Another Pinkwater thesis topic for would-be Pinkwater scholars:
Time and space are explicitly conflated in_Borgel_, and Melvin Spellbound makes a journey that is temporal, as well as spatial. This is not a unique occurrence in the Pinkwater canon–travel to the “other world” (by which I mean the City Beneath the City, the place that the heroes travel to escape the banality of their lives) is often linked with travel through time, more specifically into th past. The _Heart of Darkness_-like voyage to “the primitive” in _Worms of Kukumlima_ aside, we can see that the past is invoked in the Snark theater (a retro movie house, or whatever they’re called) and in Morrie’s occult bookstore (a used bookstore, where our heroes learn archaeology)–and remember Victor’s discovery of his childhood squirrel on Thunderbolt Island? Is this invocation of the past related to the well-known saw that science is progessive while magic (in the guise of state 26, perhaps?) is regressive? Or is it simply as extension of the time-and-space-are-one philosophy?
I note you don't tackle the ""Time, space and the other,"" formulation. Nobody does. My work is not done. I can see I have other books to write. I believe Lao Tzu had this same problem, but handled it a different way. Well, he didn't have to depend on publishers to make his living.
