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Of Structural Denial: a Narratological Study of the Structural Disintegration of the Novel Form

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Of Structural Denial: a Narratological Study of the Structural Disintegration of the Novel Form Of Structural Denial: A Narratological Study of the Structural Disintegration of the Novel Form Hugo Ferraz Maio Gomes Dissertação em Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas – Estudos Ingleses e Norte-Americanos Novembro, 2014 Cover your heads, and mocke not fleſh and, blood With ſolemne Reverence: throw away Reſpect, Tradition, forme, and Ceremonious duty William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard the Second I must Create a System. or be enslav’d by another Mans. William Blake, Jerusalem No chronology will be observed here, nor is one necessary. Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars 1 Table of Contents I. Lavish Architectures: An Introduction ................................................................................ 3 1. Prolegomena .................................................................................................................... 3 2. The Burden of the Dissertation ........................................................................................ 5 3. A Refutation of Ergodic Literature ................................................................................... 9 4. On Hypertext Fiction ..................................................................................................... 11 5. A Note on Texts in Translation ...................................................................................... 12 II. On Structure ................................................................................................................... 13 1. The Novel and The Building .......................................................................................... 13 2. The Conventional Novel ................................................................................................ 18 3. The Defiant Conventional Novel ................................................................................... 23 III. Against Structure ................................................................................................................. 32 1. The Structure of Denial .................................................................................................. 32 2. An Overview of Pre-Generative fiction ................................................................................ 34 3. One-Hundred and Fifty Beginnings: Marc Saporta’s Composition No.1, Edouard Levé’s Works..................................................................................................................................... 42 4. Stochastic Permutations: Burroughs, Ballard, Cortázar ................................................... 49 5. Hidden Narratives: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes .................................................. 55 6. Milorad Pavić: Three Novels Against Mortality .............................................................. 59 7. Theory and the Labyrinth: House of Leaves, Kapow!, S. ....................................................... 65 8. Thoughts on Idiorealism ................................................................................................... 71 9. The Disintegration of B.S. Johnson ................................................................................ 75 10. Building, Disintegrating/Rebuilding, Reintegrating: Chris Ware and Idiorealism ........... 79 IV. Becoming Irrelevant: A Conclusion ..................................................................................... 84 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 92 2 I. Lavish Architectures: An Introduction 1. Prolegomena If an opening to the argument of this dissertation is of imperative necessity, one might tentatively begin with Herbert Quain, born in Roscommon, Ireland, author of the novels The God of the Labyrinth (1933) and April March (1936), the short-story collection Statements (1939), and the play The Secret Mirror (undated). To a certain extent, this idiosyncratic Irish author, who hailed from the ancient province of Connacht, may be regarded as a forerunner of the type of novels which will be considered in this dissertation. Quain was, after all, the unconscious creator of one of the first structurally disintegrated novels in the history of western literature, April March. His first novel, The God of the Labyrinth, also exhibits elements which are characteristic of structurally disintegrated fiction, for it provides the reader with two possible solutions to a mysterious crime. As a matter of fact, one might suggest that Quain’s debut novel offers the reader the possibility to ignore the solution to the crime and carry on living his or her readerly life, turning a blind eye to the novel itself. It may hence be argued that Quain’s first novel is in fact a compound of three different novels. It is self-evident that the structure of Quain’s oeuvre is of an experimental nature, combining geometrical precision with authorial innovation, and one finds in it a higher consideration for formal defiance than for the text itself. In other words, the means of expression are the concern of the author and not, interestingly, the textual content. April March, for example, is a novel which regresses back into itself, its first chapter focussing on an evening which is preceded by three possible evenings which, in turn, are each preceded by three other, dissimilar, possible evenings. It is a novel of backward-movement, and it is due to this process of branching regression that April March contains within itself at least nine possible novels. Structure, therefore, paradoxically controls the text, for it allows the text to expand or contract under its formal limitations. In other words, the formal aspects of the novel, usually associated with the restrictive device of a superior design, contribute to a liberation of the novel’s discourse. It is paradoxical only in the sense that the idea of structure necessarily entails the fixation of a narrative skeleton that determines how plot and discourse interact, something which Quain flouts for the purposes of innovation. In this sense, April March’s convoluted structure allows for multiple readings and interpretations of the same text, consciously germinating narratives within itself, producing different texts from a single, unique source. Thus, text and means of expression are bonded by a structural design that, rather than limiting, liberates the text of the novel. 3 Quain’s preoccupation with the structural foundation of his novel as opposed to its plot makes manifest Quain’s lack of interest in literary creation, for he is interested not in art itself, so much as the creation of a new idea of art, which may bestow on him a place in the annals of the history of literary thought. Indeed, in Quain’s view, innovation precludes improvement. In his work, the novel form is challenged rather than consolidated. There is no quest for a conceptual cementation of the form, no pilgrimage for the establishment of a solid definition of ‘the novel’. Instead, there is a continual obsession with formal progression, with excessive experimentation. The form subsists in the lack of a rooted formality. Like the novel itself, Quain is interested in literary evolution as opposed to literary consolidation. These considerations on Herbert Quain would have been of seminal importance to this dissertation were it not for the fact that Herbert Quain did not write any of these books, nor was he ever more than a far-winged flight of fancy, conceived by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.1 The nature of this fact, of course, promptly dismisses most of these introductory reflections on the imagined works of H. Quain. It does not, however, invalidate the fact that Quain—or, as it were, Borges—did conceptualize what in this dissertation I define as structural disintegration. Herbert Quain’s nihility should not deter one from considering his significance to the art of novel writing. There are several lessons to be learned from Quain’s paradoxical inexistent existence. Firstly, one may concede that Quain’s approach to ‘the novel’ evinces the long-standing allurement of the form and its potentialities. There is a recognition of the novel—that is, of any novel—as something that can be rewritten and redefined. Secondly, if it is true that April March was never more than an idea in a renowned short-story collection, the same cannot be said of its concept. Anticipated by Borges, the idea of a ramifying novel was later put into practice by authors like Italo Calvino—whose If on a winter’s night a traveller will be considered in this dissertation not as a structurally disintegrated novel but as a herald of generative fiction—or Julio Cortázar—whose Hopscotch will be considered later in this dissertation—which only goes to prove that the idea of a narrative which is capable of generating other narratives, of treating literature like, as Calvino put it, “a combinatorial game” (Calvino, Uses of Literature 22) has been one of the defining elements in the construction of the novel form. Novels are based on other novels, standing on the shoulders of giants who, in turn, once stood on the shoulders of other giants, and so forth. The most significant lesson one might learn from Quain’s nonexistence is that fiction has the power to generate itself, 1 See Borges, “A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain”. 4 and that from one single, isolated narrative thousands of possible fictions may be deduced or imagined.2 2. The Burden of the Dissertation Now that the idea of this dissertation
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