Sunday, May 9, 2010
Mario: My ongoing fascination
"Mario had fallen in love with the first Madame Psychosis programs because he felt like he was listening to someone sad read out loud from yellow letter she'd taken out of a shoebox on a rainy P.M., stuff about heartbreak and people you loved dying and U.S. woe, stuff that was real. It is increasingly hard to find valid art that is about stuff that is real in this way. The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone at E.T. A. over the age of about Kent Blott find stuff that's really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed. It's like there's some rule the real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes of laughs in a way that isn't happy."-IJ p.592
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After you shared your thoughts on Mario last week and I read this passage I've started to see all of his charming characteristics. Like I said before up until recently I hadn't thought much of his character other than the obvious: he is disabled and constantly filming his surroundings. I can see that his point of view may be described by many as naive, but instead I see it as really sincere. I agree with the observation that the older we get, the more we're supposed to act like "real" things are uncomfortable or embarrassing. I've always resented that. I really enjoyed the passage that this quote comes from; it was poignant and refreshing compared to the perspectives of other characters (see for example Jim Incandenza's technical descriptions of mundane things, like seeing an analogy for annulation (?!) in the circular patterns of a knob and nut rolling on the floor, the details of Gately's stressful workday, Lenz's methodical abuse of animals, the description of drills at ETA, etc.). I noticed an obvious shift in tone and style in this passage, presumably because it's more or less written from Mario's perspective (is this the only passage so far actually through his eyes? it's the only one I've noticed...). His obsession with Madame Psychosis is definitely fascinating. I like all of the little coincidences: Mario walks outside Ennet House and hears someone (Joelle herself, though he's unaware of this) listening to the show; also the description of the fan with a big head and a forward tilt who comes to the station looking for Madame Psychosis to see if she's really just sitting there in silence (clearly Mario), but the student engineer, from whose perspective the passage is from, doesn't know who Mario is so his name isn't mentioned. (Sorry I don't have a page for that passage, I don't have the book with me.) The intricate fictional world is starting to slowly unravel.
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