APEX HIDES THE HURT

“He came up with names and like any good parent he knocked them around to teach them life lessons.”

Just to get the ranting out of the way, I have to wonder what is this guys deal, who is he? In opening the novel this way, how role does this narrator, who mentions himself in third person, see himself in roles of authority? And what is his obsession with naming? What is in a name?

What is in a name?

Saussure state that language is what carries social norms and language paired with imagery creates the symbolic form of an idea, even in a word. So in essence naming something calls it into being, solidifying it with in society. For this author the name carries all authority and weight, it is even immortal (5) A name can give an exact profile of a person, place or anything. And thus certain types of names must place a hierarchy upon the things that they call into being. So then must ask who gets to choose the names and what happens to those things that are just not named at all?

The essence of Brand:

It seems as thought the author is specifically obsessed with brand names and particular objects that represent the status of the elite. For instance when he meets Jack and Dolly even though he does not specifically name the brands of clothes that they where it is almost as though their attire is a brand in it of its self, of upper class white Americans. Jack’s “white collar erupted out of his V-neck.” And from this the narrator constructs an entire biography that is nostalgic at most as though this status, this name of white collar American holds some social norm, a code that they follow. Which according to Saussure is true because in some respects the name white collar was created to differentiate the upper from the lower and from that a whole identity was constructed. He does the same thing with the garages that he sees while driving through suburbia all decked out in the middle class man, with his name brand tools that assert his manliness. However the narrator is nameless, with no identity other than a Nomenclature Consultant, and the fact that I think he may be black.

The Nomenclature Consultant:

So he is the man whose only job is to names things. And he is in this old town of Winthrop to rename it, something that would emulate the direction that Lucky plans to take it. He has had some sort of misfortune with his toe which has effected his ability to work and this town is supposed to be his come back, in which the names will just flow back to him. However, he does not name himself, as though he is absent from this process and actually that it a well oiled machinery that enables him to produce names that embody the perfect identities of his products. “The things you name go on without you… he felt reduced again, half erased.” Why does he refer to himself in the third person, it is almost as though he has no ownership of his own identity. As though it has been created for him for the purpose of him falling into the specific niche created for him which is a “Quincy man.”

So this person the narrator who is supposed to be this objective mediator for the naming this town must create a name that suggest a future and forgets the past. In some respects Jameson would say that this is Postmodernity at its best, creating a a way to market and identity by alienating it from the tangible past. However I must wonder what is the tangible past of this town, who is this Winthrop that came and made this town the epicenter for barbwire growth. What alienated history does the name Winthrop attach to this town?