[4] solarium, souvenirs

For me, Solarium was an interesting, grounding chapter, that (as much of the novel has before this) teased me with the promise of answers and failed to provide them at the last moment.  Some topics for discussion I found interesting: what do we make of Jason’s alter ego, Eliot Bolivar?  What might his poems look like?  What about the fact that his poems are titled after chapters, and seem to borrow lines from them-- how does the interaction between the text we’re reading and the text Jason creates affect our reading of the novel?  How far do we trust him as a narrator?  
Moving into the rest of the book-- what repetition are we beginning to see?  What is its effect on the narrative?  Beginning in the Solarium chapter, I started to notice lines I’d read before-- Druggy pom-pom bees hovered in the lavender” on 151, borrowed from 94.  In Souvenirs, “Then I saw this lush girl” pops up twice.  For me, the first was a little disconcerting-- there had been enough of a gap between the two instances of the description that I really had to search to find the first time.  I did remember the general context-- the scene in “Malvern Loonybin.”  It made for an interesting juxtaposition-- especially considering the religious imagery used to describe the escaped mental patient with the bees, and the fact that the second occurrence is outside the Vicarage.  The second example was a little more obvious, since it matched the structure of the chapter-- two stories of a day spent being a tourist, each offering a glimpse into his parents’ daily lives.  Jason has some interesting encounters with total strangers in this chapter; honestly, I’m not sure which (if any) will be important to him in the future.  He still seems utterly clueless about sexuality, which seems to be becoming a major theme.