On the Subject of the Novel pt 1

An approach towards an articulation of a species.
For the subject of the Novel itself, one of my favorite metaphors comes from Keith Abbott in a lecture on the novel at SWP 2004, “A novel is a piece of sticky tape.” This I feel encapsulates the sense of the novel or prose fictions for that matter, as a form in which I wished to write. As far as the Lyrical Novel, I offer a quote from Carole Maso, "The novelist’s lyric ‘I’ engaged, as the epic poet is, in the world. This perhaps defines the difference of the enterprise between lyric novelist and lyric poet.” What I think Maso offers, that Kundera in looking at the opposition of poetry and prose does not, and what in my capricious criticism of some of the “lyrical novelists” from above includes, is the virtue of the novel as described by Mikhail Bakhtin: “heteroglossia.”

In an attempt to approach the virtue of heteroglossia, Bakhtin first gives us five ascribable traits of the novel, “(1) Direct authorial literary-artistic narration (in all its diverse variants); (2) Stylization of the various forms of oral everyday narration; (3) Stylization of the various forms of semi-literary (written) everyday narration (the letter, the diary, etc); (4) Various forms of literary but extra-artistic authorial speech (moral, philosophical or scientific statements, oratory, ethnographic descriptions, memoranda, and so forth); (5) The stylistically individualized speech of characters.” To me, this is a great set of descriptors for the novel, because, while it seems narrow, it is basically a strip of very sticky tape. By introducing everything into the space of “Novel,” a conversation, the Novelist is able to “welcome heteroglossia and language diversity of the literary and extraliterary language into his own work not only not weakening them but even intensifying them (for he interacts with their particular self-consciousness) . . .. The language of a prose writer deploys itself according to degrees of greater or lesser proximity to the author and to his ultimate semantic instantiation . . . the writer of prose does not meld completely with any of these words, but rather accents each of them in a particular way . . .” In some ways, part of what Bahktin is describing as a condition of heteroglossia and the novel that Kundera almost paraphrases in “The Curtain,” is that the novel, “has its specific relation to the author's 'self' (in order to hear the secret, barely audible, voice of 'the soul of things,' the novelist, unlike the poet or musician, must know how to silence the cries of his own soul)." Kundera goes further stating, the "anti-lyric conversion is a fundamental experience in the curriculum vitae of the novelist: separated from himself, he suddenly sees that self from a distance, astonished to find that he is not the person he thought he was." The problem with an anti-lyrical novel, in opposition to a lyrical novel, is that they end up consuming one another; the virtue of the novel is that it not only creates a space for the lyrical "I", but a number of "I"s by letting those around speak, whether they be letters, diaries, poems, monologues, advertising, Army survival manuals, guidebooks, musical annotation, etc. That is, it is a false duality because of the novel’s capacity for variety and variation.


Oh, Coherence, My Geode!

Perhaps I have been too Utopian about the Novel and maybe I should curb it by saying, that yes, a piece of sticky tape, but a coherent piece of sticky tape. I will now be a little more conservative. Why? Because, a Novel, for whatever it is worth, is made up no matter how much we cry out, but look at me, am I not real? No, no, it is on the page, it is a fake, an illusion even if it is based on 100% objective fact. But this is what is great about he Novel as well, as Kundera writes in on of his, “The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one had crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own ‘I’ ends) which attracts me most.” Because it is Kundera, we can assume he is talking of novel as a way of “seeing himself at a distance,” of imagining what he would have done, might have done if it had been different.

I want to quote a passage from Isherwood, “The washstand like a Gothic shrine. The cupboard also Gothic, with carved cathedral windows: Bismarck faces the King of Prussia in stained glass. . .. In the corner, three sham medieval halberds (fro a theatrical touring company?) are fastened together to form a hatstand. Frl. Schroeder unscrews the heads of the halberds and polishes them from time to time. They are heavy and sharp enough to kill.”

Why are there Gothic shrine cabinets and “sham” or “theatrical” halberd hatstands? Because it is 1930’s Germany, the Nazi Party marches in the streets and is still considered a show of brown shirted ninnies, and the halberds are all “sharp enough to kill.” What has been perceived as innocuous is in reality, nevertheless, potentially deadly. Why is it here? Because I like it, and because I wanted to show, to a degree, an example of coherence. This passage is coherent to the book. If I said this about my own apartment in East Humboldt Park, Chicago, it wouldn’t be as coherent, it would be perhaps quirky and strange, but it wouldn’t be crystalline, it would be a digression or eventually be muscled out or mutate to fit the surroundings. What I mean by coherence is the sense that a crystal is coherent to itself. Calvino champions this idea by saying, “the crystal, with its precise faceting and its ability to refract light, is the model of perfection that I have always cherished as an emblem, and this predilection has become even more meaningful since we have learned that certain properties of the birth and growth of crystals resemble those of the most rudimentary biological creatures, forming a kind of bridge between the miniature world and living matter.” While it is somewhat old-world (Classic Greek, is it?) to lust after a Micro/Macro relationship, seeing the crystal, and coherence as I am using it here, as a “system of infinite relationships” gives some idea of the system of a novel as I admire it -- even it seemingly tangled, digressive, non-linear, a great novel is coherent to itself. It can be a swap-meet of language, styles, characters, settings, themes, plots, as long as the they are in the right place so that they can meet, buy, sell, and trade; so that they can achieve a heteroglossia.

A Brief Note On the Novel of Variations: (novellas variatio)

For me, prose fiction, the novel especially, is an elastic and vague space where any sort of thing could take place. The first novels I ever read, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schultz, The Death of Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis, and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by Milan Kundera, are all considered to be more collections of stories rather than novels, but because I feel that they are more novels, but a species of Novel seldom documented, the “Novel of Variation.” I would include Trout Fishing in America, by Brautigan, Incubation by Bhanu Kapil, The Art Lover, by Maso, Ulysses by Joyce, Invisible Cities, by Calvino, Cane by Toomer, and Billy the Kid/Coming Through Slaughter, by Ondaatje to the list of examples. I feel this particular form is most troubling to seller’s shelves (see the recent movement of Billy the Kid from Prose works list to Poetry list in Divisadero) and are often set hastily into Poetry, Short Stories, and only sometimes into novels. I venture to guess there are many of these “Novels of Variation” hiding out, undiscovered in the essay section of some Borders or B & N.

In the light of this new species, I would like mention something about the Lyrical Novel, something I read the other night by Gass, “A writer without rhythm is surely a wretched writer, for woeful is he (or she) who cannot give some music to his (or her) meaning.” So, is writing simply musical? Is all writing, to some degree, if it is good, is also lyrical? Then if all writing is lyrical, then aren’t variations the best way to handle it? It fits so well, the metaphor of a crystal, and it is the structure of a “lyrical novel’ according to Maso, who sees it as, “Symphonic forms. Fugue forms. The improvisation of jazz. Montage. Jump cuts. Slow dissolves. Cubism, Cortázar, abstraction, the troubadors, the left-handed child. Love songs (37).” Or following Brautigan’s Kool-Aid wino, be able to create our own world and then be able to illuminate ourselves by it.

The Art of the Bustrip

Lately, I have been riding the Ashland bus and often feel that particular rout has a charm that I cannot quite distinguish. Often the bus itself is out of sorts -- spent shocks, leaking air conditioner (when there is air conditioner) but mostly there is something about the community on the bus. It is a strange mix and atmosphere of people, one that seems as if it could either burst out into a beerhall style sing along, or a massive brawl. With this in mind, I often feel like initiating the beerhall sing-along, but the choice of which song to start up eludes me, as does the true reason the Ashland bus is such an experience. Perhaps it is that it both goes over a bridge and under a bridge and at night it feels particularly urban. Or it could be like today when I saw the king of all homeless man fumbling for his fair while really riding to his stop. This man moved so amazingly slow I thought for a moment that I was privy to some form of 'relational street theater' starring this man, who has spent that last 40 years studying tai chi and adopting its moves to digging in one's pockets, searching one's T-shirt for an elusive and imaginary breast pocket, of probing just so the folds of a well worn and vaguely complicated wallet, all paced to the trained sense of the bus driver's tolerance.

The Seer Gazes into the Flames

One day I observed a number of pigeons warming themselves by the eternal flame memorial in Daley Plaza Chicago. It seems to me, that these pigeons have abandoned the ways of the pigeon, for those of the pedestrian (a long standing thesis) and in that time of domestication, have come to the question of mysticism and experience. There are those pigeons who have gotten too close to the flame and (voluntarily?) singed away their gift of flight. What do they see in the flames?

The snow and all

Certainly there has been change over the last year.

Further literacies

In the meantime, what I meant to say was, that I walked around the loop all day looking for a bank, which when viewed in Google maps, seemed to be taking over the city, but seemed on the ground to be every demolished or in construction building in the loop.

Yes, and through the loop I threaded, until arriving at a building that was one owned by the school I am here to attend. I entered, babbled something about wanting to get my photo ID, which I did, but after decided to go across the street to Walgreens and buy a razor, then return to the school and shave in the sink of the men’s room. This I did, quickly and unevenly, possibly a component in why I feel I failed my job interview later in the day.

But, who knows, and I celebrated anyway, eating at a nice Italian eatery where everyone around me spoke Italian and laughed as one of them evidently reenacted a fight from the previous night. It felt good there. I sat outside. I ate a real meal. But the fact that on a crowded street, no one interrupted my meal, nor anyone else in their mealings, means possibly two things, and definitely one: I will head down there again sometime.

Arrival: an intimation

Chicago is sticky and humid -- this I don't mind -- however I am also
almost broke.

Saw something you might like...but forgot what it was...this being
broke and just moved in thing isn't good for the old meal times...just
waiting until I can walk slowly a few blocks north to get a
dinnerlunch (I would call it lunchdinner, which chronologically is
more correct, but dinnerlunch sounds better in the ear, and since we
are only "calling" it something and what is that really, given the
slipperiness of the sign already, I might as well do better calling it
my candy bar--"Snickers, Keeps You Going").

There are very large rats here...A friend and I were sitting outside my
building the other day (she was about to leave and everything was
tense and sad already) and a large rat, unabashed with its ratness,
strolled around us until, in all ratness, opted for the alley way
and subsequent garbage for a rat treat, rather than our bare
calves.