; Fax 504-866-1966