An Inconsistent Oracle

English 205
May 4, 2010

An Inconsistent Oracle:
Trickster Art & Magic in Truth & Bright Water

                        They massacred the buffalo

                        Kitty-corner from the bank

                        The taxis run across my feet

                        And my eyes have turned to blanks
                                ──Neil Young

    One of earliest myth cycles is that of the trickster.  Trickster appears without warning and, before they leave, the world has been irrevocably changed in some manner.  In Thomas King's Truth & Bright Water the trickster appears as Monroe Swimmer, the "famous Indian artist" and an avatar for the author.  Monroe moves into an old church and proceeds to force a confrontation between authenticity and expectation on a liminal battlefield where reality, mythology, and history blur together in the fog that shrouds the bridge linking the two towns of Truth and Bright Water.  "[T]trickster stories point to the way ordinary, conventional reality is an illusory construction produced out of a particular univocal interpretation of phenomena appearing as signs" (Doueihi qtd by Smith), and to achieve such ends, Monroe enlists the help of an apprentice: the story's 15 year old narrator, Tecumseh.  Through assisting with Monroe's artistic work, Tecumseh learns the world is far larger, and far stranger, than he has conceived from his small corner of it.

    The summation and substantial representation of the Native American Trickster is Coyote. In a critical essay of King's previous novels, Dawn Karima Pettigrew considers the "innate irreverence [which] accompanies Coyote's actions. Unimpressed by titles, rules, or systems, Coyote exhibits a gentle bewilderment coupled with a complete absence of fear or fawning. The white man fails to frighten Coyote. He refuses to be reduced to a victim by the majority culture's vision and values" (Pettigrew 217-18).  Monroe Swimmer is analogous to Coyote, and the famous Indian artist irreverently moves into the old Christian church and, over the course of the novel, proceeds to paint it out of existence.  "[N]o one noticed that Monroe had ... begun to paint the outside walls of the church... [he] began with the east wall first, and because that wall faced over prairies and because you couldn't see it from Truth or Bright Water, no one knew anything was happening..." (King 30).   This act shows an absence of fear or fawning towards the white man's title, system, and rules.  Monroe does not participate in Indian Days, instead he sets up iron decoy buffalo fetishes to lure the bison back to their homeland.  In this, Monroe refuses to play the victim—that is, to pretend to be the sort of Indian expected by the conquering race of tourists—yet operates (via using iron, metal-works, paint, and modern techniques) in methods that are not at all traditional to his tribe or people.  Pettigrew goes on to suggest that although Coyote is "initially open to the contact with white people, [he] quickly becomes cognizant that their societal structures exist to exclude and oppress him. Coyote responds to these social, cultural, and economic barriers by beating their architects at their own game" (218).  Again, this description could as easily be used to describe Monroe's time in Toronto where he became the "famous Indian artist"—as King relates it: "Miles figured Monroe got lucky, that he landed in Toronto just as being an Indian was becoming chic [...] [his] paintings began to sell, and in no time at all, according to Miles, Monroe was rich" (King 28). This got Monroe into trouble with several museums for painting indians into works of art he is meant to restore.  Monroe masters the world of art as measured by the white people, then returns to Bright Water to use their architecture to perform restorations of his own.

    The fact that "in Thomas King's novels, the trickster takes these concepts and uses them to benefit Blackfoot characters who at-tempt to survive life on Canadian reservations in the modern era" (Pettigrew 219) is undeniable when examining—as Pettigrew does in her essay—King's first two novels.  But this begs the question as to the absence of a direct Coyote character in Truth & Bright Water.  It becomes easier then, and perhaps necessary, to consider Monroe as fulfilling this role. Like Coyote, Monroe shows a pridefulness that could easily be written off as egotistical arrogance.  But with Monroe taking the role of Coyote, such an attitude becomes more a matter of magic than ego.  He knows his role and function in the world and is glad to take the mantle.  When Tecumseh first encounters Monroe, he doesn't recognize who he is: "'Famous Indian artist,' says the man, as if he's announcing someone important... 'What?' 'You're supposed to say "famous Indian artist" after you say "Monroe Swimmer"'" (King 46-47).  This "man" is, in fact, the famous Indian artist himself.  The moniker needs to be spoken because—in Trickster lore—words are magic, and Monroe has come to bring fortune and hazard to Truth and Bright Water.  The most notable thing about Monroe when Tecumseh first meets him is his hair, "which reminds me of Graham Greene's hair in Dances With Wolves" (King 47) and which turns out to actually be a wig and not real hair, Tecumseh soon takes the role of apprentice to Monroe, and sees first hand—if without full understanding—of the plans and schemes this trickster has in store.

    When Tecumseh visits Monroe at the church, he takes in the strange and curious changes Monroe is making, and is quickly drawn into the trickster's plans. "There's no altar at the front of the church. I look around to see where Monroe has moved it and that's when I see the buffalo. It's not real, and I know that right away, but it's pretty good" (King 48). Monroe questions Tecumseh directly, "'What'd you think of my buffalo?' 'Is it paper mâché?' 'The real ones are on their way.' [...] Monroe puts on the wig and starts rolling around the room. He circles the buffalo a couple times. 'I'm planning to do some restoration work'" (King 49).  This is the first time Monroe discusses his restoration project.  Although he is known for his work in painting restoration, his current work involves restoring something more than a canvas.  Later in the novel, he and Tecumseh again discuss the project, and again the wig is involved: "I'm hoping Monroe will take the wig off and help.  But he doesn't. 'What do you think?' It's a buffalo. Or, at least, it's the outline of a buffalo. Flat iron wire bent into the shape of a buffalo... 'It's my new restoration project ... I'm going to save the world'" (King 139).  This sort of grand scheme is nothing usual for Trickster, who is often a multi-tasker of mythology playing roles as creator of worlds, destroyer of worlds, and, in some cases, acts to restore the world.

    Tecumseh's involvement in this restoration becomes more laborious.  Monroe enlists him to help at the church in moving his iron silhouettes; his buffalo decoys.  "At first," Tecumseh tells us, "I think all the buffalo are the same," but Tecumseh is catching a glimpse behind the curtain of the trickster.  He sees the working machinations first-hand, even if he doesn't realize the purpose, he knows the intent, "I can see that they are all different shapes and sizes" (King 139).  To fully immerse his apprentice in the workings of his magical plans, Monroe puts the wig on Tecumseh.  Tecumseh doesn't like the wig, he "can see even less now" and the "wig itself smells funny."  But this gesture between Trickster and his charge displays something tangible involving the inclusion of power.  Trickster, in mythology, is almost never on the same level as the gods.  Trickster merely uses mundane powers to fool others into doing the actual work or, when magic is involved, it usually comes in the form of hedge-magic, sympathetic magic; those process which gain power through perception and belief.  "'Before we're done,'" Monroe tells [Tecumseh], "'buffalo will return'" (King 143-44).  The magical ritual has started, but it takes some time, and a number of physical trappings, to achieve its influence. Monroe hasn't yet made the church fully invisible, but already it blends in with the prairie and sky around it.  Monroe warns Tecumseh not to tell anyone about their work because "'If they hear about it, it won't work." It is not the people of Bright Water with which Monroe is concerned, "Real buffalo,'" he whispers, 'can spot a decoy a mile away'" (King 145).  Monroe warns Tecumseh against saying anything because, like speaking his moniker, words hold power and speaking about the work in progress could lead to the words being carried on the winds to reach the buffalo, wherever they may be, and keep them from returning.

    This creates a dichotomy in Tecumseh's world, as exemplified by two conversations in particular.  His cousin, Lum, is firmly planted in the real, modern and present world: "'Garbage,' he says, his voice hissing into the wind. 'The new buffalo'" (King 162).  Lum represents a new generation of indian who does not believe in the traditions of folklore and ghost dances and dog soldiers and magic.  He is fully involved in Indian Days and doesn't have much patience for ideas involving art and restoration.  Contrarily, Aunt Cassie's life involves mystery and unanswerable questions.  In one exchange with Tecumseh, the magic at work is stated directly and aloud, "Auntie Cassie looks towards Truth. 'I hear Monroe is painting the church.' 'You should see it,' I say. 'He's making the church disappear'" (King 174).  Monroe's turning the church invisible can be seen from a realistic perspective as merely using paint to camouflage the building to appear as part of the landscape surrounding it.  On another level of perception, Monroe makes the church's history disappear as he turns it into a place of art and magic—his home—and thus, the church as a Christian house of worship has genuinely vanished.  In this latter sense, we see as well how Tecumseh is learning these same methods from Monroe, "I take my shirt off and rub dirt on my body to kill my scent and help me blend with the landscape...'" (King 205), his actions reflecting what he has learned from the restoration project of his mentor.

    Monroe's message becomes overt and undisguised when he tells Tecumseh, "'Magic ... if you want the herds to return, you have to understand magic. [...] Realism will only take you so far'" (208). Monroe, trickster that he is, is also a reflected manifestation of the author, and so Monroe telling us that magic is afoot and that realism won't bring a conclusion is King slipping in a glimpse of the authorial structure at work, hinting that the novel's conclusion will involve a certain brand of magic; realism alone will not bring us, the readers, to where the author wishes us to be.

    Later, when Tecumseh last mentions the buffalo, he sees that "a few of them have wandered off and aren't where they're supposed to be, but most of the have stayed put. Monroe said they might move around a bit and that it isn't a worry as long as they stay in sight."  Given that the church (may or may not) exist out on the prairie, iron decoys of buffalo moving about on their own doesn't come as a surprise.  Realism brought us only so far.  For something truly remarkable, if we use eyes willing to see, we find that magic will show us other paths.

    Soldier, Tecumseh's dog, has found many of the paths which the human characters traverse in the novel.  Soldier is named after the dog soldiers of old Cheyenne lore, indian warriors who staked themselves to a piece of land to defend it against all invaders, both in this world and the next.  The formation of the Dog Soldier came about after a Cheyenne warrior named Porcupine Bear had a vision of two cousins involved in a fight (Hoig).  This source vision manifest in King's novel through the three canine character—Soldier and the two Cousins.  These dogs are a crucial part of the landscape and act as symbols for both discovery and protection.  When, just prior to the conclusion of the novel, Soldier runs away from Tecumseh, Monroe views it with eyes looking at a different world than the landscape of prairies and mountains and big sky:

        "'Looks like he's on a mission,' says Monroe.
        "Soldier trots down the side of the coulee and disappears into the fog. I'm fairly sure I know where he's going, and I'm not sure it's a good idea.
        "'You better go find him,' says Monroe. 'No telling how far he'll go this time.' He leans against the truck and straightens the ribbon so it lies on the bone like lines of blood. 'When you do,' he says, 'ask him not to both the buffalo.'
        "I don't catch up with Soldier." (King 268-69)

Monroe is the trickster and Soldier is the defender and psychopomp, this passage becomes prophecy; a dark foretelling of the death that soon follows.  Tecumseh cannot catch up to Soldier because the dog must travel a path which leads to sunless lands where the living cannot go.  But this possible trek which Soldier makes, is, like the fog that shrouds the bridge spanning the river between Truth and Bright Water, is obscured and ultimately never definitively revealed.

    Monroe's message to the indians of the reservation, like his art, is not always consistent, and by the novel's end both are left unclear, but that uncertainty is part of what he teaches.  What we learn, much like what we experience, requires the proper eyes with which to see, the proper ears with which to hear.  If we hold rigid expectations about what is going to happen, as Lum and others in Bright Water did, then that is all that we may allow to occur.  If we, like Monroe and to some extent Tecumseh, open ourselves to other possibilities, then what we experience around us will continually be surprising and new.  In a previous novel by King, the narrator and Coyote are talking.  The conversation could almost as easily be placed in Truth & Bright Water as being between Tecumseh (a first-person narrator whose name is mentioned only once) and Monroe.  "'There are no truths, Coyote,' I says. 'Only stories.' 'Okay,' says Coyote. 'Tell me a story'" (King qtd by Ruppert).  The story in this latter novel could be summarized as the trickster climbing to the rooftop of an invisible church and yawping to the world: the buffalo have returned and magic is afoot!

Bibliography

Hart, Mickey and Jay Stevens and Fredric Leiberman. Drumming at the Edge of Magic. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990. Print.

Hoig, Stan. The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980. Internet file. 16 April 2010.

King, Thomas. Truth & Bright Water. 2000. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.

Pettigrew, Dawn Karima. "Coyote discovers America: The cultural survival of the trickster in the novels of Thomas King." Wicazo Sa Review 12.1 (1997). EBSCO. Web. 29 April 2010.

Rose, Wendy. "Just What's All This Fuss about Whiteshamanism Anyway?" Coyote Was Here: Essays on Contemporary Native American Literary and Political Mobilization. Aarhus, Denmark: Seklos, Dept. of Eng., Univ. of Aarhus, 1984. EBSCO. Web. 19 April 2010.

Ruppert, James. "When coyote dreams." World & I 8.6 (1993). EBSCO. Web. 30 April 2010.

Smith, Carlton. "Coyote, Contingency, and Community: Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water and Postmodern Trickster." American Indian Quarterly 21.3 (1997). EBSCO. Web. 29 April 2010.

"Truth & Bright Water Reading Guide." Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2001. HarperCollins. PDF. 22 April 2010.



~•~

23 Years...

Doesn't have the same ring to it as "Five Years" but it is just as accurate.



· • ·

The Prophet Speaks...

Talkin Shop: Unexpected Turns

So in the midst of this novel/novella, I-as-writer (as opposed to the I-as-narrator function) ask myself, where as this is going? Sometimes I know, but other times I'm writing my way towards something and don't know what. This is one of those sort of stories. And, as I-as-narrator answered that, I initially thought, how ludicrous. But then I realized that was exactly the way this Brett Easton Ellis-meets-Shirley Jackson tale goes. And the path there is quite wonderful. I hope sometime to find out if you think so as well.

Such unexpected turns are one of the tasty reasons I love what I do—the thrill of being in the midst of pure story as it manifests from the what-it-is-not. If it can surprise, challenge, convince, and thrill me, I suspect/think/hope/pray it may do similar things for others.


· • ·

Ink Blots and Answers

The final paper due for Terrorism in Literature class. A critical opinion paper. Pick a point of view about one of the books read and defend it with examples; must include sources outside the text.

This was really the only book of 9 for the class that I enjoyed reading. It was provocative, alluring, and seductively, like, perhaps, since in a foreign hookah bar and slowly getting stoned from the air you've been breathing for the past hour. And the story has been going on now for a while and is over before you know it.


~•~
(1st draft)


ENG 290
December 10, 2009

Ink Blots and Answers

What is it about some novels that lead a reader to forget they are reading a novel and take what is written to be an actual accounting of events? What sort of protagonist's identity confuses someone into believing the character is the author?

I sit with a cup of Sikkim tea and ponder my own considerations of Mohsin Hamid's short novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It is a curious book, combining several aged literary techniques and devices to tell the sort of a story that is genuinely modern. The two mercenary-archetypal main characters could certainly have met at almost any place—in almost any time in history—but the complexities of national identity and extenuating circumstance bred by the modern age of terrorism, is uniquely contemporary. The two blend in Hamid's novel, and we as readers, are given a brief and wonderfully rich tapestry to assess or formulate our own opinions about national identity and to consider what circumstances could drive an individual to the actions they take.

The framing device of a dramatic monologue is no longer common in modern written literature—although in film, the benefit-from-hindsight voice-over is not uncommon—and the story-within-story technique (placing the characters in a tavern to weather a storm, even if that storm exists only symbolically within themselves) predates The Decameron. Both are used to great effect by Hamid, and, along with a curiously successful second-person narrative voice where the protagonist speaks directly to the reader through a narratively silent stranger he meets in a café in Lahore, Pakistan. We are pulled in to become intimately involved with the story this man reveals—even as he obscures his own motives. Yet in using such literary devices, Hamid never goes long without reminding us we are reading a novel.

Early on, Changez (our Pakistani story-teller), sits in a café and courteously offers assistance to a stranger. Changez quickly shares his assessment of this stranger with us—basing his assumptions on what is presented to him, "Your hair, short-cropped, and your expansive chest ... are typical of a certain type of American; but then again, sportsmen and soldiers of all nationalities tend to look alike" (Hamid 2). Even as Changez strikes directly at some particulars to this individual, we are shown that even with such astute observations, generalities still exist. The framing technique of the novel is set firmly in place a paragraph later when Changez asks this nameless stranger, "Come, tell me, what are you look for? Surely, at this time of day, only one thing could have brought you to the district of Old Anarkali ... that is the quest for the perfect cup of tea."

We are invited to civil discourse over a cup of tea, but the civility of conversation belies the depth of fervor and animosity within these stories revealed, for this is a modern tale of extremist beliefs in action and worldwide repercussions of the September 11 terrorist attacks It is these attacks that lead our protagonist—long before he sits in civil discourse with an American stranger in the Lahore café—to alter his own life and desires to become a radical terrorist himself. Which leaves us, the readers of his tale—to wonder about any sympathy we might offer him. Why do we feel for him and his situation? Or, contrarily, why don't we? Just as the story he tells us is left deliberately ambiguous, our emotional involvement with Changez is left in this vague state.

Mid-way through his tale, Changez shares with us his personal feelings about the attacks of September 11: "My thoughts were not with the victims of the attack—death on television moves me most when it is fictitious and happens to characters with whom I have built up relationships over multiple episodes—no, I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees. Ah, I see I am only compounding your displeasure" (73). Again, Hamid reminds us of our place as readers—as an audience to his tale. This literary self-awareness does break the theatrical "fourth-wall" in addressing us as readers, but this is a device in the story which leads some readers—if they haven't already—to mistake the real and the fictional.

In a popular review of the novel, Amazon.com user Freefall comments, "The book is a semi-autobiographical sketch of a fundamentalist who is only too willing for the cause ... There is nothing in the novel or in the realpolitik that would make a Western audience appreciate his world view. Why should a westerner feel any warmth for the protagonist being a Pakistani...?" This assessment begins with a misunderstanding and concludes with a thinly-veiled prejudice. To have a protagonist share certain traits with an author is nothing new in fiction. Just as assuming some events in a novel might stem from an author's real life is common in some readers. But to make the statement that a novel is semi-autobiographical, is, in this case, akin to hoping that belief is true so that the bigoted opinion already held can be rationalized and given some validity. It is also common in human nature to believe much of what one hears or reads, especially if it sounds like something we already believe.

In the New York Review of Books, Sarah Kerr strikes to the heart of this matter. "Maybe we the readers are the ones who jump to conclusions," she offers, "Maybe the book is intended as a Rorschach to reflect back our unconscious assumptions." This Rorschach analogy allows us to make sense of the confusion this novel breeds in readers. S. Mitra ("A reader from India/USA"), illustrates this confusion: "The authors [sic] initial reaction to September 11th was to be 'remarkably pleased' because somebody had so visibly brought America to her knees.(Pg 72)." Finding the poetic irony about a superpower Goliath struck by a tiny David is not necessarily reflective of sympathetic feelings for that David. Especially when that irony is discovered in the context of a character created for a fictional story. To confuse the creator with their work is myopic of a reader and shows—like a Rorschach ink blot—more about that reader than the novel they opine.

Another Amazon.com reviewer of Hamid, "David" Wordsworth, complains at length and summarizes numerous points which are repeatedly mistaken in popular reviews, "As a Pakistani, you have come to know the best that America has to offer. Were you not admitted to the Ivy League at Princeton ... receive a high-paying job at a prestigious New York financial firm...? Did you not fall in love with a ... woman from New York? Did you not enjoy prime business assignments and bonuses at the expense of your American counterparts...? And yet you sympathize with the 911 attackers. Isn't this odd attitude of yours quite curious? It makes me think. You then become an anti-American advocate in your native land."

Again, the mirror of art has been misunderstood to be a window. It is the prerogative of fiction to create characters who express viewpoints which might otherwise not be heard in any kind of rational forum. It is in the author's realm of creativity to present a character that may be similar in many way to themselves, but should not be taken as ciphers for their own identities. If we examine Lolita, are we to jump to the conclusion that since Humbert Humbert is a literary scholar just as Nabokov was, that the novel is auto-biographical?

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is certainly not a work of complete fabrication; it is a fictional story deliberately designed to be a complex metaphor for this very real and confusing world in which we live. This is why the soil is fertile to grow such ripened misunderstandings. Hamid himself seems to have foreseen this in the final equivocal scene: "I know you have found some of my views offensive; I hope you will not resist my attempt to shake you by the hand. But why are you reaching into your jacket, sir? I detect a glint of metal ... I trust it is from the holder of your business cards" (184).

Even as Changez gives us every reason to expect bloodshed after we turn this last page, he remains civil and courteous to both us, his audience, and to his unnamed American companion, who may well be dead a moment after the book concludes.

A literary critic once stated that good fiction should ask more questions than it answers; if an author has answers, they should write religious tracts. When we as readers close this book, having finished Changez's story, when might pour ourselves another cup of tea and consider the motives, meanings, and intentions demonstrated in this novel. What we are likely to find—from an objective viewpoint, in any case—is that Mohsin Hamid has given us more ink blots than answers.

•

Works Cited

Freefall. "Willing Fundamentalist." Amazon.com.

17 Jul. 2008. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

London: Harcourt, 2008. Print.

Kerr, Sarah. "In the Terror House of Mirrors."

New York Review of Books.
11 Oct. 2007. Print.

Mitra, S. "A not (entirely) amusing piece of

hate mail from Pakistan." Amazon.com.
11 Aug. 2007. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

"Mohsin Hamid." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

28 Nov 2009, 21:43 UTC. 10 Dec 2009.

Wordsworth "David" "A Reluctant Counterpoint

for Changez." Amazon.com.
29 July 2009. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

· • ·

Stylized Denial: The Liminal Journeys in Carnival of Souls and Dead Man

The final paper for Writing About Film. Take one of the films we viewed for class (or clip thereof—which threw Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys in as a qualified sources material—and compare it with another film.

This one didn't go where I wanted it to, but it arrived somewhere nonetheless.


~•~


ENG 317
December 8, 2009
Final Essay

Stylized Denial:
The Liminal Journeys in Carnival of Souls and Dead Man


If I go first, I'll wait for you there,
on the other side of those dark waters.
―James Jones

The world of departed souls is said to be to the west—towards the setting sun. The path leads through a dim world of twilight. Another trail intersects this first; used by shamans as a shortcut to encounter the souls in journey to that other world. At some point along its westward travel, the path encounters water—a running stream, a lake, the great black ocean when the soul crosses to the sunless lands. At the brink, before this point is reached, the soul comes upon a lodge or passageway, where the guardians wait. When the soul reaches the lodge, it comes face-to-face with these guardians. Sometimes the guardians welcome the soul with laughter and drumming, and they carry the soul on to where it will ultimately pass alone. Often times the soul is not greeted warmly, fear and denial dominating what transpired in leading the soul to this point on its journey.

In Mary Henry's voyage from the river where the car she rode in plunged—killing all its occupants—she travels westward to Salt Lake City. Once there, she is drawn to a ruined structure on the outskirts of town that to her is hauntingly familiar. This is the Saltair Pavilion, and in Herk Henry's bleak supernatural tale Carnival of Souls (1962), it acts as Mary Henry's ghost lodge, through which she must pass en route to her ultimate destination.

Similarly—and more directly linked to our analogy of the journey of the soul—Jim Jarmusch's 1995 film Dead Man, shows us William Blake's westward movement from Cleveland to the Pacific Northwest and beyond the reaches of the living. Unlike Mary, Blake is lead by a guide rather than making the trek on his own.

The two films share many semblances. Both are shot in black-and-white, and both have distinctive soundtracks which use only a single instrument performed in a minimalist capacity and employed with deliberate effect to push its constraints. In Carnival of Souls, Gene Moore uses the pipe organ to create the eerie soundtrack which keeps the audience as unsettled as the protagonist, who, incidentally, is an organ player herself. This brings the sense of music into being part of the narrative created by the film and is a vehicle for Mary sense of place within the liminal space of her journey. For Dead Man, the weapon of choice is Neil Young's electric guitar, which fades and rises like a waning heartbeat behind William Blake's travel towards some unknown westward land.

Another trait both films share is their lack of adherence to a single genre. Like their main characters, the films exist in an over-lapping, in-between space of convenient labeling. Carnival of Souls is at once a B-grade horror film, a supernatural thriller, has grown to be seen as an art film, transcending the trappings of its genre. Dead Man is, on its surface, a Western, yet William Blake is no Shane, and the almost surreal Old West town of Mechanic is not a place we're likely to find Clint Eastwood; its theme is far closer to the religious ecstasies displayed in the paintings of the other William Blake—18th century visionary writer and painter who is the namesake of the protagonist.

In Carnival of Souls, the culmination for Mary Henry comes when she walks through the angular curvature of deep shadow at the Saltair, in a north-western direction, passing beneath a framed Arabesque arch. She looks across a barren salt beach, where the jutting piles of decayed docks rise like tombstones, markers of the afterworld. In a reprise of an earlier scene—where Mary played the church organ and fancifully imagined this one—white-faced ghouls rise from the dark water the lake that could as easily be her subconscious. A dozen ghouls amble to the pavilion and, amidst the framework of the decrepit ballroom, they begin to waltz. Circling back and forth, they leer, dancing to the organ music of a malicious merry-go-round.

Mary stands at the periphery, terrified of this totentanz. She has chosen to come to this place, but upon her arriving, denies her own part of this world. Having "seen" this waltz before—while playing the organ at church—she has called this world to her. The organ could be her heart, and she plays it hoping for more life, while all around her evidence of her death dances. When the music stops, the ghouls cease their waltz and turn towards her in sudden pursuit.

They chase Mary out of the pavilion, onto the white salty shoreline of the afterworld. Mary runs beneath the pavilion, among the pylons of the foundation—into the base foundation of her own consciousness—but everywhere she turns she finds a white-faced ghoul waiting. She's returned to her primordial mind and death courts her from every shadow.

The ghouls act as shepherds, herding Mary towards the lake. She runs from beneath the pavilion and out on the featureless salted shore, she stumbles, and the ghouls are upon her. Mary's fall is not so much to the salt and sand of the beach beneath her, but back through a liminal world to the place of her long-procrastinated death.

The denouement is two-fold. Three men, the policeman, the doctor, and the minister—male representation of the Three Fates—follow Mary's path along the beach to where she fell and discover no tracks beyond that point. Following their observations, there is a cut to back east, where the car Mary had been in—and plunged off a bridge into a river—is towed up from the water. Mary's body is, of course, inside.

When it comes to William Blake's moment of passage, he is delirious from his long trek through the dark woods of his own fear and dark night of the soul. Unlike Mary Henry, Blake's journey has had a guide, a psychopomp named Xebeche, a Wakashan who calls himself Nobody. Numerous times along the way, Blake has insisted that he's not dead, but in reaching the gate—both a literal as well as figurative—of a Makah village, he cannot walk through of his own power, his own body allied with his vocal denial of death. Blake leans awkwardly against a section of fallen tree, the rings—its lifespan and evidence of its death—visible around him. Nobody, having lead Blake here, continues his own role as spirit guide, and brokers a deal for Blake to pass through the gate. The solo guitar of the soundtrack pulses in a desultory staccato, as Blake stares up at a carved raven totem and his consciousness fades.

When Blake comes to, more than a dozen Makah stare at him like the faces of ancestral spirits. They appear concerned, confused, menacing. Blake has little choice now, and they seemingly witness his death finally catch up with him. His consciousness fades again.

Blake lays on a shale beach, birds can be heard overhead, the ocean crashing at his head. He is wrapped in funerary cloaks and attempts one last look around, bewildered and uncertain. As his perspective is our own perspective, we are left in this ambiguous state of understanding, having left one world—one film story—but have not yet arrived entirely in another. When he next opens his eyes, Blake is on a canoe laden with, Nobody says, cedar boughs. "It is time for you to leave now, William Blake," Nobody tells him, "Time for you to go back where you came from ... The place where all the spirits come from and to where all the spirits return."

Nobody pushes the canoe into the vast dark waters to the west, but Blake looks back, to the east. He watches helpless as Cole, a bounty hunter who has pursued him, approaches Nobody from behind. In a choreographic death, Cole and Nobody shoot each other—manifestations of Blake's higher and lower ideals; that which wisely guides and that which gives feral chase. William Blake's burial canoe is pulled out to sea by the tides as the staccato guitar pulses and then dies.

Carnival of Souls and Dead Man are cyclic stories which don't so much end where they begin but meander a pre-destined path before finally settling at the conclusion. Upon first-glance Carnival of Souls has a straight-forward understanding at its finish—that Mary died in the car wreck which began the tale, and her spirit continued on a path much the same as if she had lived—Dead Man's ending is left far more metaphysical and ambiguous: At what point did William Blake die? Shot in Thel's room in the town of Machine? In the forest where he fled? On the canoe drifting out to the open ocean?

In both instances the protagonists of these films have made stylized westward journeys through the twilight at the edge of the world to reach acknowledgment of their deaths.

•

Bibliography

Carnival of Souls. Dir. Herk Harvey.

Perf. Candace Hilligoss.

Criterion Collection 63, 1962. DVD.

"Carnival of Souls." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

14 Nov 2009, 12:31 UTC. 1 Dec 2009.

Curnutte, Rick. "Mad Poets: William Blake,

Jim Jarmusch and Dead Man."
The Film Journal 1 (2002).
The Film Journal.
May 2002. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

Dead Man. Dir. Jim Jarmusch.

Perf. Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer.

Miramax, 1995. DVD.

Kawin, Bruce. "Carnival of Souls."

Carnival of Souls
Criterion Collection 63 (2000). Print.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "A gun up your ass:

An interview with Jim Jarmusch."
Cineaste 22.2 (1996). Print.

Taubin, Amy. "Dead Man Talking."

The Village Voice 14 May 1996, 41.20. Print.

· • ·

Sense and Antisense

The first assignment from the Lyric Essay class was to define what a lyric essay is, something which has not been definitively done since the term was coined more than a few years ago by the Seneca Review.

After reading this, if I were me, I'd say, "So let's hear your lyric essay you little contrarian complainy pants." To which I reply, I'd share it with you, but not publicly at this point since it's under submission right now (having already garnered a personal rejection from SR; to which I wish I could reply to answer their question about the gist of the piece).

Anything else I could say about this paper would just be repeating what the paper itself says. And I'm just not that tautologically repetitive.


~•~
(Draft 1.5)


CRW 315 – Lyric Essay
March 2, 2009

Sense and Antisense

It is not a prose poem. It is not an informative article. It is not a memoir. It is not a dissertation. It is not an argumentative tract. It is not a recipe of exotic cuisine. It is not a soft doctrine nailed to the door of an empire and accompanied by a daring refrain that echoes through the centuries—Here stand I, I can do no other! It is not bureaucratic Endlösung meant to redact an ethnicity from the genetic collective.

It is not a story, with plot and conflict and resolution.

But it can be any of these things.

The it, in this case, is an ephemeral collection of words called a lyric essay.

Unlike a more formal writing, a lyric essay does not necessarily state clearly its subject, with introduction and thesis statement, then outline references and arguments that compare or contrast view points or facts, it instead might not even mention what its true subject really is, talking, as it were, around that point. In other words, it is based entirely on the subjective and not the objective.

If a metaphor for all writing is a river flowing along its course, then technical writing (such as scientific papers or an instruction manual) would be a fairly direct, smoothly flowing stream, in which one could reach at any time with being swept away by rapids (which might be adventure fiction), poetry could be seen as a babbling brook of pleasant cascades that shimmered over smooth rocks and glittered in dappled sunlight (haiku being droplets of water clinging to the leaves and flowers growing along the shoreline), and the lyric essay then would be an oxbow in a meandering river plain—a place where the stream once flowed regularly, but a variance in course left this bend in the stream separated from where it once ran. Like the subject in a lyric essay, to describe the oxbow, one could tell of what the river used to be, but is no longer.

•

―It is not a prose poem. It is not an informative article.

In his piece, "The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto," David Antin tells a story about shopping with his wife for a new mattress because she has back troubles. On the page, his words appear much as a poem would, breaking like verses in modern, unrhymed, poetry. But, as the title suggests, this is a postmodern piece, and uses its form to call attention to itself, and, as a lyric essay, really isn't about shopping for a mattress at all:

"so i felt there was no reason to get rid of this
mattress that had been promised to us by a salesman who said
it would last the rest of our lives i figured we were going to live
long lives i didnt think we were anywhere close to dying so
neither was the mattress" (113)

Antin, then, is discussing holding onto things of the past, aging, and the vacuity of language, especially in regards to consumer sales and goods. At the end of the piece, he and his wife have purchased a new mattress and have been sleeping on it for a while. His wife still has her back troubles, but they are not as bad as they used to be. Antin concludes,
"if youre lost in a forest and you have no idea which way
to go go for it straight ahead because its not likely to be
any worse than anything else" (122)

On the surface of his context, what Antin probably intends here, is that having been overwhelmed by consumer choices for a mattress, one is likely to be about as good as any other, and that a mattress—or any thing—is not likely to impact your life to the point of irrevocably altering it in any significant manner. Whereas, if this excerpt was from a "formal" informational article, one could easily argue that walking lost in a forest, a given direct can most certainly be much worse than another.

•

―It is not a memoir. It is not a dissertation.

In Joan Didion's essay "The White Album," she weaves her own life in among those of many notable people in the late 1960s, but never quite elucidates exactly what it is she's attempting to reveal. "We tell each other stories in order to live," she says at the beginning, but then the story she relates becomes an exercise in pretzel logic in attempting to decipher it. At least part of this is touching upon the more familiar ground of memoir, as she reveals early in the piece psychiatric information which might be her way of offering the reader evidence that she is an unreliable narrator.

This, on one level, would lend an emotional gravity to the piece, but her narrative becomes convoluted to the point that it is not, indeed, memoir nor dissertation, nor even an argumentative tract about the era of the 60s, the personalities of the famous names she constantly mentions, nor even, really, herself. She offers almost random bits of information—like jig-saw pieces with which we are perhaps supposed to put together to figure out what it is she's telling us. With the promise at the beginning that we tell stories in order to live, it seems worthwhile to assemble these jig-saw pieces. With a more formal essay, such as that of a memoir, we might do so. But this is a lyric essay, and so the jig-saw pieces are randomly collected from a number of different puzzles, and a logical assembly is not possible. Didion implies that she knows this is the case, "writing has not yet helped me to see what it means," she tells us at the end of the piece. And that is, one could argue, the point: the era and its people did not make sense—neither at the time nor in hindsight when we try to understand what happened—and so her telling this story is not supposed to be pieced together and figured out with logic and reason, however Escherean the staircase we follow may be.

•

―It is not an argumentative tract. It is not a recipe of exotic cuisine.

Reason and logic are definitely inapplicable to the essay by Harry Mathews, "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)." Evidenced by the word-play in the title, this essay gives the appearance of a exotic recipe from the land of renowned cuisine. But the dish described in the piece would be infeasible to prepared—bordering on the physically impossible—thus being a farce, as well as the essay being an example of a story-within-a-story, creating an entendre because the essay, as well as the fictive dish he details, is double stuffed.

Not only does Mathews use the recipe of a meal to tell a story on one level, in the middle of the cooking instruction, he unravels a story about a song that should be sung at one point in the preparation.

"It tells the story of a blacksmith's son who sets out to find his long-lost mother. She is dead, but he cannot remember her death, nor can he accept it." (187) Mathews continues with his tale about this fictitious song that is sung in the middle of preparing an impossible dish traditional to a fictitious town in France (which, some may say, hardly exists in reality at all). The connection, we are told, between this song and the farce double being made, is "an analogy between the stars and the holes in the lid of the roasting pot." (90)

On the surface—ignoring the fictitious nature of the dish, the town, and the song—this essay is about cooking a rural French dish. On another level, it concerns the loss of tradition and the willful forgetting of the past. And it is done so with the humor of irony, and a lyricism that combines traits of folklore, ballads, and cookbooks.

•

―It is not a story, with plot and conflict and resolution.

Of all the lyric essays read from D'Agata's collection, few contain the elements that are usually considered integral to clear written communication. In many, there is no thread of causality, either in plot, narrative, or theme; that is, some connection between one idea and the next which, linked together in some manner lead the reader to a conclusion. There is little that could be designated as conflict in many of these essays. And conflict in any written work, be it article, poem, or story, is commonly thought of as being essential to drawing a reader through from beginning to end.

This is not to categorically state that anything described as a lyric essay doesn't have causal relationship or conflict, as we have seen in Mathews' piece, some of them display these characteristics. But without some sense of what it is, the lyric essay rests at a dangerous point in the spectrum of the written word.

At its best, a lyric essay—like poetry (to steal a line from William Rose Benét)—suckles honeyed words from the poisoned lips of life. It can be use form and content to share information or impart emotion where a more linear, traditional form of the written word cannot. At its worse, it becomes muddled self-indulgent nonsense.

Without a more clearly defined realm for the lyric essay, the dangerous is present for an unintelligible written work to be declared a lyric essay and suddenly take on meaning where no existed before.

On the other hand, one might argue, that, like the Tao, any definition of the lyric essay confines and constrains it, and it no longer has an ambiguous quality that the lyric essay now possesses in a non-possessive way.

•

―It is not a soft doctrine . . . It is not bureaucratic Endlösung . . .

In postmodern literature—which is certainly a phylum the lyric essay is taxonomically related to—a great deal of emphasis is placed on what the author of a piece intends or considers the work to be. If the author's sensibilities are such to declare a work art, then it is art.

But a reader's sensibilities are just as important to a work as is the writer's. Once it is written and sent off into the world, it no longer belongs to them. The writer is not available to every reader to explain what was meant or intended—nor should they be—and the author of a written work is probably the last person who should be given quarter to explain what their work signifies or what should be inferred by it. They wrote the thing, therefore, have had their chance to explain, define, instruct, cajole, solicit, impart, sway, compel, or share their joys and sorrows, miracles and tears. At that point, a work must stand on its own to be whatever a reader of it chooses or decides are its merits and/or flaws.

The author and poet Charles Bukowski (whom I do not much care for) wrote, "An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way." By this definition, I think a number of the authors of the lyric essays John D'Agata has collected are not artists, they're intellectuals.


· • ·

Tantalus Muse

This is a piece I'd really like to rework a bit and lengthen.

From the aforementioned misliked Nonfiction course. I guess I didn't mislike it all-in-all, just misliked the way it was taught and the fact that workshopping stories in a Creative Writing Program seems to inherently be:
"Teacher, I can't read this story because the grammar is so bad it's unintelligible."

"Oh, don't worry about that—you don't need to correct it—just push through that and comment on the story."

"But if I can't read to understand it, how can I tell if there even is a story!?"

"Well, that's the assignment..."

Oh, Sisyphean Fates, how you taunt me so‽

The assignment was to write a story (nonfiction) about something you remember one way but found out was, in fact, different than your memory.

I, of course, had just the story...


~•~
(2nd draft)

CRW 309 Creative Non-Fiction
TANTALUS MUSE: The Red-Haired Girl
12/3/08
Final Draft


When I was five years old, my family went to visit my aunt for two weeks, at the end of summer. She lived in a house along the Atlantic shore in Virginia. Her back yard was a wide flat manicured lawn that fell away suddenly in rocky cliffs at the water's edge. There, a pier ran out into the ocean like a long fingertip that pointed into the gray-blue flux of forever. At high tide, the waves would crash up against the rocky shoreline, spraying their salty mist into the cool air, the beads of sweat of its long endeavors. I remember watching the crashing waves for hours wanting to linger on a single wave dissipating into mist, but before I could hold onto the falling drops back into the sea another wave would come along and smash into the remnants of the previous.

I'm sure I watched those waves for hours.

A few minutes, anyway.

My Aunt Gertrude had a proverbially quaint-and-lovely tea garden behind her house next to a koi pond that wrapped around three sides of a small swimming pool. The fourth side of the pool was bordered by a bunk house, long thin deep green fingers of hollyhock vines crawling slowly up its dark fired brick walls. A few sprawling Southern Oaks held a canopy of shade over the garden, towering over a few maples, a single red cedar, and not-so-closely trimmed hedges lining the courtyard. Saw palmettos guarded ever corner, threatening impalement to a three-foot tall five year old, should he venture off the cobblestone path. In the middle of the courtyard of the tea garden the adults would all sit around a glass-topped black iron table and talk about the boring things adults tend to talk about.

I remember the place so vividly—I can still hear the cricket chorus in the evening tune down as the bullfrogs started their nightly swollen throat-song contests that would go on for more hours than most people would believe or ever bothered to sit around and hear—the smell of wet brick and soil and rain and roots. I remember one afternoon out by the bunk house and pool—fallen reddish leaves on the slate cobblestone blown by summer breezes to scrap away days that lasted forever—I first saw my cousin, the red-haired girl.

I guess she was my cousin. I didn't think of her as my cousin at the time, but in the memory, that's the impression I have. When I was five, I didn't make such differentials. She was older than me or my sister. More like my brother's age, I guess. My sister was nine at the time, my brother, fifteen, so I guess my cousin I saw at Aunt Gertrude's would have been about seventeen, maybe eighteen years old.

She had coppery red hair and wore a white summer dress the turned soft yellow or dark amber in the sinking shades of daylight. I followed her through the tea garden and around the wooded backyard, out to the shoreline of the crashing Atlantic. I'd wait for her along the grassy lawn She was nice, and didn't really play any games with me, but didn't mind me following her around like a lost puppy dog, plastic Batmobile in one hand and chewing on my shirt collar. That was a habit I had then. Pull the front of my shirt collar up to chew on until it was soaked with slobber. I didn't mind that sort of thing when I was five. And neither did the red-haired girl.

I remember she thought it was cute that I followed her around, and although I remember we talked a few times, I don't remember the sound of her voice. I remember her smell, like sweet rotten cypress and honeysuckle, and the way she moved, her bare feet seeming to not touch the ground where she walked but getting dirty none the less.

A sure sign that you'd had a good day was seen in how stained and dirty your feet were at the end of it.

Following around the red-haired girl those last days of summer when I was five is a memory that still speaks to me in a wordless language of invisible symbology, a feeling steeped in faith and intuition. Reassurance; the calm certainty that everything is all right. Not so much safe and secure as balanced and still.

Sitting by the koi pond and watching the mammoth goldfish in the dark green waters of the garden pond with the red-haired girl is one of the most blissful places in my memory. And deeply imprinted me in so many ways.

•

There is something very wrong with that vivid slice of the past.

Here is the verifiable evidence of this deeply curious memory: Aunt Gertrude's house wasn't in Virginia, but was, in fact, on a barrier island near Savannah, Georgia; our visit was in Spring, not late Summer; my mother's oft-told story of how I almost drowned when I dropped my plastic toy Batmobile into the swimming pool and dove in after it was in no way exhaggerated.

And there was, in fact, no red-haired girl present at Aunt Gertrude's.

For years after that visit I thought about my cousin, the red-haired girl, and wondered, as years passed, what sort of life she had. When I was older than she would have been when I met her, I asked my mom about her. My mom's a genealogist and historian and she always has the story behind the various weird family members.

"That time we visited Aunt Gertrude," I asked my mom, "Her . . . daughter, I guess it would have been. Maybe sixteen, eighteen years old," I told her, just like my memory held in place, "Whatever happened to her?"

"Aunt Gertrude's daughter?" my mother asked, looking at me like I had a sprouted tentacles from my head.

"Yeah. Isn't that who had the house my the shore, with the tea garden and pool?"

"Yes, Gertrude's house had that wonderful little tea garden in the back courtyard and the pool you dropped your Batmobile in and almost drowned trying to get it."

My mom loves bringing up the highlights of my brushes with death. The local ER had a ward named after me.

"That's the place." I tell her.

My mother's expression of crazed disbelief didn't change. "Aunt Gertrude doesn't have a daughter. I don't know who you're remembering . . . "

Even after several attempts at clarifying, my mother drew a blank on who I was talking about. My brother and sister weren't any help, neither of them remembering anyone at all that I could be remembering.

A figment. A ghost.

I clearly remember spending many hours of each day for two weeks following around and talking to someone who apparently wasn't real in any consensually experienced part of the universe.

Was my memory of a guardian angel? A creepy fetch-spirit? Manifestation of the divine? A succubus come to prey on a little boy?

Hmmm, I don't mind the sound of that.

But then I think, things don't need to have happened to be real.

Memories are real even if the events in them didn't happen in that way. Stories are real, even if they aren't true. Storytelling is creating something that didn't previous exist.

And the non-existent red-haired girl started showing up, wearing various guises, in my stories. Like a shirking shadow of thought, a wisp of impossible memory, my Tantalus Muse would come and tell me a story. I'd write them, but it sometimes seems more like transcribing the words of someone else.

Maybe the red-haired girl is in some other version of this universe and I'm the figment in her memory. Maybe she's the storyteller, that little red-haired girl, in that other universe, and I'm just a character in her tale. The threads of the plot stretch out into the darkness of possibility, and I step forward to find out what comes next.


· • ·