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.