TFv02 CH 29 Starving (annotated)

Annotations for Starving from Into the Forest.

## Page 760

***Girls are allowed to think dark thoughts, and be dark things.***

Persephone goes adventuring with weapons hidden under her dress.
Persephone climbs into the gaping chasm.
Or, Persephone uses her hands to carve a hole down to hell. (theappleppielifestyle.tumblr)

## Page 761

**thirty-five-year-old man**

Do we learn who?

**torn Dendish to pieces**

Like Realic

## Page 764

**stravaging**

To wander aimlessly

**Stravaging Home**

One of Anwar’s games?

**„All of a sudden, I’m cold“**

Possibly a quote from Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac, analysed in **S/Z**by Roland Barthes. Full post by Lauren Grimes from The Familiar Reading Group:

So in Barthes' S/Z, there are "five codes that define a network (or a topos) that form a space of meaning that the text runs through"

 One is the Semantic Code: "the resonances of the text[edit]
 The semantic code concerns meaning but at the level of connotation,
that is the meanings beyond the 'literal' denotation of the words: the
resonances, additional linguistic associations, the connections between
images and so on. These meanings may well be unstable, multiple, and
change through the story. For example, the mention of “party,”
“Faubourg,” and “mansion” are all semes for the concept “Wealth”, though
 these semes (individual units of the semantic code) may have different
connotations in different contexts elsewhere in the story." (-Wikipedia)

 Another is the Symbolic Code: "the symbolic structure of the text[edit]
 The symbolic code produces a structure of (often paired) symbolic
meanings that accumulate throughout the text to establish a larger
structure in which the meanings of the story unfold. These symbolic
clusters of meanings might be around such oppositions as male/female,
inside/outside, hidden/revealed, hot/cold. Some of the key symbolic
processes in 'Sarrasine', according to Barthes, are (1) rhetorical
(transgression of the rhetorical figure: antitheses), (2) sexual
(transgression of the sex: castration), and (3) economic (transgression
of the origin of wealth) (XCII). This structure is not itself stable and
 the work of the 'writerly' reader is to pursue these structures until
they begin to break down, a symbolic collapse that is a key part of the
pleasures of the text."

 On p. 42 of S/Z. by Barthes:
 (31)
***“All of a sudden, I’m cold,”*** a lady had said who was standing with a
friend by the door. The stranger, who was standing next to the woman,
went away. “That’s odd, I’m warm now,” she said, after the stranger had
gone. “And you’ll say I’m mad, but I can’t help thinking that my
neighbor, the man dressed in black who just left, was the cause of my
chill.”
 \*SEM. Cold (first proposed in the garden, the migrating signifier has attached itself to the old man).
 \*\*SYM. Antithesis: cold/hot (the antithesis of the garden and salon, animate and inanimate, repeated a second time)
 I found this interesting especially in light of what Xanther says right
 before the Narcon quotes S/Z: "The predator was a no-show, making
Xanther no longer prey…"

**eye within an eye**

Like the spheres in X.’s chapters in Vol2

## Page 769

**Koshari**

Egyptian dish made in the 19th century

**delayed gratification**

The reason serials are so popular, Ate the Whole Bag could be a nod to binge-watching

## Page 779

The first time in the series the fractals branch out from the spine; they even go horizontal. What's the significance?

## Page 780

**all at all**

“…to tell it all without all at all” from Narcon Interruption V1, pg 568

**not Xanther’s to tell**

Is she not the one to tell it? Or is something forbidding her to tell it?

## Page 785

Baz shodan e dar - farsi
Rawang - ?
Gyeong-go - Korean
Atenció – Catalan
Se upp for Dorrarna – Swedish
Atencao – Portugese
Ostrzezenie – Polish
Fainic – Gaelic
Atentie – Romanian

## Page 793

**dévination**

? Dévinette (Fr) - riddle; Déviner - guess, infer, divine

## Page 794-795

Echoes the sword box from The Fifty Year Sword

## Reader's Guide Questions:

***14. What happens in the chapter “Starving” (p. 760)? How does the “signiconic” (see definition below) work in this chapter? Did pages 786‒809 change your perception of the “red” that Xanther experiences? What is the connection to the keyword hunger? Why (and how) does this chapter end in darkness?
a.      “Signiconic = sign + icon. Rather than engage those textual faculties of the mind remediating the pictorial or those visual faculties remediating language, the signiconic simultaneously engages both in order to lessen the significance of both, and therefore achieve a third perception no longer dependent on sign and image for remediating a world in which the mind plays no part.” —Mark Z. Danielewski***

***18. Discuss the stones Xanther sees on everyone’s eyes (and her own). Why are they there? Is there a link between those stones and the creature(s) Xanther sees when she ventures “into the forest”? Why are the stones rendered visually with at-signs?***

***19. Discuss the hierarchy of the Narcons, considering the “anomaly” on pp. 379‒380 and the changing dynamics among the three of them with respect to Xanther (pp. 564, 769), including when a Narcon echoes Xanther’s speech patterns in saying, “Uhm, no he didn’t” (p. 339). Why do you think this change is happening?***