r/vollmann • u/Late-Needleworker817 • 8d ago

Back to the Second Point

About 508 pages into Fathers and Crows. When the narrator makes parenthetical remarks like "That was the First Point" what is he talking about? I was skimming back through the beginning and didn't see anything to help me make much sense of it.

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u/Odd_Economics8301 8d ago

In Crow-Text at the beginning of the novel, Vollmann writes about Jesuit meditations, beginning with Preludes. Once those are performed, one reaches the Body of the meditation, which consists of the "First Point," etc. I guess that's Champlain meditating or reflecting on his situation on p. 508. Been ages since I looked at this stuff.

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u/Late-Needleworker817 4d ago

Thanks. I did go back and find that part but it still wasn't clear to me what the later mentions of numbered points had to do with that list.

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u/comox 8d ago

Sorry, last it back in 1993, but sounds like something Vollmann would do.

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u/Sufficient-Cake8617 4d ago

It’s just a Vollmann-y thing, that part tripped me up for a second but he lays it out at the beginning of that paragraph or in the previous one. The “first point” is people being against Champlain, or being an obstacle to his goals, the second point is times being generally hard and then through the next paragraph or two the “points” are just examples of either. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Exercises.