When a Two-Shot Isn’t a Two-Shot

Woke up at three, obsessing about the confessional snow scene in Norwegian Wood, wondering for the umpteenth time why the director would leave so much empty space on one side, which no high school film student would be careless enough to do; and then it finally occurred to me that the empty space stands for Naoko, just as the eerie soundtrack of the following scene seeps into this one, likewise obtruding her presence or absence therein.

How I Wrote Meet Me at the RASCAL

First, I created the basic text by translating into English parts of the Chinese anecdotal source “Yushan yao luan zhi” (“Treachery at Yushan”), by Feng Shu (1593-1645). Here are two sentences from this basic text:

True to what her cousin had told her, Chief Eunuch Wei Zhongxian was then at the height of his influence. On Tiger Hill, in Suzhou, the Puhui Shrine was being built in his honor.

Next, I transplanted the basic text to contemporary and near-future America, resulting in the Baltimore text, named for the city I chose to be the main characters’ American hometown (although not all the action takes place there). Here is the Baltimore version of the two sentences shown above:

True to what her cousin had told her, the current Director of the FBI, a eunuch called King Kong, was then at the height of his influence. In Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, King Kong Coliseum was being built in his honor.

Then, I subjected the Baltimore Text to a process called larding, meaning that I inserted one new sentence between every two sentences already there. Larding is one of the many literary exercises favored by the Oulipo coterie of experimental writers. (See Harry Mathews’ Oulipo Compendium for a full description of larding.) I larded the Baltimore text a total of three times. After the first round, our two sample sentences were now three, and they looked like this (the inserted sentence is italicized):

True to what her cousin had told her, the current Director of the FBI, a eunuch called King Kong, was then at the height of his influence. Eunuchs like King Kong had capitalized on the great demand for their employment in both the private and public sectors, where they reduced the risk of costly sexual harassment lawsuits. In Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, King Kong Coliseum was being built in his honor.

After the second round of larding, the resulting five-sentence passage (with the inserted sentences italicized) read as follows:

True to what her cousin had told her, the current Director of the FBI, a eunuch called King Kong, was then at the height of his influence. He had, in fact, just been named person of the year by Time Magazine. Eunuchs like King Kong had capitalized on the great demand for their employment in both the private and public sectors, where they reduced the risk of costly sexual harassment lawsuits. The trendsetter in this regard had been media scion Pharaoh Weinstein, whose self-castration on live MeToo TV had inspired young Kong (then known by his rapist name of Mahatma Montessori) to choose the gelded path to power. In Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, King Kong Coliseum was being built in his honor.

With the third round of larding (again highlighted in italics), RASCAL assumed its final density, as shown in our sample:

True to what her cousin had told her, the current Director of the FBI, a eunuch called King Kong, was then at the height of his influence. The name King Kong would later figure prominently in accounts of America’s decline, but during his own time he commanded respect and no one deemed his rise improper. He had, in fact, just been named person of the year by Time Magazine. His autobiography, More Balls Than Most, sat immobile atop the New York Times bestseller list, where it dominated both the political and inspirational genres. Eunuchs like King Kong had capitalized on the great demand for their employment in both the private and public sectors, where they reduced the risk of costly sexual harassment lawsuits. (The final liquidation of the Catholic Church in a class-action settlement served as the wake-up call.) The trendsetter in this regard had been media scion Pharaoh Weinstein, whose self-castration on live MeToo TV had inspired young Kong (then known by his rapist name of Mahatma Montessori) to choose the gelded path to power. Kong’s career, in a few short presidential administrations, led him to his current commanding position in the Bureau.

In Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, King Kong Coliseum was being built in his honor.

By the numbers (according to textfixer.com): The Baltimore text contained 371 sentences, which grew into 729, then 1407, and finally 2777, with each round of larding. Between every two sentences of the Baltimore text, there are seven in the completed RASCAL.

Stylistically, the hardest thing about larding is that each new sentence will separate two sentences that belong together, so that the effect on the text is damaging. A writer seeking merely to mitigate the damage would labor to make each new sentence a general nullity, so that nothing of substance is interposed between the ideally consecutive sentences of the original. On the other hand, if the writer, accepting the challenge of the experiment, wishes to transform the damage into an improvement, then he must craft each new sentence to contain either amusing embellishment or wholly new material that follows naturally from the previous sentence while leading seamlessly to the following one. The new sentence, therefore, loops off in a (hopefully) interesting direction before returning to the original thread of the text. The Oulipo exercise of larding is like being forced to use an extension cord to plug in a lamp that is already right next to the electrical socket. One can try to hide the extension cord (or in this case seven extension cords), or one can make it artistically pleasing enough, perhaps by tinkering it into a string of Christmas lights, to count as an important part of the overall décor.

Passages: From The Evening of the Holiday, by Shirley Hazzard

“He was pleased to be in these beautiful places, which he had known all his adult life, with someone who gave them a new sense of being enjoyed.” (p. 62)

“When the storm began, they were all glad of the interruption. There was quite a lively conversation about storms in general. Darkness, in this long, large room lined with furniture and dim paintings, drew them closer together.” (p. 81)

“It was as if she had taken leave of her senses – or come into their full possession at the expense of her reason; as if she had no capacity to consider her actions in light of their consequences, as if she thought it could go on forever, this disregard for the eventual course of her life, and his.” (p. 110)

“‘What a lovely dress,’ he suddenly said to her. Her beauty had seemed to him so remarkable as they sat at table that he could not keep from making at least this indirect reference to it. She was wearing a simple dress of a splendid color, the sort of dress that might turn up in one of his memories.” (p. 112)

“Since his nostalgia for her was inevitable, he preferred to embark on it as soon as possible – even in her presence.” (p. 114)

He was like someone who, at the close of a beautiful day, constantly shifts his chair to enjoy the last of the light.

She said: ‘Don’t be anxious to find a reason.’

He had forgotten what they were saying. She saw that, and added: ‘To come to the end of this.’ (p. 115)

Book Review: The Fawn, by Magda Szabó

This book is about Eszter, the daughter of an aristocratic family fallen before the advent of communism, and her lifetime hatred for Angéla, who passes seamlessly from the old aristocracy to the new.

Angéla the convener of seminars, the constant presence at the orphanage, forever improving herself, her eyes glued to the copy of Karl Marx in German…and buying all the latest books on Party ideology. When people were turned away from the butcher’s because there was no meat to be had, she opened her eyes wide in astonishment and the tears flowed down her cheeks, and when she got home she took an economics book off the shelf to find out why there was nothing for sale….She had been just the same as a child, so self-sacrificing…she would always take on other people’s problems and shoulder all sorts of impossible burdens…because she always had the time and the means; she had no other business than to be the benefactor of mankind. (p. 185)

Book Review: Seraph on the Suwanee, by Zora Neale Hurston

“Putting food on the table” is what both husbands and wives do. In traditional marriages, however, the husband does it figuratively while the wife does it literally. The separateness of these two modes of devotion leads both husbands and wives to feel that they are laboring alone, and both grow resentful.

In Seraph on the Suwanee, the husband, Jim Meserve, makes clear from the outset that his view of marriage is not as an equal partnership. As he conveys “in so many words” to wife-to-be Arvay Henson, “‘Love and marry me and sleep with me. That is all I need you for. Your brains are not sufficient to help me with my work; you can’t think with me. Let’s get this thing straight in the beginning.’” (p. 35) Indeed, Jim’s idea of connubial sex is quite explicit: “‘Sure you was raped, and that ain’t all. You’re going to keep on getting raped.’” (p. 57)

As Arvay is Seraph’s protagonist, the course of her resentment at this type of marriage forms the main thread of the narrative. What’s surprising – or perhaps unsurprising, given a grasp of human nature in all its irony – is how much Jim resents it too:

‘I feel and believe that you do love me, Arvay, but I don’t want that stand-still, hap-hazard kind of love. I’m just as hungry as a dog for a knowing and a doing love. You love like a coward. Don’t take no steps at all. Just stand around and hope for things to happen out right. Unthankful and unknowing like a hog under an accord tree. Eating and grunting with your ears hanging over your eyes, and never even looking up to see where the acorns are coming from. What satisfaction can I get out of that kind of love, Arvay?’ (p. 262)

Adding complexity to this story of resentment is its symbolism, with the “cracker” Arvay representing the Old South and the hustling Jim standing for the New. Perhaps the former, sullen and parochial, can only be dragged forward by the latter, enterprising and propulsive; and perhaps this dragging does not allow for much collaboration or consultation. It’s certainly ironic that a progressive development  – the modernization of the South – should be depicted here in the context of an unprogressive marriage: Arvay finds her liberation in submission, and if any beneficial readjustment of marriage roles takes place, then I must have missed it. It may be that Hurston prizes the social and economic improvement of the South over the raising of the status of women…

…or maybe her point is that the South hasn’t quite changed enough. Otherwise, it’s very strange for Hurston to have painted Jim as such a know-it-all of a husband, only to admit in the end that hubby really does know best.

Dream: My Life as a Trespass

…I am not alone in the woman’s apartment upon my arrival, because she maintains an entourage of young fashionable people. One of them is an arrogant hippie. He serves everyone a dish of bread pudding with syrup, everyone but me. When I ask him about it, he replies that I am being punished for the rudeness of my initial greeting. He’s right: I had been a little aloof.

“OK, then,” I declare, with token defiance, “I’ll just fetch myself a glass of water.” I repair to the kitchen. However, the flat is very well fitted out, and I’m afraid of breaking something expensive, simply by my presence. I find a plastic cup, which I manage to extricate from a cabinet without causing a glass avalanche. I hold the cup under the faucet and turn on the cold water, but nothing comes out of the tap. Instead, an immaculate column of electrolyte-enhanced eau filtrée begins pouring out of a countertop purifier and splattering cacophonously upon the marble-tiled floor. 

I search in vain for a schmatte to wipe it up. 

Book Review: Autobiography of a Female Slave, by Mattie Griffith

This book was actually written in 1856 by a white woman (a Kentucky slave-owner turned abolitionist), which nearly disqualified it for adoption as my Juneteenth reading this year. However, as it is dedicated “to all persons interested in the cause of freedom,” I deemed it not entirely inappropriate.

Like many similar books of the antebellum era, Griffith’s Autobiography seeks to steal a march on slavery’s sugar-coaters by portraying the peculiar institution as the cruel, treacherous, family-destroying inferno it was. Nothing about this portraiture is controversial today, and modern readers will find it unremarkable, as harrowing as it is. Where Griffith may stand out a bit is in the special pains she takes to show that one of the greatest evils of the slave system was its tendency to undermine Christian belief and practice, for blacks –

‘When I dies, I’ll jist lay down and rot like de worms, and dere wont be no white folks to ‘buse me.’

‘No, there will be no white folks to abuse you in heaven; but God and His angels will love you, if you will do well to get there.’

‘I don’t want to go ther, for God is one of the white people, and, in course, he’d beat [us].’ (pp. 208-209)

– as well as for whites:

To impugn the justice of his Maker’s decrees was a common practice with him. He had so long rejoiced in power, and witnessed the uncomplaining vassalage of slaves, that he began to regard himself as the very highest constituted authority! (p. 235)

It may be objected that Griffith, owing, perhaps, to this religious emphasis, devotes excessive attention to white heroes, called sometimes “prophets” (p. 81) whose eyes are “saint-like” (p. 296); but the objection would be inadmissible. In the first place, given that Griffith’s task is necessarily to inspire white redemption, she never diverts from the context of black suffering. One of her book’s dramatic highpoints is the death of the Christlike “young Master,” which not only fails to yield a promised salvation but is paralleled ingeniously with the wretched martyrdom of a blameless slave. In the second place, the supposedly-heroic white people in the Autobiography are really just exhibiting basic decency. One of them admits, “I deserve no thanks for the performance of my duty” (p. 359), and of another benefactor protagonist-narrator Ann declares, “How beautifully she illustrated, in her single life, the holy ministrations of true womanhood!” (p. 347)

With this last point, Griffith is arguing that fairness toward blacks is not only a Christian imperative but a womanly one. Indeed, she makes the case explicitly (and somewhat self-referentially):

Woman, when once she interests herself in the great cause of humanity, goes to work with an ability and ardor that put to shame the colder and slower action of man. The heart and mind co-work, and thus the woman, as if by the dictate of inspiration, will achieve with a single effort the mighty deed, for the attainment of which men spend years in idle planning. Women have done much, and may yet achieve more toward the emancipation and enfranchisement of the world. The historic pages glitter with the noble acts of heroic womanhood, and histories yet unwritten will, I believe, proclaim the good which they shall yet do. Who but the Maid of Orleans rescued her country? Whose hand but woman’s dealt the merited death-blow to one of France’s bloodiest tyrants? In all times, she has been most loyal to the highest good. Woman has ever been brave! She was the instrument of our redemption, and the early watcher at the tomb of our Lord. To her heart the Savior’s doctrine came with a special welcome message. And I now believe that through her agency will yet come the political ransom of the slaves! God grant it, and speed on the blessed day! (pp. 196-197)

To Christianity and womanhood must be added the founding principles of our nation, to round out the trifecta of Griffith’s inspiration:

In no situation, with no flowery disguises, can the revolting institution be made consistent with the free-agency of man, which we all believe to be the Divine gift. We have been and are cruelly oppressed; why may not we come out with our petition of right, and declare ourselves independent? For this were the infant colonies applauded; who then shall inveigh against us for a practice of the same heroism? Every word contained in their admirable Declaration applies to us. (p. 242)

More often than not, though, American ideals – as well as Christian and womanly ones – do not so much inspire as shame, when reality falls short of them. “Give us no more Fourth of July celebrations,” declares Ann, in an especially gloomy moment, “the rather let us have a Venetian oligarchy.” (p. 375) It is mostly as sources of shame that American ideals appear in this 1856 book, driving home the lesson that shame can be an important engine of progress.

Unlike others of her era, Griffith is as egalitarian as she is opposed to slavery. “‘I do not see why Fred Douglas [sic] is not equal to the best man in the land,’” she proclaims from the mouth of a white abolitionist. “‘Might I not (if it were made a question) prefer uniting my sister’s fate with such a man, even though partially black, to seeing her tied to a low fellow, a wine-bibber, a swearer, a villain, who possessed not one cubit of the stature of true manhood, yet had a complexion as white as snow?’” (p. 79)

Finally, Griffith is an elegant writer and a prescient one:

‘Will my death-hour ever come?’ I asked myself despairingly. ‘Have I not tasted of the worst of life? Is not the poisoned cup drained to its last dregs?’

I fancied that I heard a voice answer, as from the clouds.

‘No, there are a few bitterer drops that must yet be drunk. Press the goblet still closer to your lips.’

I shuddered coldly as the last tones of the imagined voice died away upon the soft night air.

‘Is that,’ I cried, ‘a prophet warning? Comes it to me now that I may gird my soul for the approaching warfare? Let me, then, put on my helmet and buckler, and, like a life-tired soldier, rush headlong into the thickest of the fight, praying that the first bullet may prove a friend and drink my blood!’ (p. 327)

Book Review: Botticelli’s Muse, by Dorah Blume

The difference between the man of God, preoccupied by Sin, and the man of Art, preoccupied by Beauty, can be measured by how comfortable they are with their penises.

First, the man of God/Sin:

Prayer and performance had been for naught when that ugliest of all heads decided to rise with a will of its own. If he could hack it off his body, he would. (p. 283)

Next, the man of Art/Beauty:

She removed his vest, his other boot, his leggings, and all of his garments until he was naked and his maleness had grown to its full length in spite of all his best intentions.

She looked at it and let out a sound part way between a laugh and a sigh. ‘How beautiful! A bird has spread its wings to become an eagle.’

‘He wants to fly to you!…See your power.’ (p. 190, emphasis added)

Whether a woman is a temptress or a muse is up to the man and his member.

And let us say, Uccello.

Book Review: Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes, by Will Buckingham

Will Buckingham’s Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes is a collection of short stories, each based on a hexagram from the Yi jing. It traces a meandering search for meaning through a broad expanse of cultural material from Baal to Billie Holiday.

Of course the meaning of life will never quite come into focus, yet contentment is possible for all who stop focusing on it. The lesson is perhaps most obvious in #48, “The Well,” about a stranger seeking to understand his adoptive home, a pursuit that would baffle native townsmen for its pointlessness:

They live, they eat, they sleep, they make love, they move down the thousand pathways of their lives, but they never ask themselves: ‘Do I understand this place?’ If the question were put to them, perhaps, they would think for a moment, then they would recognize the question for what it was, a question born out of confusion, out of a failure to live, and they would move on. (p. 259)

As it turns out, the strange place absorbs its would-be understander’s life. Around the time he realizes that a sip from a local well yields only a cool drink and not a mystical enlightenment, he is free of his confusion, his failure to live, his strangeness.

Another one of my favorite hexagrams is #13, “Fellowship,” which is a little Rousseauian in its narration of the bland civilizing of its lioness-raised protagonist. There are copious treatments of the meaningful meaninglessness of poetry, including #28 and #42. Really, with such a cornucopia of “chance pieces,” the reader will enjoy finding his own preferred treasures.

Each of Buckingham’s hexagram-stories is accompanied by a headnote and endnotes, and these can be rather personal and chatty. Although some editors disparage chattiness, in this book, the conversational style anticipates the natural randomness of the premise and provides structure and a friendly sense of humanity. Sixty-Four Chance Pieces succeeds so well because of Buckingham’s affability as tour-guide.

In sum, this Book of Changes, like the recently-reviewed Metagestures, has made me rejoice that I am living in an age that has produced such brilliantly unconventional, refreshing, and fulfilling books.