Abstract

There, On That Stretch Of Road is Part One and Part Two of a novel-in-progress. The title is taken from Virginia Woolfs novel, To The Lighthouse: "...but it seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road." What has been extracted, my title, will always be linked to the clause which precedes it, and this absent clause points towards the major theme of the novel: the dissolution of a friendship. The story documents just over one full year in the life of two young men in their early twenties. It begins in September of 2000 and ends in the late summer of 2001 (the thesis ends before the spring). The story is recounted in the first person by one of those two young men. Some time has passed since the events of the narrative. The narrator is writing the story, he is a writer. But I've made an effort to keep his present circumstances remote. Just where he is exactly at the time of his writing is not made explicit. What is important is that he is still preoccupied with the events that took place from September 2000 to the late summer of 2001, so much so that he has taken it upon himself to order those events into this story. And so, in the novel, there is the present tense and there is the past tense--the former gestures towards that remote place from where the narrator is writing. The story belongs to the past, while the tone, the language, the interpretation, and some select observations--in effect, its retelling--all belong to the present. Nevertheless, there are multiple instances of intersection