The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  Larissa my love. This is going to be a disconnected letter as I am writing it during a faculty meeting. The man who runs it–the faculty I mean not the meeting which he attends clothed in democracy and a garish tie he changes for each occasion as he changes the chairman of the hour (and I hope it never devolves on me) is an oddball, who first wrote me as Armel, signed Oscar. They use first names from the start here. He is, my dear, a typical demagogue. Not that I intend to describe him, descriptions capture so little and people are becoming more and more stereotyped. I am becoming more and more stereotyped. You are becoming shall I conjugate? But no, you are the exception to all the stereotypes or are you? Have you not carefully invented the person you have become? Not of course a stereotype, rather a unique unrepeatable model with cropped hair and a blue guitar, superimposing many models like a dompna soisebuda but is it you? Naturally you will not stoop to retort who am I, and perhaps it was after all I who invented you though you would not admit this. Certainly you invented me and withdrew, indifferent, paring your fingernails. Well enough of that. In a way they are all ready-made caricatures here, nothing to invent. Except the show within the show, the portrait within the portrait. But why bother since they create your psychic invisibility as you did and don’t want to know your true or untrue knowledge of themselves. I have gotten a little tied up with my second person singular here but aren’t you used to that–who is my second person singular?

  Eyes that do not exist and reflect nothing, nor do they look at their companions, exact black replicas less tarnished and more clearly outlined in their proper place on either side the nose. Only these lower eyes reflected from the felt eyes can see, presumably, the upper eyes blurred just below the dark hairline, looking at nothing upwards or inside the brow which some teller or Other thinks Beethovenish until you enter into the rectangle saying today we shall study the transformation of functions in the epistolary novel, unless perhaps initiation to the Generation of Narrative Complexes in Audiovisual Imperialism as Intentional Object of Exchange. Or merely, diachronically The Beginnings of Narrative, so that you have to take her out and start again.

  Once upon a time laid out in rectangles into which you enter as into a room saying once upon a time the author had supreme authority surrounded with floating faces some bent some gazing into diasynchrony or scrutinizing the chain of phonic signifiers with listening eyes linked to the question of

  Take Homer written down in the first row whose moi in

  the first line by way of invocation to the muse is the only instance of the subject-emitter addressing his discourse to the young beardless Marx in the third row taking no notes staring through the phonic signifiers

  with riveting eyes that break the chain asunder yet he is omniscent, from a modern viewpoint since he tells us things that Odysseus doesn’t know, omniscient, anyway, within the universe of the mythic discourse, in which the relationship between emitter and receptor is univocal.

  since the community assumes both roles, emitting and receiving a discourse it addresses to itself, indeed, the community is the discourse, existing by, through and for its myth, not before or after. In such a relationship the emitter speaks the truth (God) in fact he speaks for God

  with a spirit-loaded pen on the diagram box writing

  n a r r a t i o n

  you see not narrator for the reasons just given. The element of manipulation however should not be too

  visible, for it destroys the fictive illusion, making the recipient over-aware of a technique at work thus losing eye-contact with the young beardless Marx taking no notes and for that matter with Saroja Chaitwantee. Yes Ali?

  Omni scient qui mal y pensent.

  Ooooh.

  My! That’s a terrible pun.

  Not when you think about it. I can do more.

  So I noticed in your work.

  Nominipotent O miniomnipresent narrator with his interdiscoplenary comment hominivorous or deivo rous consuming his patrimoney.

  ( )

  Omni rident!

  Well now

  Excuse me correcting you Salvatore but it should be omnes. Rident omnes.

  Well now

  Okay okay Herr Professor Ali Nourennin we all know you’re a great scholar and I’m only a wog putting in Italian endings. Besides your puns bust the grammar too.

  Well now

  But you weren’t punning Salvo. The pun is free, anarchic, a powerful instrument to explode the civilization of the sign and all its stable, reassuring definitions, to open up its static, monstrous logic of expectation into a different dialectic with the reader.

  Oh come off it Al.

  I think we’d better get back to the subject of discourse.

  Why, wasn’t all that stuff you spouted from the same book as the stuff I’m spouting?

  Sure. I gave you the bibliography. You’re the only one who seems

  Well then

  Tell me since we’re on this, were you working with Francesca? There seems to be a remarkable similarity in your attempts at explosion.

  Sure why not? We’re all in this together aren’t we? There’s no more private property in writing, the author is dead, the spokesman, the porte-parole, the tale-bearer, off with his head.

  Fine. But wouldn’t it have been better to have first given the reader

  No. Ideas, and ideas are always words, come out of a mouthful of air, jostling each other, bursting like atoms, or hoops if you prefer, set theory gone wild, and the text slowly forms itself, like a shower of gold in Danae’s lap. But even a raindrop has molecular form, and in the puddle it makes a shape.

  Why that’s beautiful Ali, you should work it into the text.

  Thank you Saroja of the Oriental eyes, you are a girl after my own heart.

  In my country a girl is a woman at my age.

  Is that an invitation my love?

  Come my friends, this is getting out of hand, extra-textual shall we say, or extra-classical.

  Why sir, it’s infectious.

  Sure it’s infectious. But what about the clarity of the message?

  You read what you want into it.

  I see. And what do you read?

  It’s not for me to say, I wrote it.

  But the reader is the writer and the writer the reader.

  According to his positioning in time and space. You remember what you said about the picture? It’s the same. If you come very close you’ll see only the texture and the brush-strokes. If you distance yourself a little you’ll see the madonna and child. Distance yourself further and you’ll see the balance of colours and lines, until when you go very far there’ll be merely an oval with a blob off-centre. So with Hamlet you said, or Frye said, if you distance yourself very far you see an open grave, a woman’s descent into it and a battle of two men leaping in after her. Then I did it with Macbeth and saw a dripping dagger leading to a circular O around the head and another balance of power struggle to a double death. But the process is infinite I think, within each text there is another text, within each myth another myth. The reader has to be prepared for the undeicidable.

  Oh, Ali!

  Hmmm. That’s interesting, Ali. Opera aperta in fact?

  Opera a parte!

  No, Salvatore.

  I still think the reader should be helped a bit.

  No, but he can be prepared, like I said, he’s the instrument, you know, it’s a motet for a prepared piano.

  Ha! Sul piano umano?

  Oh, Salvo!

  Piano, piano.

  Well, to get back to the narrator. Take Pride and Prejudice, which we have been analyzing. What point of view does Jane Austen take? Barbara.

  The point of view of a Victorian old maid.

  Are you being ironical or have I not made myself clear? And perhaps a little diachronic precision wouldn’t be out of place here. Queen Victoria came to the (scrub) throne in

  Jane Austen wrote during the Napoleonic Wars, which as you should know from at least the 1812 Overture occurred somewhat earlier.
Though admittedly this is hard to tell from the text since the author is not in the least concerned with war. Right, well, to continue

  Surely she should have been concerned with war and what about the Revolution don’t you think all literature should be engagée?

  Oh shut up Jean-Marie your French revolution achieved nothing it was a bourgeois revolution.

  Surely you should be concerned with dipping into their minds (gently dip but not too deep) according to varying degrees of omniscience and coming at this point perhaps upon dramatic irony

  For often the narrator passes from one floating

  Take Homer for instance through to the civilization of the sign with its dualistic binary structure and its vertical hierarchy which coincides roughly though not by chance with the Renaissance we’ll come to that and the rise of the novel of the middle class in layers to the unomniscient unprivileged unreliable narrator in the explosion of the sign at a time still laid out in rectangles into which you enter as into a room filled with nineteen maybe characters into which you enter for that space twelve times a term after which repeat performance with thirty two floating faces of another generation who create anew your psychic invisibility with unrapid eye movements tampering the Message between Emitter and Recipient so that that do not want to know your true or untrue knowledge of themselves behind the marked portrait you compose in grades of presence/absence competence/performance that makes up the student role they play to the teacher role you play for that space twelve times a term not to mention a few faces overlapping such as those of Ali Nourennin and Saroja Chaitwantee so that you can compose in either case a double portrait.

  Ali Nourennin however tends to get ß+ or a– in Creative Writing whereas Saroja Chaitwantee gets a in both Creative Writing and The Beginnings of Narrative as well as in Black Literature which triplicates the portrait so that you get to know each year after three or four weeks which face is which, calling them by their names second names first and first names later looking at the correct referent the proper name gradually possessing the long blond hair the short cropped khaki the almond Indian eyes outlined in heavy khol the cherub revolutionary the pale girl’s spotty skin the pudgy nose the dark trees thickly falling over the left shoulder silken in sari the fuzzy mop the red beard the horn-rimmed glasses the bright mauve eye make-up the intelligence wrapped in potentiality that you gently dip into and feel for, caressing it with sentences cocooning it with the convolutions of your brain to bring it out in signifying strings foetally modelled on yours and feeding on the corpuscles of your life’s unlearning until they flutter out and about the rectangular room for a flash for an hour then nothing, settling on this or that blond or black head or the dark beauty of Saroja Chaitwantee. But we’ll come to that.

  Surname: Chaitwantee

  First names: Saroja Sharon

  Major: Anglo-American Studies

  Minor: Information Theory

  Course: The Beginnings of Narrative

  Teacher: Dr. Santores

  Other Courses this term: The Semiology of Mass Media, The Poetry of the Cry, Black Literature, Creative Writing

  (Portrait by the Institution)

  which she generates out of maxims in the imperative, addressing herself or the Other with adagia like never let yourself be fully known. A fool utters all his mind. When an unsuitable young man proposes and proposes call his bluff and accept, he will soon get cold feet. Yes is for young men. Never let a man see you see through him. Or if by such misassociations when waking by anyone who has sworn eternal love, and thinking in the grey light of the small hours that grip the hole of truth what are you doing here with this sweet empty substitute, let not the day weave again his fantasy into your own so fully recognised, pick up your fantasy and go. Fill the air with quotations, twiddling along the transistor of your isolation, for no man is an island and the isle is full of noises.

  Peter Brandt also prefers not to assume his I but ineffectively subsumes it in a dialectic of desire to name things by way of action in the second person singular until plural through a haze of heat and sunlight when you take off at dawn racing down to the ocean first to the swanky part then back along the highway to the slum stretch of shore at Las Ondas trash filthy with the sordid motel where you make love till noon then off again along the freeway towards Malibu or maybe into the hills above the chaparral of a canyon or into the desert where the air is hot but soft on your skin and you make love again in the shade of a cactus in flower.

  While Ali Nourennin plays with literality and other flawed reflections in the grammar of narrative which says the house must be broken into before the robbery can occur or that the introduction of the pistol indicates its later use. But the shot can precede the introduction of the pistol. In the beginning was the parting shot. In some languages moreover things do themselves: tout se passe comme si se hacia ma non si puo dire for es träumte mir. Ça parle. Who then, the Other or the metalanguage?

  But you don’t have the floor it’s Veronica’s turn.

  Who has been waiting a long time.

  Who however signifying merely a

  true image

  in a piece of texture

  has been removed from the calendar.

  They however seem to permutate their loves wholly within the department still undesegmented apparently unable to communicate outside the textimetable and moving incestuously around like a motet for prepared musical chairs bottom-shaped with liftable flaps for right-minded people to fight on, no two fantasies fratrisiding in exactly the same binary arrangement from one term to another which creates a certain amount of tension between Charles Catherine Bob Isabel Oliver Claire Maurice Helen Jeremy Hubert Vivien Olaf Chou and the rest who teach mass media cultural images audiovisual materialism or discourse analysis as subversion of society imperial linguistics and initiation to the black man in white women’s liberation shouting at faculty meetings where faculties never meet even on an imagined curve or even as an audiovisual illusion of a coherent structure diminishing in size

  Yes well very briefly I simply want to remind the colleagues that this idiotic affair as Julian rightly calls it arose out of the question of recruitment, which is on the agenda. And the real protest is about this curriculum vitae which has been waved at us like a white flag but which none of us has seen, in other words as usual a candidate is being foisted upon us whom none of us knows anything about but with whom we shall have to work–and here we touch again on two other major problems, that of desegmentation and that of syllabus reform, both incidentally on every agenda since the beginning of the year if not longer and always put off under pretence of more urgent business until there is no quorum, which urgent business is also the ostensible excuse for a rapid pseudo-solution of problems at the end of every year before everyone goes off on their jamborees.

  Aaaaaaaaw.

  and for the rapid foisting of this or that candidate every time there is a vacancy

  Hear hear

  nor does there ever seem to be any rival candidature, as in other universities which get two or three hundred applications from all over the world for any one post, indeed by the time the post is legally advertised it has already been privately filled

  :No, boo

  :hear hear

  I demand therefore that as from and including the present instance the whole department should be entitled, in a new, radical, democratic university such as this

  :ha ha

  :hear hear

  was intended to be, the whole department should be consulted and entitled to examine in advance copies of any Curriculum Vitae.

  Name: Homo Scholasticus This portrait

  Place of Birth: Ur, Urania captures

  Date of Birth: Mid 4th millennium B.C. nothing

  Education: Athotis Preparatory School

  Memphis

  Nebuchadnezar Public School

  Babylon either

  being a record

  not of brain

  drain into

  Universities
: Bamboo Script Writing School Hao (Shenxi) feelings of futility nor

  Rome Alma Mater of running

  Athens Academia twice as fast

  Iona School of Democritus to remain in

  the Place of

  New World University Birth but of

  Degrees: of Presence bare

  Teaching Experience: Baghdad (Creative Telling)

  Athens (Dialectic) results exact

  replicas of all

  such records

  Megaros (Eristics)

  Alexandria (Bibliography) with minor

  variations such

  as Subject of

  Bologna (Logic)

  Syracuse (Rhetoric)

  Cambridge (Mass. Information Theory) Thesis

  Object of

  Antithesis

  Paris (Disputation)

  Heidelberg (Hair-splitting)

  Dublin (Nail-paring) Subject/

  Object of

  Synthesis

  References: Professor Philanthropos

  Professor Semeiosis

  Dr. Sophisto

  Nor

  for that matter does it mention Larissa

  who is the second person singular

  keeping her I

  So that today we shall try to work out a typology of digressive utterance by a narrator like Tristram Shandy who inscribes himself into his text as subject struggling with various levels of his own discourse. But is he not also an intransitivitised subject walking through the inaction with indirect objects only or none? Every structure presupposes a void, into which it is possible to fall, rehandling the signifiers over and over into acceptability, itself subject to memory and constant mutation as the subject-actant undergoes its transformations, each level of utterance generating another. This is an ancient technique, derived perhaps from agglomerated tales, you know, ten a day for a hundred days. You remember that 12th century Georgian romance we read, The Knight in the Tiger Skin, where each character has to tell his story–after much coy resistance–in order in fact that Tariel’s quest may proceed. But as we saw the motivation can be reversed, Tariel being a passive and extraordinarily helpless hero who lets his friends hunt the heroine for him, in order that each story may be told. The initial story of the knight is practically forgotten. Better known and more significant is Scheherezade, whose very life is to narrate and whose narration gives her life, with every new character in the same situation, not a character but a tale-bearer, whose life also depends on his narration generated by the surplus value left over from the previous tale and itself generating the next. Read Todorov les hommes-récits on this. Each I leads into another I, unless I into O for Other interruption with a point of information?