from this weeks reading…
3 wholistic recordings of the lived experience
and its entagled entailments
“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else”
-Emilry Dickinson-
Tag: Literature
Man-O’-Word’s Summer Reading List
SUMMER READING 2012
from top-to-bottom as they appear at this moment on the table
Fyodor Dostoevsky – Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings
Joe Bolton – The Last Nostalgia
Susan Howe – The Midnight
Laurie Sheck – Captivity
Ann Smock – What is There to Say?
Jerome Klinkowitz – The Self-Apparent Word Continue reading “Man-O’-Word’s Summer Reading List”
Friday Fictioneers – July 6, 2012
I labor steady, slowly, surely. Block after block, hewn from my ruin. This hapless task at hand. Construct a habitation of words. I use whatever I come by, wherever I happen to be. With an eye for the concrete and a feeling for sky. I’m a weedy terrain, dried up from AA and a searing of spurn. No smoke, no rain. I’ve been looking for signs or instructions: there are none. Or far too many. So I set out simply to make. A noun, a verb, an adjective; pasting with participles and pronouns. Tedious, thankless, alone. I build, it crumbles. It cracks, I evolve. Not much of a shelter, but it holds. And remains, opening up to the night.
Thanks for Madison Woods et.al. and the continuous production of prompts for this weekly challenge and exercise: Friday Fictioneers
The Underlying Theory
The Underlying Theory
What we found on his desk was a drawing. A very lightly penciled sketch of a woman from stomach to throat, as if seen from above to the side, one arm flung out in the viewer’s direction and her breasts provocatively displayed. Underneath were the words “underlying theory.”
Our work was to plunder his study. An author, famed for fiction and poems and writings on art, had died suddenly, and his wife had contacted us to go through his things, evaluate its worth and preserve for posterity. There were boxes of manuscript pages, notebooks and loose-leaf, letters and typescripts, recipe cards full of quotations. The library was extensive, each book filled with scribbles and markings, a signifying system of importance and reference for use in his various projects. His mind was displayed like a trail left in woods. Here the path to food, here the one to water, here the building nest, here the safety hideout. It overwhelmed us.
I had written numerous critical studies on this man and reviewed professionally most of his books. He’d written extensively in philosophy and aesthetics, with compendiums of writings on particular artists and particular works. He’d produced over a dozen literary novels and twenty or more books of poetry. He was prolific and known for the depth and acumen of his thought, the cavalier ways he used language, and the breadth of his interests and knowledge. No one knew he made visual art. None would have tagged him “erotic.”
I wondered what this drawing might “mean.” What did it refer to? Was it drawn from a picture? An image from memory? Was the subject herself the underlying theory, or was it something about representation? Desire? And what theories did this mean to evoke or give rise to? His wife did not recognize the sketch – not the body, nor an artist her husband might have copied – and it was interestingly tucked beneath blank open sheets, at the middle of the desk – the ones always ready when he came to compose. It was worn, wrinkled, as if indeed, it underlay everything inscribed above it and served as inspiration or focus, an impetus to his work.
I’ll note that the form seems composed, not a doodle. It appears to be representative. No one knows of him having a model or lover, in fact no other drawings exist from his hand. Perhaps he had need of a form to describe, an image to imagine, some desire to propel. The figure is finely proportioned, both busty and lithe, fleshy yet thin and shaped like the currents of rivers.
I’m not certain what draws me to this. In an office literally stuffed with fine books and odd trinkets, paraphernalia of printing, and stacks of diaries and drafts. Among paintings and stones and figurines of the Buddha, historical writing utensils, family photos and legal documents dating throughout his life. There is so much to uncover and know. But “underlying theory”? That grabs me.
As I’ve mentioned before, this author was a reader of depth. Fiction, philosophy, poetry, science; criticism, essays and cultural studies. There are tall shelves of monographs of particular artists, but nothing gives hint to this sketch. I am struck by this rendering – baffled by image and text. An erotic drawing is always of interest, all other concerns of this man are abstract. It beggars the biographers “who/what/when/where” yet the text writ along the arch of her back stirs me in a different direction. “Underlying theory.” What the hell? What’s it for?
A theory is made for a function, something “underlying” proposes a cause. This drawing, these words must explain something, but what?
Is it cosmic? Like what drives human vocation is desire? Or epistemological? Ethical? Aesthetical? Metaphorical for apprehension of form? I can only guess at this point but am open to ideas – I’d love to find some consensus for the book I’m contracted to write.
I ask you – how would you piece this together? I’ll share a scan of the drawing and request that you submit your hypotheses below as comments. I thank you so much for your thoughts.
Sincerely –
The “Right” Word
What are we waiting for? And why? It’ll never get any easier, and this is remedial.
I had thought we were awaiting the word. The right one. Any one, but right all the same.
I had thought that. But I didn’t know why.
Since any old word would do. Being all we had.
Still we waited, not quite believing.
How many words do you suppose there are? we wondered. Given multiple spellings and various languages all – how many? And their requisite alphabetical sourcings. I reckon we could figure it out in an equation, don’t you? Only so many letters rearranged so many ways with up to twenty-six (or however many) letters equals = ? For every tongue? There are limited options. It’s certainly not infinite, this isn’t rocket science here, or religion, so to speak.
Still, we waited. Because, well, because we didn’t know. Know which of the any was “right.” By which we meant, well, by which we meant “worked” for whatever it was we desired. Which, again, we did not know. Leastwise I certainly did not.
I had a feeling for how it might, or that I’d like it to, feel, but wouldn’t be able to tell you how that was until I found the right words, any words, but, you know, the right one(s). I could kind of hear the sound, how it would wrinkle into the ear and swoosh down their canals, troubling the waters. Or what textures the air would take as it blew up out of the lungs trembling the throat and over the tapping tongue. Some idea or sense of it, but nothing particular, not knowing the word, only the anticipation and desire.
That’s what waiting is, after all. A hunch without a reason or cause or an outcome. Guesswork with some directed hope. A running of options, but unable to identify.
So we waited, not knowing what we were waiting for or on, exactly, but also because we didn’t know.
And waited.
I could imagine its shape, the work of the muscles, the grip and the tracing of lines, but I couldn’t know how to begin, not knowing what or which curve happened first. And was it dotted or crossed or simply angles and loops? I had no way of telling, without the word, the one I’d keep waiting for, any word, the right one.
So I kept still. Well, actually we paced. Walked to and fro and back and forth, ahead and around, and sometimes sat down, sort of listening I guess, looking and listening for an outline or scrawl, whisper or code, some rhythm or sound that might bring on the term, any word, but not the ones we were using, no, the next one, the “just” or “proper” or appropriate word to our intake, our output, a resonance you know, what we were waiting on. The “correct” as it were, word, sound shape texture intonation field of references emotive trail and so forth…that one.
The discreet utterance or image that would hear us out, carry us on, would solve us.
I’m waiting.
the Book of a Thousand Eyes
I have just entered in to another remarkable whorl and world of Lyn Hejinian‘s language. From the blurbs…”For Lyn Hejinian the concept of ‘everything’ or ‘everything living’ is the greatest seduction. In this book of tales, poems, polemics, lullabies, treatises, asides…’everything’ is captive to life and continuation is queen…Lyn Hejinian knows that ‘familiarity breeds the predictable’ but she knows as well that – and how – ‘contact produces uncertainty.’ This is a brilliantly uncertain book, a book of fantastic connection, connection as multiple and as hopeless as love might be, connection as big and leggy as the night is long”
And I quote:
“Who can be trusted? / One tells / but cannot recognize.”
“the yearning inherent in the use of any sentence makes it mean far more / than ‘we are here’…
shows with utter clarity how sentences in saying something make something”
“My sentence is garbling grammar to the inside as phenomena change / concentration”
“since the future, like fortune, is to be found not in events but in their / meanings /
The future is fortune’s form /
But it lacks familiarity, the criterion for belief /
But it is real by definition, being unaffected by what we think of it /
…
The future is an accuracy requiring patience, presence /
We can’t predict if we don’t watch /
Watching makes what comes to be watched”
“It’s not the length of a life but the tension of its parts that lets / resound all that it feels”
“There is nothing unconditional – there is always room – “
and so on…333 pages of dreams and wisdom, language and possible meanings…I recommend
Recommending Brilliance
Today I am thinking of that particular mysterious and mind-blowing talent that a very few writers have done well throughout history, beginning perhaps with Cervantes or Sterne? perhaps Ovid…that amazing capacity to seamlessly, compellingly involve myriad levels of reality in each paragraph. The containment and development of Reader, Writer and Character or Language without distracting or abstracting any of us from the propulsion and enchantment of the written work! I strive toward this – that the reality that an experience of art is – is fully presented in each work of art – its requirement of relationship – of a maker, a recipient and a form – to give all of it its due – but so few succeed in this masterfully. Here are those I am recommending today:
The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel) by Macedonio Fernandez
On the cover of this book rests the self-reflexively ironic blurb “The best novel since both it and the world began – Macedonio Fernandez)
Fun as that is…as my life goes on and my bodies acquisition of literature expands…I am honestly compelled to agree with that!
the works of Cees Nooteboom – and there are many others –
again, brilliant incorporation of story/character/reader/writer/event seamlessly woven for our engagement
Raymond Federman – works and writings…these are my favorites, but many others also accomplish this reality-making-presenting that literature makes possible on so many levels.
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko
I could throw in Fernando Pessoa, Ronald Sukenick, Lance Olsen, Lynne Tillman, Homer, Shakespeare, Alejandro Zambra and many others…such a wonderful experience to read…but for today – seek these!!!!
A Little Fiction(al) Rant
“creation is continual mouth”
-Craig Watson-
The Ranting of a Little Fiction
Fiction is tired of stories. So tired. I’ve been through the gamut and back again, many, many times.
I’m tired of hearing about things and objects, people and places and selves. Tired of hearing the past reworked and the future foretold. Tired of telling myself.
At one point I’d even identified anything made of up images and texts as myself. Any construction with meanings were Fictions. But everything is so much like nothing and I’m so tired of hearing about it!
Hell, there’s fiction about the Fictions! And fictions about the fictions about the Fictions! We can’t say anything anymore that hasn’t already been said for us, about us, even in us and by us! Yes, we’re the once-fabulous dynastic Fiction family. Big Daddy Fiction (also known as Master Peace Litratoor or Grande Buchs in various cultures, He-From-Which-All-Stories-Spring and so forth) – Papa Litratoor worked the overarching histories, the myths, the great narratives, the macrocosms. Pretending that everything that needed to be known was in there, at least in the cracks and suggestions. He lives on in the pursuits of the “Great American Novel,” and the “Truthful Memoir,” in “Compendiums of Science” and “Philosophies of Philosophy.” Wherever you find an engulfing trajectory or inclusive point-of-view, an omniscient narrator or gnostic devotee – you’ve got Papa Fiction working his magic, creating the world again and again.
Then there’s our mama, oh ancestral trickster, always experimenting, economizing, busy on fringes. Collaging and quilting, unraveling and resourcefully mending – ever insuring our survival. What style! Sometimes she was just called “the Alternative,” and for ages she was known as “Secondary” (what blasphemy!) – but eventually she gained her equality coming to be known as Little Rarity or Ava Ntgard, and hundreds of varieties of “Liz T”: Structura-LizT, Surrea-LizT, Forma-LizT, Femina-LizT and so on). Working at facts under the banners of Fiction, mama persistently kept the Big Daddy in check. Pointing out faults, tightening gaps, working the seams and expanding the views. Thank goodness for the consistency and stubbornness of Mama Fiction.
And then the countless bastardized offspring, of whom I am surely not last! Brother Fantasy, Shemale Erotica, Sibling Sci-Fi, Princess Romance. My cousins who took off to the wilds where the sun goes down – we refer to them as “the Westerns,” or Ad Ventura, Sir Vival and clan. Our ancestry and family tree is encyclopedic, from Origins to Hypotheses, Knowledges to Speculations we’ve been languaging the world since language appeared : all of us Fictions, all of us related.
But the Fictions, as far as I can see, have grown sick of our stories, all the rumors and family feuds, the copycats and half-breeds, in-breeds and genetic accidents. I for one, granted, just a Little Fiction, it seems I’ve heard it all (which isn’t even the half of it! not even a drop in an galaxy-sized bucket!) and its already turned into an endless babble of voices talking over and around, under and about the same old stories, rehashed and revised, every Fiction telling their own version of the way it all goes down, how it oughta be told, what’s important or not, and in whatever genealogical line or branch of kin.
Enough! I say. Enough Fictions! I don’t care if it’s our researching relatives writing detailed descriptive statistical Fictions; or our emotional cousins discussing its effects on life or bodies or minds. The avaricious Fictions supposedly leading the clan – who use it for politicking or morality; the mystical tribes out in the caves and the mountains spouting wisdoms and inspirations and advice! Or our black sheep, ne’er-do-wells who just wanna escape and have fun. Enough of all of you Fictions! Use what we already have! We’ll never be done with it! Never get through it! And there’s something for every obscure and peculiar concern, passion, interest, belief!
There’s nothing new under the sun, one Fiction said (just look it up – you’ll see my point – there will be millions of Fictions who have also said this their way – our family can’t seem to leave anything alone – well-spoken or not – we’ve gotta say it our own damn way!). Repetition, repetition, repetition and paraphrase. I’d wager there is not one word, image, thought or letter in this entire little Fictional rant that hasn’t been used, said, written, sung or visualized countless, literally uncountable numbers of times!
Which is why I am begging from down here at the end of such an enormous and incalculable chain: “Fictions!!! Do something new or be silent!!!”
Think about it before you foist your precious version on the rest of us! Sure, we’re family, everyone’s a Fiction from that original untraceable Big Fiction in the sky or sea or soil or seed – yes, we grant each other obligatory slack and family resemblance – but come on! Am I the only one feeling it? I mean, whichever of us came up with Babel was already sick of the confusion of voices and the bitching’s never stopped!
Concatenation of stories and rants! Poems and speeches! Theorems and proofs! Manuals and manuscripts! Musics and roots! Dreamings and screams! WHOA!!!!
How about this, brothers and sisters, cousins and kin? Look carefully first. Whatever you are about to say, attempt, express or explain – check out what we’ve already said, inscribed, emoted, etc., and if it’s already there concisely or beautifully, erotically or empowered, be content with it! Show it to others! Bring it quietly to our attention! Don’t distract from it with your own paraphrasing and excursions of commentary and notations!
We don’t really need more of us – do we? We can’t manage what’s already here! What is this unslakeable desire? This bewildering avarice and compulsion? WHY AM I SHOUTING!?
Peace, be still, some Fiction once said, a million Fictions have written. This is staring at the abyss – an endless train of others. I am alone – haven’t all Fictions said this?
Alas. Everything cliché. Everything done, undone. A remorseless overwhelm. We’ve outstripped our resources. Blasted the wells.
We are alone and confused in an echoing chamber called universe. The one-verse of Fictional voices repeating repeating repeating and that without pause or escape. There is no escape (you see what I mean?) Refracting on and on and…
I, little Fiction, with my mouthful of words, all inherited…
Sweet I.L.L (inter-library loan) Manna today!
“Anything you can write is already somehow immanent in the language, a baffling fact that has various ways of affecting those who discern it…For if we both of us, reader and writer, command our common language – and if not, why go on? – then we both know, potentially, whatever it can say, and shall neither of us gain anything if I raise my voice…Let us agree to pay attention, then, to some sequences of words which I shall now set down, with my usual respect (which you share)…uses of words which entail ways of being used by words”
-Hugh Kenner, from the foreword to Prepositions, and applicable to both)!
Thank you Wichita Public Library! Thank you Inter-Library Loan!
Signs
Signs
“We wanted love. This sentence has no meaning outside a sentence. We wanted a multitude of words. Love was to become the quarrying of ourselves, emerging from a completely different side of the narrative…Representing ourselves to ourselves was an unmanageable task from the beginning. To continue being a reality while simultaneously becoming its sign that dissembles nothing, only relentlessly elevates itself in a continuous shadow – “
-Arkadii Dragomoshchenko-
There was no doubt we wanted. What it was that we wanted, exactly, was another matter. We wanted love? Perhaps. Love made from words and signs and gestures. From the beginning we had trouble representing ourselves. Being a reality while also signifying it and being its addressee – inveigled us in a continuous loop. We needed another view. From a completely different side of the narrative.
Maybe we wanted to drink reality to its dregs. We wanted love. Someone who could read the being and its signs and comprehend its address. Someone to help interpret the loop, quarry the signs, chart and map the shadowy spiral. We wanted a multitude of words. Words we’d never thought of. Never heard before. Synonyms and antonyms to set apart our signs, that we might, perchance, see who we are. Learn, not just be. We wanted love.
Loving ourselves was clinging to continuous shadow. Ourselves always just ahead of us, being, quarrying experience, fabricating new signs, dissembling nothing. We didn’t know, anything. We wanted love and a multitude of words, of gestures – significations of action and matter – we wanted to be real.
Your side was completely different. There you were – being, assembling signs, dissembling words I thought I knew into paradoxical meanings. I’d see a sign that seemed familiar but the language was foreign, the reference obscure, of exotic materials. Where were you quarrying? I was stunned and fascinated – we could make such similar things of our surround and within – yet pointing in apparently opposite directions! How could this be?
We wanted love. I followed your signs, tried to tell you what they meant. We wanted for multitudes of words. You sought to explain, what with the being, the source, the signs and address, indicating your shadow, not mine. I, forever chasing the shade of your dress.
We wanted for love and showed each other signs. We gestured and addressed our bodies and songs, put on shows of ourselves for each other. Here are my banners and pennants. Here my consistent mottoes. Here the images we keep – representations of ourselves like lost memories. Here our directions and contents, graphics and readings. Signs, signs, and a multitude of words.
We began telling one another their stories as we read. Replete with new words, new signs and misreadings. This did not often go well. With each sign that we made we were reading the last. We couldn’t keep up, swimming in continuous shadow.
A multitude of loving and words. We believed we wanted reality. We decided to quarry together – our insides working into a shared surround. We disagreed on its representation and agreed to post personal options. We grew confused and crowded with signs and gestures. Grabbing some of these, we started swinging, thinking ours might outlast the others, might prove “right,” win out, or be “true.”
Our signs began to shatter as our words and gestures dissembled. We established picket lines and separate camps. We fashioned more signs with blazoned slogans of ourselves and our views, losing them inside our shadows. We decided to climb. Perhaps a view from afar, or you’ll be off on expedition. We located a guide. Who seemed to think all of our signs were true. We looked again and could read that we wanted for love. Our valley was riddled with signs. Our guide interpreted gestures the same. Words of pain, words of fear, a multitude of words. All quite similar but in our own languages.
We wanted love, he said.
Someone to read our beings, our signs and receive their address. Someone to help interpret our loops, quarry new signs, and map our spiraling stories. We wanted multitudes of words and we had them. Words we’d never thought of nor read. Words replete with variant meanings and references. Synonyms, antonyms distinguishing our signs, redirecting our shadows. If we listened and looked, and with care, he said, perchance we might see who we are, being. And learn how to be. If we wanted for love, we had it, he said. Just look at the signs.
All my Words are Silent 