Thad’s trance and automatic-writing state

Thad’s trance and automatic-writing state is the condition in which his attempt to summon the sparrows becomes an involuntary channel to George Stark. What begins as a deliberate experiment ends with Thad’s hand writing Stark’s account of Miriam Cowley’s murder, converting an uncanny recurrence into evidence of a direct, dangerous connection between the two men.

Earlier Recurrence and the Pencil

For years, the Berol Black Beauty pencils had belonged to the routine of George Stark’s intermittent presence in Thad’s life. During an earlier fugue, Thad had used one to write “THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN” on the manuscript of The Golden Dog. He put the pencils away afterward, intending not to use them again. Yet Stark’s pattern returned: for roughly three months at a time, he would emerge at ten o’clock each day, weekends included, take a pencil, and write the fiction that earned money when Thad’s own work did not. When the book was finished, Stark would disappear again.

The old pencil jar therefore carries more than practical significance when Thad takes it from his desk drawer. The pencils are objects from the period when Stark had seemed to live both with and within him, and their reappearance ties the present experiment to an established cycle of emergence, writing, and silence. Thad handles a pencil marked by teeth before returning it to the jar; the familiar tools make the past feel close even before the trance begins.

A Deliberate Attempt to Make Contact

Thad prints “THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN” at the top of a blank page and recognizes what he intends to test: whether he can consciously induce the trance and make the sparrows fly. He understands the experiment through the idea of automatic writing, a practice he has read about but never witnessed. In his understanding, the practitioner holds a pen or pencil loosely over a blank sheet and waits for a spirit—dead or living—to move the hand. He also knows that the practice may be treated as a game, yet has been described as dangerous because it can leave the practitioner open to possession.

The theory, once remote from his own life, now seems to Thad to have a frightening logic. To attempt contact, he must summon the sparrows. The scene thus gives the trance a conscious beginning: it is not simply an unexplained spell of absence, but an experiment undertaken because Thad wants to discover whether he can call up the birds and reach Stark. The very act of trying, however, exposes him to consequences he has not mastered.

The Sparrows and the Loss of Control

The first birds gather near Thad, and the sense of being drawn away becomes stronger than during his earlier telephone contact with Stark. More appear on the carriage house, crowding its weathervane, while the surrounding neighborhood fills with sparrows: on roofs, antennas, trees, telephone wires, parked cars, and familiar landmarks. The birds are not confined to Thad’s private perception. They arrive in numbers across the visible world, waiting for a command to fly.

As the trance deepens, Thad’s control of his body gives way. He slumps in his office chair, and the windows of the study fill with birds looking in. His hand begins to write. Even after the sparrows take flight and disappear in a rush of wings, his hand remains attached to the pencil’s movement. Thad recognizes the decisive change: the pencil is writing by itself. He had meant to summon the birds, but summoning them has not left him in command of what follows.

Stark’s Account and the Meaning of the State

The writing is in Thad’s handwriting, the same hand in which Stark’s novels have been written. Yet Thad experiences the hand as numb and detached from his conscious intention; he cannot identify the words as his own thoughts. The manuscript continues across the page, and when one sheet is filled, his hand turns it and proceeds to another. The familiar handwriting therefore does not reassure him. It makes the division between Thad and Stark harder to locate: the physical instrument is Thad’s, while the words come from a mind he does not consciously control.

What emerges is not another fragment of confused writing but a coherent, forceful account of Miriam Cowley’s murder. Thad understands that he has reached Stark’s mind, as Stark must in some way have reached his. He had set out to test whether he could induce the trance and summon the birds; the result is a revelation that the birds are real and that the automatic-writing state can expose him to Stark’s thoughts. The episode gives the state its central double meaning: it offers contact, but that contact is also a loss of authorship and agency. Thad becomes the writer of words he does not claim as his own, and the attempted communication becomes a means of witnessing Stark’s account of a murder.