ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

However, Brophy is not entirely done with modernism. Midway through
Section Four, there is a suggestion that the seemingly radical ontological changes in
the airport are in fact radical epistemological changes. As Baroco becomes a “selfdestructive
artist” by decapitating himself on a propeller blade, “Indoors, the Transit
Lounge, without any physical change being wrought, suddenly sprang into a new,
temporary existence as an art gallery, like a pattern leaping into 3-D when viewed
from a new standpoint” (211). Here, Brophy’s narrator asserts something of a middle
ground, the moment where modernism is transformed into postmodernism. The
Transit Lounge does not simply appear to become an art gallery from a certain point
of view: it becomes an art gallery. This non-physical transformation is compared to
the effects of point of view on certain objects, but the narrator does not explicitly state
that this transformation is the result in a change of point of view. Such a shift in point
of view would have to be a collective shift, since the art gallery is not simply there
from the point of view of certain characters. This reinforces the novel’s general shift
away from the individual consciousness to the collective. So we have a
transformation that is non-physical, similar to a transformation in an individual’s
point of view, but that does not seem to be merely a change in perception, but a
change in reality. What actually effects the transformation is the narrator’s statement
that such a transformation has taken place. This is, therefore, as close as we might
come to a purely narrative transformation in reality. This narrative transformation
straddles the line between ontological (highlights the narrative universe and its
questionable ontological status) and epistemological (highlights the ability of
interpretation, rather than concrete physical changes, to alter reality). This
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