'Avoiding Closure' and 'Postmodern Temporality' in Barth's 'On with the Story'

„Avoiding Closure‟ and „Postmodern Temporality‟ in Barth‟s „On with the Story’ [PP: 135-140] Mojgan Abshavi (Corresponding author) Department of English, Payam-e-Noor University Iran Mahboobeh Taghvaei Payam-e-Noor University Iran ABSTRACT Postmodern temporality in literature, as it involves non-linear time and narration, creates a discrepancy between the narrated time and the temporal time of narration, and thus the order of events within a story are playfully dealt with. Complexities become more when there is no sense of ending in such stories. John Barth‟s „On with the Story’ proves a good case in point in reflecting the poetics of postmodernism by manipulating nonlinear progression of time with multidimensional, discrete, and game-like temporality in creating flickering textual constructions, especially when he puts no endings for his stories and avoids closure to mirror the breakdown of traditional narrative values. Accordingly, the present paper tries to highlight Barth‟s narrative techniques in foregrounding nonlinearity and open-endedness in his „On with the Story’. As such, the aim of the study is to determine to what degree Barth‟s play with time and narration echo postmodern concerns and how is possible to make sense of a postmodern story by investigating into its textual structure than the mere course of events. Barth‟s achievement in the postmodern ground in this story, just like his other ones, not only challenges traditional narrativity and temporality but also presents the reader with a new sense of understanding reality as it is happening around us. Keywords: Non-linear Time, John Barth, On with the Story, Multiple Endings, Postmodern Temporality ARTICLE The paper received on Reviewed on Accepted after revisions on INFO 12/09/2017 10/10/2017 17/12/2017 Suggested citation: Abshavi, M. & Taghvaei, M. (2017). „Avoiding Closure‟ and „Postmodern Temporality‟ in Barth‟s „On with the Story’. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 5(4). 135-140. 1. Introduction seek to break out of the linear and generic In the final decades of the twentieth conventions of traditional writing to the century, and even into the new millennium, extent that parody, pastiche, irony, the term „postmodern‟ appeared to playfulness, skepticism, temporal disorder, celebrate fragmentation as „an exhilarating, multiple endings, and metafiction become liberating phenomenon, symptomatic of the central features associated with our escape from the claustrophobic literature in postmodernism (Featherstone, embrace of fixed systems of belief‟ (Barry, 2007, p. 7). These features manifest 2009, p. 81). It means that, on a literary themselves more concretely in the level, postmodernism tries „to break free of manipulation of narrative time which is many of the established conventions of one of the most effective devices of genre and narrative‟ (Bradbury, 192, p. undermining the chronological 209). This fact is well reflected in John presentation of events. In contrast to the Barth‟s essay, „The Literature of conventional theories of time, Replenishment‟, in which he discussed the postmodernist fiction deprives narrative principles of literary recovery through from its linear coherence by twisting the fictional strategies such as parody in sense of significant time, so that one is not undermining the inherited literary able to find the difference between the conventions. As one of the pioneering time of fiction and the temporal time. As postmodern writers of our time, Barth an experimental writer, John Barth tries, in defends the idea that old writing is a sense, to replenish the exhausted fiction exhausted, but that playfulness now offers by manipulating time during narration and new forms of expression on the literary bringing it to the foreground. To put it ground. In this vein, postmodernist writers differently, he denies and confounds the International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies (www.eltsjournal.org) ISSN:2308-5460 Volume: 05 Issue: 04 October-December, 2017 traditional conception of temporality in Barth‟s themes and techniques pass mimetic narratives. Ermarth has stated that through familiarity with postmodern while „all narrative is temporal by narrativity and thematics. Accordingly, it definition because its medium is temporal, has been tried to highlight two specific postmodern sequences make accessible aspects of „On with the Story’ as they can new temporal capacities that subvert the be discussed within the postmodern privilege of historical time and bind lexicon. Therefore, „games with time‟ and temporality in language‟ (1992, p. 11). „avoiding closure‟ are discussed below to Barth‟s own fiction explores these give a better understanding of Barth‟s story temporal capacities in a playful manner. 3. ‘Games with Time’ in ‘On with the By using different games with time, he sets Story’ narrative time in non-linear fashion and In „On with the Story’, time is not going presents the story as fragmented and to come to an end and everything is in an disrupted. In Douglass‟s words, while everlasting becoming and continuum, as in „Bergsonian aesthetics give art the a Möbius strip which Barth incorporates imperative of constantly reinventing itself „as a central point‟ in many of his stories and have furnished a useful key to (García, 2015, p. 122). In other words, the Modernism‟, Barth‟s play with time author has encapsulated his applies to „the continuities and disruptions conceptualization of time in the title. The of the „postmodern,‟ with its hybrid, title, telling about the story itself, suggests contradictory, pluralistic claims‟ that there is an essential divergence (Douglass, 2012, p. 34). Moreover, Barth between life and story. The narrator prevents his fiction from being ended. In reveals that our lives are not our stories. It other words, endings seem inaccessible in is life which finally and necessarily his fiction, and no single and definite overcomes the story. By manipulating time ending is promised by his poetics; hence, and space, Barth in fact arrests time in its the obsessive treatment of ending in his onward course. short narratives. „On with the Story’ opens with a Barth‟s replenishment is carried out by „freeze-frame‟, in which the writer sits by flouting the mimetic aesthetic in fiction, the antagonist who reads a story about which brings about certain unusual or herself. After the freeze-frame which anomalous temporalities. These anomalies imposes a state of suspension on the story, are actually the very subject of his stories, the narrator‟s remarks follow as such: especially revealing in his shorter ones „the writer of these lines is another, and a such „On with the Story’. In what follows, third one is the above-mentioned Alice, chief it has been tried to highlight Barth‟s character of this story-now-in-progress, manipulation of time and endings in this whose attention has been caught by the postmodern short story. passage that you and she together have just read‟. (1996, p. 71) 2. Theoretical Background The situation is a correspondence In this paper an attempt is made to show between what one is reading in a piece of how Barth‟s postmodernist‟s attitude fiction and one‟s own life. Alice is reading toward narrative time and ending has a freeze-frame story which is very similar shaped the texture of „On with the Story’, to her own life, while she is sitting next to and the way readers may respond to it a man who is the writer of both the while reading. Despite the numerous “freeze-frame” and Alice herself. We are researches done on John Barth‟s themes in fact reading about „motions-within- and techniques, this short story has been motions‟ (p. 89), the „zero narrative mph1‟ somehow ignored to be discussed (p. 82), and the way these issues shape separately. Many of the researches on Barth‟s narration. Barth have rather focused on his longer Considering the story time and the well-known stories, such as The Floating temporal time, the narrator ends his story Opera, The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Got- saying that “all the stories are essentially Boy, Lost in the Funhouse, and Chimera. constructs in time, and only incidentally in However, the findings of other researchers about Barth‟s narrative techniques can be 1 The narrator is here talking about the rate of used in writing about his less known Alice‟s story which is moving with “zero narrative writings. mph”: „The protagonist of „Freeze Frame‟ is Barth‟s „On with the Story’ is an moving from St. Louis‟s Gateway Arch toward acclaimed postmodern story. Interpreting University City at a velocity, alas, of zero miles per hour‟ (Barth, 1996, p. 81). Cite this article as: Abshavi, M. & Taghvaei, M. (2017). „Avoiding Closure‟ and „Postmodern Temporality‟ in Barth‟s „On with the Story’. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 5(4). 135- 140. Page | 136 „Avoiding Closure‟ and „Postmodern Temporality‟ in Barth‟s „On… Mojgan Abshavi & Mahboobeh Taghvaei the linear space of written words‟ (Barth, the narrated time of Alice‟s domain 1996, p. 94). As Vukanović and Grmuša happens in a nonexistent diegetic level, it say, is subject to the narrative time of the Underlying this idea of separation magazine-world since she is experiencing between story and plot is an old assumption, a temporal version of her own life (story). revealing a fundamental discrepancy between So, Barth pushes the narrative pause button literature and life: the assumption that in and „smart[s] off‟ about relative motion, literature events can be

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