The Novel in Five Pages

First, to get the big thing out of the way, the Rape scene appeared on page 45. So many of my questions have now been answered. The rape was (technically) consensual. That is to say Helga was willing, rather than being raped by force or extortion. She smiles, she experiences pleasure, she pulls her own body closer to his. But, she is also "a girl becoming a woman." Helga is young (how young?), and a married man with another mistress has taken advantage of her childishness. Also, the opening page seems to suggest that X is some kind of legal superior to her. So, this is a rape. X is a villain. But he is, perhaps, a softer villain than he could have been. Or I'm giving him credit because if my own American desire to find the central character of a work of literature sympathetic

Microcosm of the Novel

Today's reading was interesting in that it seemed to encompass all the important themes of the novel in one sitting. The first page featured Dagmar walking through the city streets (a common event on the novel), this time on her way to "this first meeting." She is, as usual, effortlessly beautiful despite herself and this seems to be her first romantic meeting (date) with X. This is the beginning of their romance. The second page contains a car wreck (another?) in which "death is so gentle it makes indifference easier." Who's death is unclear. Of course, most vague personal references in the novel seem to point to X, but that seems hard to accept in this case. This may be the "end" of Marianne. At any rate, it is an end. And this end just happens to occur the page after a beginning.

These two pages, then, create a sort of merism--the entire novel could take place between this beginning and this ending. The rest of today's reading seems to fall naturally between these two events, and the events on these pages represent the most important themes of the novel. Page 43 addresses the macro-cosmic events of the war, as anti-Nazi leaflets are dropped from a high window at Sorbonne (the University of Paris). Page 44 contains a description of Dagmar's apartment/studio where hangs her unfinished work Composition No. 1. Finally, page 45 (the last page of this session) contains the Rape scene--THE unifier of this novel.

If this had been a narrative strategy, it would have been a very interesting one. Narrate the beginning, then the end, then all the stuff in between. Of course, here, it's accidental, and is perhaps even an accident of my own interpretation.

X's Three Women

I read ten pages today instead of five, which is probably okay since I have catching up to do anyway. Today, we are back to the serendipity of theme. A lot of today's pages dealt with Marianne.

Francine is dying of intestinal cancer and Marianne, as before, refuses to leave her side. Marianne insists that she has cancer as well, but I suspect that her cancer is metaphorical. Dr. Brun doubts her self-diagnosis as well and suggests that Marianne has a nervous condition. In these pages, Marianne also threatens, apparently, to leave X and she goes so far as to leave the apartment building and get into the car, which she cannot drive. She also threatens suicide, locking herself in a bathroom. Interestingly, X does not take her seriously and continues his argument with her, implying that she is lazy (this is narrated and not quoted. X is still technically absent from this narrative). He finally must try to beat the door down and, when she comes out on her own, she has cut her wrists. The injury is not serious. On the last page of today's reading, she sits on the floor and sobs, refusing X's help in standing. The reason she gives for her anger is that he never calls her from work. This is clearly trivial, so she seems to be hiding the fact that she knows what is going on in X's other relationships, though she will not confront him.

Contrasting Marianne's character on these pages, we see Dagmar walking through the winter air in a well fitting dress. Dagmar seems constantly and effortlessly beautiful. So, considering Marianne's characterization as a fading, perhaps even dying woman, it is understandable that X would fall in love with her. Even if it is not honorable, it is forgivable. How can he be expected to resist falling in love with the vivacious Dagmar.

But then there's Helga. Whatever will happen with her is, even before it happens, unforgivable. On page 38, X appears in the garden below Helga's window. It is summer now and her window, depending on the angle from which one is looking at it, appear either black or bright white (a significant dichotomy). Helga finally sticks her head out the window and, seeing X, grins before thrusting her head back into the window and shutting it. Though her grinning seems coquettish and inviting, she is also taking detours to get into her apartment without X seeing her. So here, X seems a bit like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert. He takes Helga's nervous politeness as being purposefully alluring, as if she is playing a playful game with him. She may, in fact, be trying to escape him.

Synthesis:

By looking at the three women to whom X is connected, we get a complex look at X. X seems capable of romantic love with Dagmar, reluctant loyalty (though not faithfulness) to Marianne, and imperialistic brutality toward Helga.

Much of the way in which the reader will interpret X's character then may come from the order that these characters appear and the order that pieces of the narrative is revealed. The very first page of the novel, for me, contained the statute for rape. So from the very beginning, I knew X as a rapist. This characterization clouds all other views of X. Sure, he may wish to salvage his marriage, but he is salvaging it from his own horrific crimes. He may have a compelling romance with the easy to love Dagmar, but he is also a rapist.

Would this characterization change if the order of events had been different? If I knew of his failing marriage first, would I see his clearly exploitative (but not necessarily forced) affair with Helga as a desperate search for something he dies not get at home? If I knew of his love for Dagmar first, would I see his inappropriate dealings with Helga as the flaw of a man who is too easily enamored with pretty things? Or would the rape take over, even if it had come at the end? To what extent, then, is the softening or hardening of my feeling for X determined by the line of the story?

Fade

As soon as I write about serendipitous thematic threads appearing in these pages, I get a set that seems disconnected. In today's reading, Dagmar dances with a black man, and the text suggests that she has her own kind if racism which causes her to be nicest to "jews and negroes." We also see the police watching an intersection with sub-machine guns. They stop cars, talk to the drivers then let them pass. They are looking for someone and, since this is the only intersection in the city they watch, they have specific information. We also see X climbing a dark stair case (the return of the dark hallway from earlier). He puts oil into the lock mechanism of the office door at the top of the stairs to keep the mechanism quiet so as not to alert the nightwatchman. He holds a skeleton key.

There is a thread across two pages, however. On page 26, Marianne eats only grapes (actually, on the juice from one grape) because she is sick, and tells X so. Of course, the reader immediately thinks of pregnancy, but the text suggests something else. She is aging prematurely and wearing a stained dress.

On page 28, unpaid bills are stuck into the frame of a mirror along with an insufficient funds notice. These are here so "Marianne won't forget." So we see a picture of Marianne fading, in health, in beauty, and in wealth. X's actions and her marriage to him are having profound effects on her.

Laying Blame/Thematic Serendipity

Today, we learn that X is a person who passes blame, sometimes without even having to do it himself. On page 25, we learn that X is the driver of one of the vehicles involved in the car crash alluded to earlier. He accuses the other driver of being at fault saying that he himself had the right-of-way and that the other driver was driving way too fast. This might be believable (and may even be true) except that this page falls among others that seem to characterize X as a person who is always shifting blame.

On page 24, Helga is being kissed (by X, no doubt) and is "unsure" of whether or not she will allow it or to fight it. But we don't get the impression that this is a decision about whether or not she likes it, but about whether or not she can "defend herself." This suggests that her passivity will allow X to convince himself, or at least argue to others, that whatever happens between he and Helga was consensual--that she was a willing participant, even if she is only a willing "girl." To him, this will not be a rape but an affair.

Even when X is not purposefully trying to shift blame, others seem to take his blame upon themselves. On page 22, X has confessed to Dagmar, who pretends not to suffer. She takes a share of his crime on herself, feeling as though she is somehow an accomplice, perhaps only because she loves him. She tells X that just as she must forgive him for his faults, he also must forgive her for his faults. It seems that X will not ever have to take full blame for what he himself does.

Serendipitous Thematic Continuity

I have been surprised day to day how well pages I read in succession fit together thematically. The pages on day 1 seemed to center around the theme of small dramas occurring within larger historical dramas. Day 3 foreshadowed the consequences that are inevitably to come for X. The pages on day 4 seemed to all suggest a quality of flashback. And on day 5, we get three examples of X shifting blame to others.

The serendipitous thematic arrangement of these pages has made me wonder more than once if I have shuffled the pages well enough. Perhaps, I have failed to mix the pages up as much as I should and I am seeing some of the author's hand in organizing ideas.

But the fact that these themes seem to be divided perfectly according to day (one day, one theme) makes me think that something else is going on. Here is more evidence that my own brain, in its act of reading and interpreting, is providing its own continuity. The act of reading, then, involves taking possibly disparate pieces of information, and finding among them ways to connect them. Of course, if one follows my descriptions, one will probably see why I reasonably interpreted these pages the way I did--why I saw the themes that I say I saw. But how much of this is my own careful editing, my own picking and choosing information that seems to fit together into a coherent story while leaving the dross on the floor to be swept away.

This suggests that the reader has a great deal of agency, even if unknowingly, in interpreting any narrative. If the events of this story don't make any sense to one reader, it has as much to do with the reader's ability or inability to find and invent narrative threads as it does with the author's own virtuosity or clumsiness. Perhaps this is why we tend to see in any narrative what we are looking for. A Marxist will always see power relationships and class structure. A rhetorician will always see devices the author is using to convince the reader to believe or feel a particular way. So (and this is not news to anyone) we bring as much to the table as the author does.

The Immediacy of Memory

After four sittings, the plot is beginning to take shape. On page 16, Dagmar is gone and has left behind a hyperbolic emptiness. An "abyss" opens where she should be at X's side. On the next page, Dagmar is leaving--actually "vanishing." But she is also seen in a square feeding birds and enjoying the remarks of a "bold man" (X), something that seems to happen early in their relationship (which increasingly appears to be an affair). This page, then, seems to be a flashback scene. Finally, on page three Dagmar, who is beautifully dressed, gets into a car.

Obviously, the scenes seem out of order--if it's appropriate to talk about order in this book. Add to this the fact that the second of these pages is narrated like a flashback in the classical sense. The fragmented nature of this novel gives the book a feeling of being a disjointed collection of memories.

Interestingly, though, the narrative is in present tense. This is the case on every page so far. This invests the narrative with extraordinary vividness, as if X is reliving these events even as he remembers them. This combination of non-linearity and presents tense narrative creates a very interesting dichotomy. These events are happening now, but they are somehow also jumbled distant memories. There is an immediacy in the novel that is nevertheless clouded by the fracturing of time.

Pieces of the Puzzle

Day three of reading was revelatory. But even as I write this, I question it. A word like "revelatory" probably overstates it. But certainly pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place, and the story is becoming easier to follow, or at least to catalog and interpret (it's still difficult to determine a discernible plot line).

First of all, I'm fairly comfortable saying that I've got the point-of-view issue figured out. Pages on which X is not present read pretty much straight third person, albeit it often using poetically vague language. Pages where X is present, so far at least, are narrated very close to the character in the scene who is not X. An image may help explain what I mean:

In the early days of theatre, when paper was hard to make and thus expensive to buy, an actor would not receive a copy of an entire script, but would instead get only one roll of paper on which his own lines were written. These might have actually been cut out a copy of the script so that one script might provide the entire cast their rolls. This is, in fact, where the term "role" (fr.) comes from. It is as if this is what we are reading whenever X is present. We get the stage directions (narrative) and lines (dialogue) of one character. But it is always the role of X's co-star, and never of X himself. Thus, X's actions and speeches are only implied. We fill in the gaps.

Plot Revelations:

This reading included several important pieces of plot information. Motorcycle cops run traffic and, in lecturing absent minded drivers, allow real criminals to escape. A Salvation Army bell ringer stands outside a club where someone is winning (X?). He dumps all his winnings into the pot. Marianne is at Francine's, cleaning up after her hemorrhages as she dies. Marianne is said to be a faithful friend of Francine because Francine played a part in her marriage. The text mentions that Marianne is "in the process of giving herself last rites." Dagmar brushes off an insolent flirting man (X, no doubt). So. we learn these things:

1) Someone feels guilty.
2) Someone is running.
3) Marianne feels her marriage is doomed, and so is she.
4) X is insolent in his approach of Dagmar.

And so the story begins to take shape.

Continuity and the Fractured Novel

Today's pages raised questions about the point of view of this novel and also broader questions about continuity in literature as a whole.

Point of View

The point of view question may be a premature one, as I have read only ten pages of the 150. But in two scenes today and in at least one from my last session, the main character (generally called X in literature about the work, and in Saporta's original introduction) is alluded to but his actions are never specifically explicated. Marianne (X's wife) "answers," "asks," and shuts doors, but no other character does anything. X's presence, language, and actions are only implied. After two days, I am left to wonder if this will be the way X is dealt with throughout the book, or if he will at some points, have a more explicit presence.

And if he doesn't, what does that mean for the point-of-view of the novel? It is third person, but on the pages where X is implied, the point-of-view seems so close to him that the narrative need not even mention him. Though the narrative is in third person, these pages are seen through the view of X himself. Of course, it is early to tell if this is indeed what is going on. Certainly, most of the pages so far have not involved (so far as the reader can tell) X, and thus are not seen through his point-of-view. Or are they? Are these pages his own imaginative constructions of events he knows about but must invent possibilities as to how these events unfolded? Whatever the case, figuring out the narrative perspective of the novel is adding a layer to interpretation that I had not anticipated.

Continuity and Narrative

The other issue coming out of today's reading is that of narrative continuity. The events of today's pages were rather disjointed. They include a gambler at a craps table, X and Marianne picking up a bloody hitch-hiker, Dagmar in the hospital with Helga looking on, Marianne making a mess of cooking, and Dagmar made up in candlelight, chewing on her lip.

I find that my mind, whether by habit of training or by natural tendency, is trying to connect these pieces somehow chronologically (though I feel comfortable with the idea that they are out of order). I find that I am waiting and searching for clues that will tell me how these events are to unfold in time. But I suspect that these events will remain disjointed and random.

It feels as if I am incredibly inclined to look for continuity to these events. I am now wondering whether this is a reaction to my having been habituated to the idea that continuity is an important part of narrative fiction or of this is a natural reaction. I am, as a post-modern, disinclined to believe that anything is natural, and in fact I do not seem to feel the same type of drive to connect the random events in my life to form some kind of real-world continuity. Or do I?

Is this what we are doing when we try to analyze how our upbringing, or the events in our past have led us to the point where we now find ourselves? While certainly, because of laws of cause and effect, some things from our past (especially the habits and attitudes were are taught, and perhaps large events) effect the outcome of our lives. Certainly, we are effected by our past. But do we also sometimes feel inclined to find continuity where there may be none, to force real life events to fit together somehow when they in fact do not? Do I expect my life to be like a novel, or am I asking novels to be like life? Can a novel like Composition No. 1 help me to become comfortable with the randomness of human existence? Probably not, unless other texts reinforce this new view.

Wicked Foreshadowing, and Histories

So the introductions have been written, the pages have been shuffled, and now the reading begins. Thus begins the book for me:

Article 332: The crime of rape shall be punishable by ten to twenty years. . .

This "first" page goes on to include Article 333, which deals with suspects in close and unequal relationships with the victims (people in authority, master/servant relationships, ministers, older relatives). The page concludes with a caveat that "the professor of criminal law" acknowledges difficulty in distinguishing what constitutes a use of force in committing the act.

This was an ominous way to begin the novel. By reading statute without any connection to any act, the reader is left with a sense of foreboding. This must be foreshadowing, obviously. It also suggests an event so large and destructive that it must cloud the whole novel.

On "page 2" Helga sits in her room, which is "full of bric-a-brac" yet " meticulously clean." She is stooped over a letter. We are not told what the letter is about, or even who Helga is, but of course I could not help but connect the scene with the statutes on page one. What is Helga's role? Was she a victim? Does she know of a rape we don't yet know about?

The theme of sexual perversion (not quite the right word) continues on this page, which goes on to describe an odd painting in which a female "saint" waits on a huge bed, apparently for a knight in another part of the painting.

"Page 3" features Marianne laying in her bed where she has spent the last three hours crying. She answers (who or what we do not know) "you know perfectly well what you've done," and later "why did you do it?"

The narrative is unclear as to what she is talking about, or who she is talking to. But here again, I cannot help but to connect this scene with the suggestion of rape given on the first page. For the potential or past rape clouds all. It seems that it will oppressively rule over the narrative. Thus is the importance of the first page!

On "page 4," a German patrol looks for members of the [French?] resistance. Prisoners are led to a truck or, if they fall, shot on sight. Jeanette, who has been silenced previously screams. A roof collapses. A building burns. We know very little of what actually happened in this scene. It is very visceral and fragmented, as if we are seeing only parts of something happening under a swinging light. But we do now know that something bigger is happening. The war is apparently on.

"Page 5" contains a jumbled conversation containing accusations that someone is mistreating his wife. Lucas talks of "confessions"of resistance fighters stored in a nearby drawer. Finally, an anesthetist, a nurse, and a driver speak, suggesting that there has been an accident in which someone has been badly injured.

Synthesis of Day 1:

A scene in which resistance fighters are being defeated and exterminated by German soldiers is intermingled with passages about car accidents and a rape, both personal tragedies to be sure, but no where near the scope of a World War (if that's what's happening here). This intermingling of macro- and micro-histories illuminates how intimate human events are caught up in and often drowned out by larger historical events. We humans live our lives, we grow up, we love, and we suffer under the sweeping blindness of history. And though it is we, as a people, who make history, as individuals our lives and all of their events are small and unnoticeable. We are both a part of history, and an uninvited guest in it.

And so it begins.

Up to this point, I've done only introductory work on Composition No. 1, as I have been in the middle of another project as well. That has ended, and the introductory work seems sufficient, so it is time to begin the actual reading of the novel.

So, this is a simple note to report how I will proceed. The idea of this blog is to provide an online space for me to record my experience and interpretation of Composition No. 1 as it infolds. This is because the experience will be different for each reader, which is always the case but even more so in a novel where the narrative is in different order for each reader. The idea is that other readers may compare their experiences with mine, that we may learn something about interpretation, reader agency, narrative linearity or whatever.

For this reason, my reading will be meticulous. I will read only five pages per sitting and I plan to take careful notes as I read. The purpose of the blog, then, it to provide a real time catalog of my reactions to the piece. If I can get the word out about this book, I'd love to see others do this project as well, and I am on the prowl for others writing similar blogs.

I hope folks will enjoy following along with my experience, and I hope that we will all take something from it.

Shuffling the Pages: A Video Post

In the video I've posted here, I show the act of shuffling the pages of Composition No. 1 in order to randomize the page order, as per Saporta's instructions. Though we only filmed the shuffling of pages one time, I actually did so four times in order to really mix them up. It was interesting that, just as Uglow suggested in his introduction, I had highly emotional reactions to this act. I put it off for a long time despite feeling like I should practice the act before filming it (I did not shuffle the pages once until the day I filmed this) because it did not seem appropriate to do so until it was time to begin the book. I felt as if shuffling was a part of reading. I also considered (though not seriously) how I might know what pages they had originally come in and whether knowing this might have significance. I thought this despite the fact that I knew that the randomness was part of the experience. All in all, I felt incredibly uneasy about performing these simple instructions, even at the command of the author.

My feelings while performing the simple act of shuffling the pages is an example of how emotionally and ethically invested we are in book-space ideas of what literature ought to be. Even a radical like me feels tradition bound, as if there's something naturally "right" about the way it's always been done. Read left to right, top to bottom, front to back. This is the way it's supposed to be. But who says? Who started that, and why were they right? Who is Aristotle but a long-dead Greek?

Why read Composition No. 1

In 1962, Marc Saporta created a book, or a book work, or just some words that confound the conventions of literature. He did so by a minor technical innovation, or un-innovation: he didn't bind the pages.

These words begin the introduction to the 2011 Visual Editions printing of Composition No. 1. Visual Editions aptly chose Tom Uglow, the creative director for Google and YouTube, Europe to write the Intro. Uglow, a well-known designer and creator of hypertext, seems the perfect person to introduce the new printing of Composition No. 1 because he both understands and embodies why the novel is once again important.

Uglow asserts that "the instinct not to manipulate the 'deck' [not to shuffle the pages] is almost overwhelming." What Uglow understands is that, for those of us used to reading literature, conventional bookspace (Lanksheare and Noble) ideas of narrative linearity are seemingly innately sacrosanct. Stories (rather unlike the events of life) must have a beginning, middle, and end (Aristotle), and the writer should maintain careful control of their order. The role of the reader then is relatively passive. She cedes agency to the writer, who guides the reader through a series of carefully constructed and well revised series of narrative events.

Composition No. 1 goes as far as printed literature can in breaking this convention of linearity. As Jay David Bolter notes:

When all other methods of fragmenting the novel have been tried, what remains but to tear the pages out of a book one by one and hand them to the reader? From the ideal of perfect structural control, Saporta brings us to the apparent abdication of control?

Since the order of events in a narrative has much to do with how the reader interprets the story, by handing over control of the order of the story, Saporta hands over a great deal of agency to the reader who chooses how to read the pages, or to blind chance when the reader shuffles the pages.

The experience of reading Composition No. 1, then, relies as much on the reader and pure random fate as it does on the writer. The novel is therefore, in as much as printed fiction can be, interactive.

So, while those of is used to reading literature may find it almost pathologically difficult to shuffle the pages of Composition No. 1 before reading, the act is probably more appropriate to the experience of modern reading where "every narrative [is] fragmented by links, pings, mails and #fails; a world where form augments content rather than defines it, where stories unfold across magazines, games, 24-hour news and 140 character messaging" (Uglow).

In the modern reading experience, we control the information (in some ways) as much as it controls us. When we read news stories, we choose how much background information we want by clicking links that lead us backward through previous or related stories. We discredit information we find dubious or images we suspect have been doctored by murderously typing "FAKE" into a comment box. We crave, seek, demand agency in interpreting texts. Composition No. 1 is important because Saporta seemed ready to play with this idea of agency 30 years before the internet made it commonplace.

Under Construction

Stay tuned everyone. I have some introductory material to discuss and a Saul Bellow novel to finish, then we'll be off and running.