flew forth two

When I said that The Porthole, 1964, reminded me of Tom Jones, 1749, what did I have in mind? A rough impression that the parts about the mother at the start of Spatola were similar in their approach to the reader to this passage from Jones:

First, from two lovely blue Eyes, whose bright Orbs flashed Lightning at their Discharge, flew forth two pointed Ogles. But happily for our Heroe, hit only a vast Piece of Beef which he was then conveying into his Plate, and harmless spent their Force.

Since Fielding is setting the audience up to anticipate a certain outcome and then thwarting it, as Spatola does; both also making their awareness of the thwart part of a game that carries on to the ends of the two books; the mood of teasing play being carried on throughout Jones, and the luring/thwarting pattern of the mother passages being mirrored later in Porthole – there's this in the Arianna chapter for example:

It was a small room, three quarters or more were taken up by her wardrobe, and the rest, by her childhood bed. A light rain fell in the twilight on the poorly-lit street. A warm, light rain fell on my street: I slowly moved closer to her. No one spoke.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the black princess jersey she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the flared satin dress she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the wavy blue wool dress with lateral draping she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the orange wool dress with kimono sleeves she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the military-style cloak fastened at the neck she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the lovely printed pastel-colored wool overcoat she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the short tulle and lace formal dress she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the double-bellied skirt with open panel she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the new fine tulle bridal gown she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the slender three quarter-sleeve, turtle-neck bodice she wore.

In front of the enormous mirror she removed the fluffy multi-layered skirt she wore.

(tr. Beppe Cavatorte and Polly Geller)

Etc, etc, for over a page, changing the spectacle of an imaginary person into the mechanical production of a real sentence; which I interpret as, at least partly, the author inviting you to see how his trick is done, or how his trick could have been done if he had chosen to be a realist. The expectation you might have formed after the first paragraph was not inevitably going to make the next part manifest itself as you anticipated; your expectation was not fate. (Samuel Richardson believes in fate and fears it, the agitation before the wedding in Grandison so incredibly roused by the thought that this upcoming event cannot be stopped.) You don't expect this much repetition either; it carries on past the point where the point has been made. It takes on, I think, a kind of abrasive mechanical autonomy. At the same time you know a human being is behind it. The human being is expressing freedom by appearing not completely reasonable and human. Clarissa and Tristano (and Grandison as well as Clarissa) are made of movements so small, it seems to me (and to Richardson, who said that he wanted to reduce his books by editing them but there was nothing inessential he could find; in spite of him they needed all their atomies) that they seem to bunch in on themselves, without moving out towards the reader, as Spatola and Fielding do, grabbing them, touching them, changing tone --  Richardson is contrastingly serious -- maybe culminated atomie is the least whimsical thing --.

ramble safe and unregarded

Henry Fielding ends Chapter III in book XVII of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749, by saying that he "can no longer bear to be absent from Sophia" but he begins the next chapter by writing two paragraphs of preamble, or two hundred and fifty-five words in which her name is not mentioned. He has said that he cannot bear to be absent from her, and by saying that -- in that moment -- he is not absent from her: she is on the book's mind all of a sudden, and she will remain there throughout his conversation. If she was absent from him then where was she? She was nowhere but he was not writing about her. Now he is writing "the bleating Ewe in Herds and Flocks, may ramble safe and unregarded through the Pastures," but the reader has been asked to understand that in writing those words he is writing repeatedly, "Sophia is coming, Sophia is here."

When he says he "can no longer bear" to be apart from her, is the reader right to say that the personage of the author is feeling genuinely upset or should they believe that this is a calm device to make the discussion of the ewes seem more carefully aimed, and to make them feel the discomfort that the personage in fact does not feel? They might as well understand both at once: he would like to see Sophia's name written down but he is also the predator that he writes about who chases the "plump Doe;" he is somewhat glad to be thinking but not saying, and he is happy to know that you are waiting and wondering: he is happy overall as he imagines the sensation in the mind of you, the reader, "some tender Maid, whose Grandmother is yet unborn" who will "under the fictitious Name of Sophia [read] the real Worth which once existed in my Charlotte," his wife, who had died five years earlier. Book XIII, Chapter I.