On the merely narrative level, flashback in Pincher Martin is the natural result of Martin's isolation and illness, and is the process by which he is gradually brought to his ghastly self-knowledge. This process is quite distinct from the flashbacks' effect on the reader, who sees each memory both in relation to all the other memories presented in the book, and in relation to the physical circumstances of Martin's life on the rock. Neither relation is simple: they constitute the main device by which the writer characteristically obliges his reader to pay more than casual attention.
In Free Fall and The Pyramid this control of attention is achieved by the use of flashback in an elaborate time-structure. In Pincher Martin, however, events in flashback are not precisely dated, as in The Pyramid, or even clearly placed in a sequential biography, as in Free Fall: we have to struggle to place them accurately in Martin's past…. It is not possible to construct a precisely ordered "real-life" sequence of events behind the fragmented sequence we meet in Pincher Martin. In Free Fall, in The Spire to a degree, and certainly in The Pyramid, it is not only possible to do this, it is essential if a dimension of meaning is not to be missed: the time-structures are part of the novel's meaning…. The novel works in terms of related images, not formal time-structure. (p. 3)
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