Continuity of Parks

“He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it down because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations.”

The opening of the story establishes the significance of reading and literature to the text, and introduces the reader-protagonist, a well-to-do estate owner whose leisure is briefly interrupted by business. The seductive pleasures of novel reading are indulgences that the reader-protagonist can “permit” himself after he attends to his duties. This is literature as leisure-time entertainment.

“That afternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney and discussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of his estate, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study which looked out upon the park with its oaks.”

Working through an analogy, the narrative establishes an ironic foreshadowing of the passive immersive kind of reading indulged in by the protagonist and the risky loss of personal power this entails. That is, just as the protagonist gives his estate manager power to make legally binding decisions involving himself and his property, he likewise gives himself over to the powers of the novel he is reading. While the protagonist does not realize these risks, “Continuity of Parks” underlines the danger of submissively immersing oneself within a story. It does this through literalizing, making actual and concrete, the danger as the plot to murder the reader. Additionally in this sentence, the “joint ownership” of property points to the “joint ownership” the two narratives finally take in the story “Continuity of Parks.