Tag: experimental literature

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.

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.

Book Review: Metagestures, by Carla Nappi and Dominic Pettman

Metagestures, a collaboration between Carla Nappi and Dominic Pettman, is an homage to Vilém Flusser’s 1991 book Gestures (Gesten in the original German), which the reviewer has alas not read. Owing to this ignorance, I’m somewhat unclear on the significance of the gesture, which seems to me a superfluity, one step removed from more easily graspable themes. Looking through the table of contents, where the authors’ treatments of “The Gesture of Writing,” “The Gesture of Speaking,” and “The Gesture of Making,” etc. are all set out, I cannot help but see them as unnecessarily cluttered approaches to Writing, Speaking, and Making. Isn’t a study of The Gesture of Writing essentially a study of Writing?

So I guess I don’t get the gesture part. However (and here I raise my pointer finger and incline my head toward it in a Gesture of Qualifying, even though the “however” would have been sufficient), Metagestures is fresh and delightful, just the kind of experimental yet accessible literature that can reinspire a jaded reader. If there isn’t a Gesture of Being Glad I Read Something, there should be – and I would be making it now.

Nappi and Pettman take turns addressing every subject, with Nappi offering prose poetry and Pettman short stories. Actually, Nappi’s contributions nearly defy description but tend toward the shape-shifting, supernatural, and symbolic. I call them poetic because – well, check this out:

He sat on a log on the beach in the drizzle and watched the water fall toward him and pull back out again and he saw that the water had fingers that tried to grip the sand as it was dragged back into the sea and he saw tendrils in the foam on the sand as the watery women put their heads and faces down and flung their hair out to try to reach him, just a little bit, just for a little bit, before they had to leave again.

He was lonely.                                 (p. 183)

Two sentences, each a paragraph, one long, one short, balanced, exquisite, and devastating.

Pettman’s sections are more straightforward, but his take on “The Gesture of Making,” envisioning a factory where workers make do, make light, and make fun is a big smile.

Sometimes the authors’ half-chapters cross-reference, and they seem to work toward a climax of sorts in the concluding Gesture of Loving, which makes the meaning of the gesture a little clearer.

Or maybe it’s obvious throughout, as conveyed by Nappi (via Vilém):

Vilém read, and his emotions were written on his face by the twisting of ropy eyebrows and the pull of flesh and hair around his nose and chin. Eyes and skin and nostrils gathered into a text…                                                                                                         (p. 26)

Book Review: Lake of Urine, by Guillermo Stitch

Guillermo Stitch’s Lake of Urine consists of four parts. Part I, “Seiler,” describes the narrator’s (Seiler’s) obsessive persecution of homely Ms Urine, in a way that calls to mind Harry Mathews’ Tlooth and its narrator’s murderous fixation upon Evelyn Roak. It’s a twenty-page giggle.

Part II, “Noranbole,” is named for Urine’s half sister, who has made her way to the big city and now sits at the helm of the Terra Forma corporation. She seems to be the only one capable of managing anything, because she can manage anybody; and she can manage anybody because each is a nobody, a mere collection of idiosyncrasies that she is adept at manipulating. This section contains the choicest collection of corporate blatherspeak that one is likely to find. Here is a sample:

‘We need to talk about a radical rethink, Ms Wakeling,’ said Mr Perigo. ‘A sidestep, or perhaps a ninety degree. I don’t think we should exclude the possibility of a complete about-to, frankly.’

‘This could deepen the crisis exponentially,’ said Mr Amerideath, ‘sending us spiraling downwards toward some sort of upheaval.’

‘Or worse,’ said Mr Drinkwater. ‘Upwards.’

‘What about any implications for the other crisis?’ asked Mr Freeze.

‘Well,’ said Mr Deer Spirit, leaning forward so everyone could see him, ‘on the bright side, it might actually resolve that one.’

‘Ooh,’ said Vacuity, ‘that would be good, wouldn’t it?’

‘Depending on how things go, of course,’ said Mr Elderkin.

‘Of course,’ said Mr Deer Spirit.

‘And we definitely can’t salvage this?’ asked Noranbole.

‘How?’ asked Mr Star Blanket. ‘I’ve been imagineering all morning. Nothing. And I’m the head of Creative.’ (p. 49)

Part III, “Emma Wakeling,” turns to Urine and Noranbole’s mother. It is ingeniously written, alternating between two sets of chapters that move in contrary chronological order, and it provides the backstory of all the other parts. Despite the cover blurbs testifying to Urine’s hilarity, these chapters are dead serious, exploring themes of domestic abuse and neglectful parenting.

This part is also replete with author Stitch’s unique brand of performative dialogue, which, perhaps, counts as comic relief.

The pastor [Emma’s father], who liked to think of himself as an open-minded man had, as part of his ongoing efforts with the county’s wayward women, turned to psychology. He had been leafing through a copy of Dr Hans Sittlichkeit’s Mother Abandonment: causes, symptoms, and role in the development of the contemporary strumpet and one or two of the eminent scholar’s theories had struck a little close to home. As Phinoola Quigg was fussing about him one afternoon in his study, wiping pristine surfaces and rearranging decorative items, he put his quill down.

‘I would like your advice, Phinoola Quigg.’

‘Would you indeed?’ asked the housekeeper and stopped her dusting.

‘Yes. I have been reading this book – ’

‘Have you indeed?’

‘Yes. And it says here – ’

‘Does it indeed?’

‘Does it…? But I haven’t… The book is about girls, Phinoola Quigg, and how we might, with the use of cutting-edge scientifical interventions, go about the prevention of their loosening.’

‘Well, isn’t that nice?’

‘Yes, let me just… The point is, Phinoola Quigg, that I am of the opinion that some of the theories presented by Dr Sittlichkeit – ’

‘Are you now?’

‘…may pertain, indeed may pertain very closely, to our own situation, and – ’

‘Our situation?’ The housekeeper clasped her hands.

‘The situation in this house, yes. The long and short of it is that according to modern science, it would seem that young Emma would almost certainly be the better for it if she had rather more to do with her mother than is currently the case. Rigorous studies have shown as much.’

‘Have they indeed? It all sounds very clever, doesn’t it?’

‘At the very least, I think a formal introduction is called for, don’t you? That is the matter upon which I would like to consult you. The fact is, I don’t know how to go about it. I haven’t seen the woman since last October, although there is not the slightest doubt in my mind,’ and here the pastor’s voice became shrill as his eyes darted around the room, ‘that she is listening.’

‘Right, and I suppose that’ll be my job, will it?’ (pp. 116-117)

Toddler Emma’s first word had been harlot, incidentally. (p. 98)

In Part IV, it all comes together, kind of.

Lake of Urine is well crafted, meaningful, and subtler than its title suggests, drawing the reader forward and inward by making him supply what is inexplicit in its pages, showing (rather appallingly) more than telling. It is not so much a guilty as a grim pleasure.

What I’m Working On

My current book project is a little hard to explain, but I’ll try:

  1. I translated a seventeenth-century Chinese text, a detailed account of a tedious political imbroglio, into English.
  2. I extracted an intriguing subplot concerning a despicable family, resulting in a snappy 6000-word text.
  3. I transplanted the setting to contemporary Baltimore. My impulse was threefold:
    • Chinese settings seem to discourage would-be readers, and Baltimore may prove more accessible;
    • Chinese names are especially off-putting to would-be readers, so  rendering Zhang Qi as Tinus Juckman, Gu Xiangtai as Morgan Schwartzenberg, and Chen Luqian as Ruckleshaus Schumacher will hopefully yield more memorable characters;
    • Transplanting Chinese institutions such as eunuchs and public floggings to Baltimore produces a keen jarring effect.
  4. For fuller length and depth (and for the challenge) I am now employing an Oulipo method called larding, which means inserting one new sentence between every two sentences of a given text. The baseline translated/edited/transplanted 6000-word text has, as of this posting, been subjected to almost two full rounds of larding and currently stands at 22,000 words. I plan to lard it a total of three times.

I call it Meet Me at the RASCAL. Here is a choice sentence: “Tinka Klein and an oud player named Ashurbanipal, both naked and dreadlocked to the pubes, leapt back and forth between the modules of Goldie’s Italian leather sofa, trying to avoid collateral damage.”

Book Review: A True Novel, by Minae Mizumura

As is known, Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel is a retelling of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights that takes the form of a narrative within a narrative within a narrative, triangulating on the character of Taro Azuma, the racially impure pauper who makes the best of the various table scraps the world throws to him and becomes a millionaire. As such, it illustrates the triumph of the middle class over residual aristocracy, a theme that is developed on other levels as well, outside the main storyline. Secondarily, it draws attention to the process of novelization itself by, among other things, impugning the reliability of the chief narrator.

I loved losing myself in A True Novel’s 854 pages and seldom put it down. The pace does drag in one or two of the middle chapters, which provide the background of the aforesaid chief narrator, but it picks up again.

The cover blurb promises “an examination of Japan’s westernization and the emergence of a middle class,” although its treatment of westernization is muted (it is more explicit in Mizumara’s Inheritance from Mother) and its depiction of the middle class, while not exactly triumphalist, is certainly not an indictment. In this respect, A True Novel is representative of postwar Japanese literature in its mostly happy adjustment with bourgeois, middle class life. The sense of angst and malaise, the criticism and satire that would accompany any American novel set in the middle class, is entirely absent. While A True Novel makes ample mention of squalor, failed marriages, and office drudgery, these occurrences never warrant a rejection of the bourgeois ethos in toto; no alternatives are considered. When its characters enter a hotel, restaurant, bookstore, or supermarket, they are comfortable in such places and participate unselfconsciously in the consumption that occurs therein. They refrain from mocking the decor or caricaturing the clientele, activities de rigueur in America. In short, these bourgeois settings are not enemy territory, through which its unassimilated characters trespass.

The lack of any snark directed toward the middle class may be explained by the simple fact that most Japanese are pleased to identify themselves as members of it. (For that matter, Japan’s racial and cultural homogeneity also ensures that the ethnic, religious, political, and cultural strife that dominates American novels has no parallel in Japanese ones.) In fact, A True Novel may be read as a middle-class epic, with Taro Azuma as its hero.

But does Taro find love? And if he does, is it of the aristocratic or the bourgeois kind?

The answer, of course, would be a spoiler.