PARABLE NO. 9: THE HOPELESS ANIMAL AND THE END OF NATURE 5 MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI Parable No. 9: The Hopeless Animal and the End of Nature1 Let’s begin with a name. Max. A Preliminary Aside I think Max is a good name. And let’s make this his last name. And for a first name let’s pick Richartz — for the mu­ seum here. But let’s say he goes just by the letter R. So this evening, we’ll say our character’s name is R. Marx and if we’re feeling playful, we can perhaps involve an English pun so that it’s “Our Marx.” Oh, I mean Max! R. Max. Excuse me! And since we’re already there, in this territory of errors, where I was certain we’d end up eventually [Danielewski smiles], I also want to quickly destabil­ ize other words we’ll encounter. For example — since “animal” is in the title of this talk — consider Derrida’s fun with the plural: animaux [ani-mots]. Especially since words/mots are not an incidental part of tonight’s grave con­ cern. English is a little less playful than French. “Ani­mals” might give up “mals” — or bad things. In German, “animal” is tier. In French, tirer and tiers pres­ ent themselves as possible incarnations of tugging or levels. English can keep a hold of this question of levels — the animal as a hierarchical creature per­ haps? Also in English, with a little bit of urging, our German tier might become “tear,” bestowing upon our animal, or just ourselves, a sense of sorrow. But these are all silly ways of prying apart words in a way that may uncover Anglistik, Jahrgang 27 (2016), Ausgabe 2 © 2016 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) 6 MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI little but still more generally provoke us to consider whether or not any word can validly stake a claim on the creature we like to call so casually the animal. This much I can tell you — and with great certainty too — our character, R. Max, gives little thought to words. Max is a woodcutter. He goes out with an ax and cuts down trees. And when he’s not swinging for wood chips and collapse, he’s a hunter. He likes to go out and kill things. Well, one day, Max’s brother dies. Max is not upset. He never really knew the man. The brother was a stepbrother. He Winter Journals only finds out about the death because his stepbrother’s wife arrives at his doorstep with two cats. She and Max’s brother had a childless marriage, and now she’s returning home to France. Before she goes, though, she for personal use only / no unauthorized distribution is leaving R. Max the two animals/les animaux. R. Max has no choice but to accept them. Now, the first thing he thinks about is, Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) “Maybe I’ll take these two animals out into the backyard, and I’ll chop their heads off with my ax. Because what am I to do with two animals from a brother I didn’t know, left by a woman who has just run off to another country where they speak a language I will never speak?” But as hard and as tough as he is, R. Max is not an unkind man. And so he looks at the two cats, and he decides that instead of killing them he will name them. The first cat, the male cat, he names “Lark.” [Danielewski has changed the name here from the original “Elam.” Anglistik, Jahrgang 27 (2016), Ausgabe 2 © 2016 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) PARABLE NO. 9: THE HOPELESS ANIMAL AND THE END OF NATURE 7 NB: other small changes occur through- out the text.] Don’t ask me why — I don’t know. Not surprisingly, R. Max develops a fondness for this creature. Lark is a beautiful cat: sleek, powerful, a formidable hunter, clearly a creature to be reckoned with in the wild. The female cat R. Max names “Sibyll.” In fact, he doesn’t name it Sibyll; he names it something else, but Sibyll was the name of my cat, so I decided to in- trude upon this story and include her name here. Now in the eyes of R. Max, Sibyll is a hateful creature. All she does is hiss, and scratch, and piss in the corner. ASIDE #1: No Cat in Sight I’d like to add a quick note here, and this is sort of the tricky thing about this entire narrative that we’re going to pur­ sue: what I do here is actually not what I do, and what I say is not necessarily the point of what I say, because what matters most is what will be left unsaid, what’s left open, what’s left wild. By the way, I’d like to commend you for coming here in the first place. You were very brave to show up to some­ thing that starts off with “the question of humanity’s dilemma with place will be addressed in terms of the nomenclat­ ure of the natural and blahblahblah, and anecdotes and blahblahblah, and subjects ranging from the emotional topographies of fear and hope and blah­ blahblah.” [The original title and description: Anglistik, Jahrgang 27 (2016), Ausgabe 2 © 2016 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) 8 MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI The Hopeless Animal and the End of Nature The question of humanity’s dilemma with place will be addressed in terms of the no­ menclature of the natural and more precisely the positioning of the animal as interlocutor, antagonist, anecdote, docent, screen, alle­ gory, substitute, vessel, guardian, difference, the indifferent, necessity, prisoner, deity, ci­ pher and finally as the unimagining human. Of course this will bring up subjects ranging from the emotional topographies of fear and hope, manufactured surfaces (and vocabu­ laries and vegetables) of denial to nudity, fur fetishes, mechanized companionship as well as medieval bestiaries, zoos, the pet industry Parable No. 9 not to mention the pictorial pastoral, wildlife photography and YouTube funny creatures; with some glancing attention paid to Walton Ford, Giorgio Agamben, Valentino Braiten­ berg, Temple Grandin and perhaps Cesar Millan. It’s unclear whether Danielewski will actually succeed in drawing all this together into a cohesive whole, especially since that whole must obviously also include matters of synthetic intelligence, speculative fiction and the architecture of fate. Still, perhaps by the end of the hour he will have managed to trace out a line describing why in framing the human dilemma with place, in terms of the animal, nature is now neces­ sarily at an end. Then again perhaps this is all just a grandiose way of giving himself an excuse to talk about his cat.] What is that all about? It sounds kind of scholarly, and yet . I’m a novelist. I’m not a scholar. What I do is something a little different. Which makes the subject even more elusive. So, is the subject re­ ally “The Hopeless Animal and the End of Nature”? That sounds pretty depress­ ing. Of course maybe this will be that depressing. Regardless, let’s rename it. How about “Parable No. 9 ”? OK? So let’s scratch out the first title and just write that. And perhaps it’s also worth emphasizing now that there will be a performative aspect to all this tonight. Usually when these kinds Anglistik, Jahrgang 27 (2016), Ausgabe 2 © 2016 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) PARABLE NO. 9: THE HOPELESS ANIMAL AND THE END OF NATURE 9 of talks are given, they are typed out. [Danielewski has only a handful of note cards]. They’re often over­articu­ lated. Some eventually are published as chapters in a book. Then all you’re really seeing is a reading. [Danielewski paces the stage.] But I don’t just want to just read to you. I do want to give you a sense of where we’re going, even if I also don’t really know what will happen. And that’s because you and I through the process of time and that which reaches out between and beyond words will become involved. Maybe you’ll have questions. Maybe you’ll walk out. Maybe you’ll fall asleep. Maybe you’ll look at me like you don’t know what I’m saying. And by the way: if you do feel that you don’t know what I’m saying, that’s OK. You can think to yourself: “Well, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” so long as you also recognize that you have no idea what you’re saying either. Then the night will be a success­ — if you leave, thinking, “You know what? I don’t real­ ly even know what I’m saying when I’m saying what I’m saying.” My desire is not to finalize this topic but to open it up. And it’s a topic — as we’ll get into a little later — that has been with me throughout my work. In fact this subject of animality has become a little more overt with my current project — recently mentioned on some online forums — a multi­volume novel entitled The Familiar, about a twelve­year­old girl who finds a kitten. In fact, concerning those online forums, I just learned via some posts two Ger­ man words I didn’t know before: one is katzenjammer [a hangover; liter­ ally a cat’s misery] and katzensprung Anglistik, Jahrgang 27 (2016), Ausgabe 2 © 2016 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) 10 MARK Z.