Of course.
Oh no! Go away take your politics elsewhere we want to work.
Let them speak at least, it’s a free country.
Who sez?
Go ahead please. In this text everyone has a voice.
Brother I thank you well as you all know some of our comrades were arrested in the demo yesterday and we have called a strike of all
Who’s we?
A majority of over a thousand to sixty-seven at the General Assembly.
Okay and there are over fifteen thousand students in the university
Yeah and where were they? If they’re not concerned with the iniquitous situation resulting from authoritarian decrees in a society which serves only the interests of capitalism
Cant!
and conspicuous consumption
Go consume yourself
hear hear
them out they’re right
Who sez?
The problem is then for the narrator to get back to his initial subject, if he wants to of course, as clearly Tristram does, and on his own surface structure assumption that his Life and Opinions are his subject. Now:
Supposing you had started telling a story, which digressed into another and yet another, how would you go about returning to the first unfinished story? You could work back towards S, here, through other digressions, in a wide circular pattern, so. Or backwards through the same digressions, like returning through the same doors, so.
Digression in fact, has the same structure as any action or adventure. As when you have followed one character and want to return to another. You remember the guinea-pig simile in I promessi sposi. No? I have it here I will read it. I have often watched a boy (a dear little fellow, almost too high-spirited then, really, but showing every sign of growing up into a decent citizen one day) ((uuugh)) busy driving his herd of guinea-pigs into their pen towards evening, after letting them run about free all day in a little orchard. He would try to get them all into the pen together, but it was labour wasted: one of them would stray off to the right, and as the little drover was running about to get it back into the herd, another, then two, then three others would go scurrying off all over the place to the left. Finally, after getting somewhat impatient, he would adapt himself to their ways, and push the ones nearest the door in first, then go and get the others, in ones or twos or threes, as best he could. We have to play the same sort of game with our characters; once we had Lucia under cover, we hurried off to Don Rodrigo; and now we must leave him to follow up Renzo, of whom we had lost sight.
A quaint long-winded way of expressing the linearity of the text. And a false simile if you think about it since characters do not run about like guinea-pigs when abandoned by the author but remain suspended in a fictive illusion to be recreated by flashback more or less well camouflaged.
Camouflashback.
Who speaks then, Tristram Tariel (or Manzoni or Chota Rustaveli or Queen Thamar?) Lending his signifiers to a character who does not exist but nevertheless switches on the overhead projector to draw rewrite-arrows or transformational trees of embedded digressions or maybe rectangles with a spirit-loaded pen thus not losing I-contact through to the convolutions of twenty-seven brains he dips into and caresses with a point of interest built up at the flick of a switch into a diagram of digressions like doors leading into one another then scrubbed as soon as copied down to be replaced by a neater and more cryptic formula where S for Subject somehow via S1 (Sn) is rewritten as O for Object, o1, o2, on.
Oh.
Or you could simply leap back, either without signalling, or using a phrase like to return to the subject of discourse, to return to our hero, or the old standby of adventure stories: Meanwhile, back at the ranch. Though that’s naive and clumsy, and in a way cheating since you’ve given the reader a certain peculiar pleasure in frustrating his vulgar desire to know what happens, and that pleasure should not be dropped too brutally, leaving him hungry for it. On the other hand the vulgar desire to know should be kept warmly floating in his mind. He must not be allowed to forget the hero or whatever the initial subject was. The two pleasures, the intellectual pleasure in your game, and the curiosity, should be skilfully balanced, you should build in him a sense of trust, so that he feels you know what you’re doing and abandons himself to your wiles. You keep both pleasures going. Do you follow the principle? Yes Barbara?
If the author has lost all authority like you said about the omniscient narrator how can he build up a sense of trust?
A good point, and the subject of our present analysis. But you’re putting it a little too simply perhaps. The author has lost authority many times in the history of narrative, when one type has consumed itself, the element of manipulation becoming too visible thus destroying the fictive illusion, and no-one has yet come along to renew it, usually, as here, reconstructing it by perpetual destruction, generating a text which in effect is a dialogue with all preceding texts, a death and a birth dialectically involved with one another, but this is another problem. We’ll come to that.
Ali Nourennin makes a brief phenomenological analysis of narrative time, bringing in Heidegger, Husserl, and Hegel’s revolution that has been long preparing out of archaic flaws in the dialectic of change, raising antinomies of action that surpasses the subjective idea and renders it objective so that man realises retrospectively that he has accomplished more than he desired and worked at something infinitely beyond him. Are you already practising the art of digression Mr. Nourennin?
So that you could work backwards towards your main subject through other digressions, unless you simply leap back and say but to return to Larissa, though that would be rather clumsy and in a way cheating since you have given many women a certain peculiar pleasure in frustrating their vulgar desire to know what happens inside you, and that pleasure should not be dropped too brutally, leaving them hungry for it. The two pleasures, the pleasure in your game and the curiosity, should be skilfully balanced which is the work of a lifetime. You should have given her a sense of trust, so that she could have abandoned herself to your wiles in keeping both pleasures going. Do you follow the principle? The principle being that you do not follow the principle, you separate yourself from it though you remain good friends and write fairly constantly leaving the door open onto other doors as you drive away into the night twiddling along the transistor and watching the luminous colored hoops dance in the bluish rectangle that reflects the rear before you.
We’ll come to that.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia
Let the shot precede the introduction of the pistol.
And if one settling a pillow by her head should say That is not what I meant at all That is not it at all, fill the air with quotations for the aisle is full of noises where angels fear to tread nel mezzo del cammin because I do not hope to turn again where the lack of imagination had itself to be imagined for a flash for an hour
slipped
out of
the rigid rectangle of time tablet able to preserve the name of the fa bled farther law bearer who unab le to forbear his anger breaks all eleven commandments (10+1) in the textual act and brings new tablet s(Shh) not rEplicas of thE prime uNs
Who is it saying O in the mountain? Putting his foot in it on a Thothday or is it Friday thus introducing a statistically improbable formal order in the general curve of entropy which will however be restablished by the scattering winds, the Noble Savage or the Blue Guitar? See Bibliography*.
*retrogradiens
Wallace Stevens John Dryden Umberto Eco Daniel Defoe Sigmund Freud Moses Ezra Pound Wallace Stevens T.S. Eliot (or Guido Cavalcanti) Dante Alighieri Alexander Pope William Shakespeare Saroja Chaitwantee S. Eliot Snoopy Hegel Ali Nourennin and the occidental discourse of Westerns.
**retroprogradiens
The retrovizor 1001 Nights Ezra Pound Lewis Carroll Robert Burns Lewis Carroll Robert Graves Louis Hjelmslev Ali Nourennin Paul Stradiver oh her Georges Bataille William Shakespeare Jacques Derrida A.J. Greimas Noam Chom
sky Plato Ezra Pound the voters Ruth Veronica his reflection Diderot Roland Barthes Edward Fitzgerald Francis Bacon Sophocles W.K. Wimsatt Robert Greene Daniel Defoe Moses Wallace Stevens Sigmund Freud Wallace Stevens the folk Barbra Streisand Jesus Christ Frank Kermode Jacques Lacan Denis Diderot the Institution Ezra Pound the chairman of the hour Jeremy Roland Barthes Francis Bacon Jeremy Armel Tzvetan Todorov e.e. cummings the short plump demagogue Bertrans de Born James Joyce Wayne C. Booth Homer Roman Jakobson Julia Kristeva Ali Nourennin et al W.B. Yeats Northrup Frye Umberto Eco John Cage Jane Austen a Victorian old maid Julia Kristeva Dr Santores the Institution Saroja Chaitwantee Traditional wisdom Gertrude Stein William Shakespeare Peter Brandt Christopher Isherwood Ali Nourennin Anton Chekov the chairman of the hour hagiography Armel? the lanky henchman Julian Claire Oliver the chairman of the hour Charles et al Homo Scholasticus Laurence Sterne Choto Rustaveli Scheherezade Tzvetan Todorov the Student Body Karl Marx Plato Tristram Shandy Alessandro Manzoni thus meeting up with the occidental discourse of the Western.
Who is it?
Hello, Ruth?
Armel! Hi.
Hi.
Er And to what do I owe the pleasure?
You haven’t had it yet. You free right now?
Honey you all right?
Sure why?
First time you’ve rung to say that usually it’s me.
Well there’s a first and last time for everything.
What, what do you mean Armel?
You alone?
Yes.
Send him packing I’m coming right over.
Armel that’s not fair you never no never two nights running but never regular nights either so she never knows where she stands I never know where I stand what do you mean stand on this rather hastily remade bed I guess it’s difficult to lie, naked, even on the phone with a naked man beside you.
Oh Armel that’s a lovely pun you kill me I just can’t be angry with you.
Why the hell should you be I’m the one who’s angry who was he anyway?
Are you, Armel?
Answer me.
Nigger bastard.
Oh no don’t you misuse the code now we’re not in an erotic situation.
Aaaaren’t we Arme-e-e-e-el?
No damn you Jewish slut
Nigger bastard decoding brown into pink mouth four eyes aslant black white limbs winding in and out over and under each other vertical horizontal diagonal swiftly changing positions swaying undoing and floating up every ninety minutes or so under loaded lids for a shared who was he anyway was he white was he any good?
Armel! You, jealous?
No. Just, outraged
What the heck’s the difference?
in my mythical aura. What’s the big idea telling me all those dreams if
Oh come off it Armel you’re the one who insisted no regular petty boorjwah arrangement no planning and that all spontaneous like and you never ring and half the time you’re busy and I’m just crazy for you so what can I do the night after’s the only night I know you’re not
Okay okay was he any good?
What d’you think after just now?
So? Why then?
You don’t understand a thing do you. I promised not to fall in love not to make scenes and complications casual you wanted it so okay casual it is that cuts both ways or are you for the double standard you male showvinist and black at that. And you treat me like dirt at best a mildly amusing air-filling sex-object and make me pursue you well I’m a woman and okay I can pursue and be turned down and all but only up to a point so when a goy-boy crazy for it won’t leave me alone and begs for it and turns up at all hours of the night not when I’m here he doesn’t okay so he’s selfish too and assumes I’m always available and so I am thanks to you and he comes too quick and goes and he’s only using me to get confidence so’s he can pass it on to the fresher flesh of little girls less good at it than me and I teach him plenty and say in effect go forth and multiply I have no illusions but for the moment he pursues me and I like it see?
She cries her black hair over her white arm.
Abstention. Refusal of votive offering.
Do you always make love in your watch?
Yeah. Just like you always take yours off. I love you Armel I’m sorry.
Have a puff.
No thanks finish it.
I never noticed.
What?
Your watch. Funny that. Like Gulliver.
Gulliver. Who’s he when he’s at home?
Precisely at home. Couldn’t stand the human smell of his wife after living with talking horses and fell into a swoon, for two hours he says, implying that he looked at his watch as he went down. There’s empiricism for you.
Oh very signif I’m sure. The man always takes his off, pretends it’s out of time I guess so it doesn’t count.
I just don’t want to hurt you.
You can say that again. The boy left his behind once I was idiot-happy about it till I remembered a big middle aged man at the office I was crazy about he’s left now, a cautious pussy-cat wouldn’t make firm dates either not like you though just frightened so he’d wrap it up in vagueness I must protect myself he said like I was going to eat him.
Eurilochus.
I’m what?
Nothing. Something Larissa said once.
Clarissa? Who’s she when she’s at home?
No one. Someone I used to know.
You never told me about her.
Go on about the middle-aged man. Did he take his watch off?
Course he did. And he left it behind once together with his fountain-pen or was it a biro that dropped behind the bed and I took’m to him next day and teased him what would Freud say to that I said and he looked kinda sore and took’m and walked to the door and just as he opened it like he wanted everyone to hear he turned round and said he’d say I suppose that I’d spent the night in your bed. Annoyed? I was parannoyed. Well I mean I wouldn’t have minded if he’d come out with it quick as a flash like you would adding maybe elementary my dear Watson like Freud was Sherlock Holmes but it was more a doubletake, slow and heavy, jocular and kinduv friendly you know on the surface but supercilious really and with the door open so’s anyone could hear. I lost him soon after that. I always lose my men just like I’ll lose the boy and I’m losing you. So how can the watch mean a damn thing?
You read what you want into it.
Oh yeah?
You know very well, Ruth, that everyone, you, me, anyone, gets the treatment they ask for, they unconsciously want as you’re so fond of saying.
Yea, sure. So?
Jewish slut.
Nigger bastard.
Myra Kaplan
Second Semester
Comments by Dr. Sartores Exercise: dialogue
Well at least it has got the elements of narrative moving a bit even at the cost of the bathetic fallacy filling the heremeneutic gap but, on the other hand, enabling the original asymmetrical subject of discourse who does not see the four lies in the retrovizor to be tactfully dropped without scene full of summary, as was forescene she having initially accepted her momentary status. Thus the cost is balanced on the
(though of course when the account is transferred to the viewpoint of the object exchanged the debit goes to the left and the credit to the right).
Either way the economy of the narrative is preserved via the Value theorem of Valincour.*
*Il est temps de rappeller ici que d’excellents érudits attribuent la paternité réelle des Lettres sur la Princesse de Clèves non pas à Valincour mais au P. Bouhours, S.J.**
** portrait of the paternity of the Value theorem by Gérard Genette***
***Boohoo to paternity S.J.: in the interests of narrative economy and of abolishing private property all plagiarisms will presently be unacknowledged.
To return to the subject of discourse: the arbitrariness (liberty) of narrative is not infinite. The narrator chooses the middle of his sentence (his kernel narrative sentence of c
ourse we’re not speaking of real sentences) in function of its end
Contrary then to Brémond on Propp’s functions who says that although from the point of view of la parole the end of the sentence commands its first words, we should adopt the point of view of la langue in which the beginning of the sentence commands the end, thus opening the whole network of possibilities in which we can then construct our sequences of functions.
Yes there is a contradiction there Ali, quite right. But that was in the beginnings of narrative analysis, I think Brémond has moved on. To return to Genette, the arbitrariness of narrative is its functionality
You said it was liberty
At the beginning of his argument yes. But he too has moved on and we with him I hope. Are you following this?
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 53
