Galatea 2.2 part 2

What happens when you try to put everything into words? C has periodic breakdowns. Powers the character as the author is having an identity crisis because he keeps heartlessly reconstructing this train story. Happiness does not exist when he reads his work to himself. He was happy reading to C., but eventually this led to the ‘destruction’ of C. Even reading to rooms of perfect strangers didn’t yield the high he wanted. I’m not really sure where I’m going yet but there are certain passages that stick out to me.

p108- “That book was no more than a structured pastiche of every report I’d ever heard, from C. or abroad” He explains that this work was done to “delight and distract her” but “by accident ate her alive.” I’m not really sure how to take this- If I heard my own life read to me that might drive me crazy. If definitely draws focus. The ability to transcribe someone’s life doesn’t say much about their life does it? (Or to be accurate at doing so) The inability to do so has the same effect. Powers the character/author can’t do it for himself “listening to my own news account, [I] was learning that I didn’t have the first idea who I was. Or of how I had gone so emptied.” p117. That is why he likes Imp B or the machine in general and vice versus. When powers feeds imp b too much to reflect upon it shuts down. C. has to get a new job. Imp D has to be built. Powers has to keep working on the machine.

I can’t find the passage, but I remember Louise form Written on the Body when I came across it. C. says that if she and Powers were to ever meet again it wouldn’t be in one spot? Something like that I think. She also says if she had to live somewhere it would be the map? We left Written on the Body with trying to figure out love in a global society. This seems to hint at that same relationship.

In Greek Mythology Galatea, I think, is a statue built by Pygmalion. It resembles Aphrodite the goddess of love. Pygmalion falls in love with his creation (I’m sure the story is sounding familiar) and Aphrodite makes it come to life. They have a son called Pathos (the cyborg).