A Walking Meme or Emoticon

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 25 March 2014.

Dr. Farthington as "Ray"

The phrase "turbulent reversals" has many meanings to me:

1. Peripeteia: As Will and Arthur are in some senses tragic heroes, we can use reversal in Aristotle's sense.
2. Arthur's destiny: I think Arthur's calling was to be the turbulent reversal to our culture...the saint of rock 'n' roll...rock 'n' roll's great baptizer.  In this scenario, Dr. Farthington reverses Arthur White.  He becomes the turbulent reversal.
3. The rise of the digital age and the fall of analog: It gives Dr. Farthington his power, but, ironically, it will also be a medium that gives Arthur his place back in rock history. Along similar lines, I was struck by the description of the monster as having "human eyes." It struck me that the monster they encountered was Will, who conveniently does have human eyes. The story doesn't have to go this way, or this could be one of the ways it goes, but it makes sense to me that Will would go into the tunnels to seek revenge against Dr. Farthington and possibly shoot him in the face. It makes sense to me that Farthington's followers would believe that Will is a monster.

I also like the sea devil costume idea for Dr. Farthington. We really don't know if he's alive or not. We don't know if the whole mutilated jaw thing is real. Anyone could be Farthington: Will can't know if he killed him or not.

And Farthington in taking the guise of a mascot is now a walking meme or emoticon. Dr. Farthington also becomes a reflection of us. We're writing the story the same way The Principles of Theory was written. We're manipulating the Internet to foster a turbulent reversal of Internet culture to Catholic art.

The virtual nature of Dr. Farthington also keeps suspicion open about Arthur. It's possible that he is a tortured mystic moving toward sainthood.

Or--if he's the one who imagined Farthington into being--he's insane.