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.



~•~

[Doing Nothing ≠ Neutrality]

FST 205-002
30 April 2010

[Doing Nothing ≠ Neutrality]
The Camera as a Gun in Danis Tanović's No Man's Land

    The Italian neorealist film movement grew out of need and necessity amidst the cultural and economic devastation following WWII and reflected the ambiguous moral conditions which existed in Italy in the years following the war. The narrative of these films often centered on the trauma to the psyche of people in their everyday life, the desperate poverty and uncertain future facing most people in the country at that time. Twenty years later, the film movement of Third Cinema developed in Latin America to confront colonialism, American capitalism, and the Hollywood model of cinema which dominated most film markets throughout the world—which was seen by many Latin American film makers as being escapist entertainment bereft of social awareness or value and created only to make money. These Third Cinema filmmakers embraced the idea of film as a weapon of propaganda. Indeed, regardless of authorial intention, they viewed cinema as already being in the political realm of propaganda; that is, a message meant to convey ideals about a specific social-ideological structure. Upon the tapestry of these two film movements—and in the lingering aftermath of atrocity in the Yugoslav Wars—Danis Tanović created what could rightfully be cited as the first anti-war film of the post-Cold War era, the Bosnian release, No Man's Land (Ničija zemlja) (2001).

    Tanović's film is infused with seemingly insignificant details that add up to make a mosaic of something larger than itself, albeit, a mosaic that might resemble a stained glass window shattered by rifle fire and is missing a few pieces; those missing pieces are provided by the viewers' various degrees of perception and connotative understanding. It is saturated with political commentary mixed with metaphors which reflect the competitive clash of multiple ideological propaganda and tinged with bitter sarcasm—the sort of humor one might laugh at and then wonder if it was really meant to be funny, consider it was, laugh again, and then wonder what has brought humor to the point that something like that was indeed meant to be so humorous. It makes some level of sense then, that this single film could so casually incorporate and display its many different genres and film movements. It becomes, as previously stated, an anti-war film, a Post-Cold War film, an example of new European cinema (being produced by companies from at least six nations), an anti-globalization film, a biting political satire, a reflection of mass consumer-driven media, and even an examination of the micro-politics of the murderous impulses that lay buried in the deep of the human psyche. That's a lot of mosaic pieces scattered about that readers of this dense text must consider if wishing to offer commentary equal to the complicated narrative offered in the film.

    Although Italian neorealism may have died at the end of the credits in Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D, it would be a short and futile argument to say that Gillo Pontecorvo's La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) isn't depicted in an unselfconsciously similar style. Realistic to the point that not only was there a caption at the beginning of the film assuring the audience that "not one foot" of newsreel was used, but forty years later the Pentagon would host a screening of the film as an instructional guide to their current urban warfare in Iraq. Writing about the Pentagon screening, New York Times critic, Stuart Klawans offers that "apart from Orson Welles, no one before had so imaginatively imitated the look of a newsreel, although Welles had pulled the trick only for the 'March of Time' segment of Citizen Kane, whereas Mr. Pontecorvo kept up his illusion for 123 minutes." Given the circumstances in Tanović's own country for the decade prior to making No Man's Land, it might have been expected to see him produce a film with a similar dramatic-documentary ethos.

    Danis Tanović was studying film and theatre at the Sarajevo Academy of Art when the Yugoslav Wars began in the early '90s. The Academy taught multi-disciplinary theatre—film-making, TV, radio—in the same program. When the Siege of Sarajevo began, he volunteered with the militia but because of his background in film, he ended up carrying a camera instead of a gun. His work documenting the war began often used footage for the world media covering the war from abroad. He continued this for a few years before smuggling himself out of Bosnia and finishing his education in Belgium. Years later, when production began on his first feature film—No Man's Land—the location shoot was in Slovenia, which had been spared virtually all warfare, but the filming location was within range of the country's military maneuvers. Actual tank and artillery fire could often be heard during filming. All of this, along with Tanović's love of De Sica's techniques, produced a film that blatantly shows the influence of Italian neorealism, but could never be mistaken for a documentary at all.

    The staging of this—as well as a number of overt points within the narrative—becomes a matter then for comparison to Latin American Third Cinema and its use—which Tanović experienced first-hand—of the camera as a gun; the manipulation of scene and tailored narrative to formulate image and story into propaganda. Tanović loads his film with information that is perhaps not meant to be consciously understood upon first viewing but instead lingers in the psyche to impart information at a later time. The very principle which guides much of political and ideological "advertising," or, as could be drawn from Bolshevist Russian terminology, the idea of agitprop (a portmanteau of agitation and propaganda). Tanović not only uses this theory as technique in his film-making, but incorporates it into the story's narrative.

    First, an example of the density of visual information. From the opening scene, the world is shrouded with a blinding fog. From out of this step five or six non-uniformed soldiers (the audience is not given specific number of men, as the fog is too dense). The only indicators of which side these soldiers fight for—their national identity—are simple buttons and patches pinned to their jackets, or, in a few cases, only a colored bandana tied around the arm. This detail reveals the deep significance of identity which permeates the film. Not the sort of identity of belonging so much as the identity of placing blame. The extreme visual density is so ingrained that subtitles are provided in several scenes in which there are dialogue nor written words. These subtitles inform those unfamiliar with the symbol set at work: most participants look the same, are of a shared ethnic and cultural heritage (despite the wailings of national extremists to the contrary). The colors depicted on the flags from both sides are similar and it is only in the small coat of arms displayed in the center of one banner that reveals who's side is whose. Without understanding the background of the conflict, the symbols shown are of little use (even in the American Civil War/War Between the States—the only instance in United States history that holds any similarity to the Yugoslav Wars—the two sides in conflict chose alternative colors for their troops). In a wide angle shot of the front lines, a red, white, and blue flag unfurls in the breeze. A cross in the center with four Cs is displayed. The film subtitle detonates to the outside viewer what signifier is on display: Serbian Lines. This subtitling is repeated at various times in the first third of the film to indicate the Bosnian Lines, a UN Outpost, and road barricades for both the Serbs and the Bosnians, showing the film's "point of view is not anchored in any one national perspective, but sees a local ethnic conflict from a roaming vantage point, moving between two soldiers from opposing sides stuck in a stalemate, hamstrung U.N. officials, and an intrusive TV journalist" (Corbin 46). Without familiarity of the signs and signifiers involved—whose ideology holds sway in a given area—the viewer could be at a loss as to identity in the film. This is a deliberate point made by Tanović which certainly has its roots in the Latin American revolutionary cinema of the 1960s.

    Showing aspects of multiple viewpoints simultaneously is not limited merely to the visuals in the film, but also is inherent in the structure of the story being told. This is not a film where a scene of narrative is followed by a scene of characterization followed by the micro-details of a model telling, that is, a single example meant to convey the repetition steeped in routine. Instead, Tanović uses the attention to the smallest of details to show us character mindset, personal faith, and context within the narrative all at once. Early in the story, Čiki is alive but wounded in the trench in no man's land between the two front lines. He explores the trench as best he can, and is under the assumption that the shelling that stranded him there also killed his friend Cera. For a full two minutes of screen time within an even longer scene without dialogue, Čiki discovers a half-smoked cigarette on the ground in the trench, realizes he has no lighter, deduces where a lighter might be (in a kit bag outside the trench within range and view of snipers from both sides), devises and enacts a plan to recover the kit bag from in the field of fire, does so, and finally, reverently, lights his cigarette. In a situation where death occurs at the speed of 800 meters a second, this attention to the seemingly inconsequential detail and gesture of smoking a cigarette shows the joy each living moment has in a war zone. Later, when Čiki discovers, only too late to prevent the tragedy which befalls Cera, that his friend is alive, he shares a cigarette with him. Cera jokes with him, "I hope those aren't my cigarettes." "When I took them, I didn't know you'd need them. But now I hope," Čiki tells his friend as he holds one for Cera to smoke, "that you'll die of cancer."

    This humor is also a integral part of the film, of the culture from which it comes. These are a people who, in the midst of the longest siege of modern military history upon a capital city under heavy embargo from both the United Nations and the assaulting Bosnian Serb Army, wrote and published a manual called the Sarajevo Survival Guide. This book details with bleak and vicious sarcasm, a guided tour through a city that had hosted the Olympic Games eight years previous. One example from the Guide concerns gift-giving during time of siege, "for you will have friends to visit ... a complete edition of books which lack humor and poetry. Could you spare some Vladimir Illich Lenin? Last winter has proven that his books burn well" (Prstojević 39). The straight-faced humor displays itself in the film as commentary on media propaganda, as newshound Jane Livingstone, Global News Channel, points out when she signs off from a live update, "The absurdity of war continues. How will this all end? Stay tuned."

    This sort of war humor isn't by any means unique to Tanović's film. Although with his Sarajevan wit, Tanović plays it openly understated. In The Battle of Algiers there is a almost imperceptible moment of outrageous ironic humor in the middle of what is perhaps the most infamous scene in the film. As the three women plant their bombs in cafés around the European Quarter, the girl in the milk bar dances to a pop tune. The song is "Hasta Mañana;" a revolutionary's sense of humor is not well-understood outside of besieged or occupied cities. Tanović, in his film, makes clear that "laughter was an antidote to horror in the Bosnian war: 'We didn't have any weapons, so humor was the way we defended ourselves against what was happening'" (Gilgoff). The comedic aspects of the film reflect the absurdity of the situation, of warfare in general and of humans astonishing penchant for atrocity. "The comedy is not in juxtaposition with more serious moments, but felt as a grim irony underneath every action ... it is not laughter the film evokes so much as a grim smile" (Corbin 47-48). This theme is present throughout, but it is crucial to understand the context of this film.

    Globalization is another target where Tanović's biting sarcasm replaces the animosity and anger conjured by Third Cinema. In repeated exchanges between characters of multiple nationalities, it seems English is the only common language most of them share. As French UN soldiers await a German bomb expert who arrives "bang on the dot" to the minute he was scheduled to, the two Frenchmen and the German verbally demonstrate active stereotypes in a subtle manner:

        German De-miner: Guten tag.
        Captain Dubois: Parlez-vous français?
        German De-miner: Nein.
        Sergeant Marchand: English, of course?
        German De-miner: Yeah, of course.

This commentary on globalization reflects on the micro-politics within the film of understanding between characters of even the same language.  Even sharing the same symbol sets, language, or a pre-war infatuation for the same woman (as two characters from opposing sides do) does not automatically lead to understanding.  And this understanding a fellow human is a major underlying theme in No Man's Land.

    This film does not take sides and it does not point fingers nor firearms of blame at any one side in this conflict (as the characters do, insisting the other admit fault in being the aggressor).  It does not seek to exonerate anyone, but to rationally complicate the matter in order to examine it more closely.  As is repeated several times in the film, one cannot remain neutral in the face of murder and doing nothing does not equal neutrality. Without laying upon us-as-compassionate-viewers a guilt trip for which we could almost all be culpable, Tanović brings us conspiratorially close to the cause of the conflict, to the point, almost, of complicity.  In some sense, acquiescence. But guilt? Tanović detours us all from the easy path of guilt.

    At the end of this film, two soldiers are dead, and one is left alive, albeit a movement away from death by the "bouncing mine" activated under where he lies in the dirt on the floor of the trench in no man's land.  The UN soldiers with their impotent rifles of neutrality make ready to depart.  The media with their loaded cameras drive away ("a trench is just a trench" she tells her cameraman). Their camera is a gun as well, but in this case, their shots missed the real target. Danis Tanović's aim, however, does not.

Bibliography

Corbin, Amy. "No Man's Land (Nikogarŝnja Zemlja)." Film Quarterly 60.1 (2006): 46-50. JSTOR. Web. 3 Apr. 2010.

Cowie, Peter. "The Idealist." Projections 15 A Greater Europe (2007): 68-72. ILL. Web. 7 Apr. 2010.

Dovi, Suzanne. "Movie Review." Contemporary Justice Review 6.4 (2003): 401-02. Print.

Gilgoff, Dan. "The Man From No Man's Land." U.S. News & World Report 132.12. 15 Apr. 2002: 10. Print.

Horton, Andrew. "Beyond No Man's Land: Comic Tragedy & Tearful Laughter in Cinemas of the Balkans." World Literature Today 77.3/4 (2003). JSTOR. Web. 3 Apr. 2010.

Ničija zemlja (No Man’s Land). Dir. Danis Tanović. By Danis Tanović. Noé Productions and Fabrica, 2001.

Portuges, Catherine. "No Man's Land (Nikogarŝnja Zemlja)." American Historical Review 107.2 (2002): 675-76. JSTOR. Web. 4 Apr. 2010.

Prstojević, Miroslav. Sarajevo Survival Guide. Sarajevo: FAMA, 1993: 39. Print.

Shapiro, Michael J. "'The Fog of War'" Security Dialogue 36.2 (2005): 233-46. Sage. Web. 4 Apr. 2010.

Stewart, Matthew. "Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land and the Contemporary War Movie." Midwest Quarterly 47.1 (2005): 9-25. Print.

The Matthew Passage

English 363
April 28, 2010

The Matthew Passage:
Damned Ideology in Mountains Beyond Mountains

    Before Tracy Kidder leads us up the crisscrossing trail through the religious manifesto of the Matthew Passage in Mountains Beyond Mountains, we've already become familiar—if a bit uncomfortable—with the multi-faceted persona of Dr. Paul Farmer.  Farmer is shown as an agent for grace, an iconoclastic saint, and an avid, delighted practitioner of deep, abiding faith in the midst of 20th century academia and secular medical science.  He becomes familiar, because we are show Farmer in several of his guises and see his work as if at first hand; uncomfortable, because most of that work as been among the "wasteland" and "slums" in regions of the world that are, at best, "littered with ... garbage, garbage on fire, and with ramshackle-looking developments, like ... strip malls that had moldered before being completed" (135).   Somewhere amidst this familiar discomfort, Kidder allows Farmer to display in vivid terms, his working compassion and to challenge to us—as readers, as humans—to find in ourselves some measure of care, concern, and action for those born into the global rural squalor of poverty and disease.

    One of the first impressions Kidder shows is Farmer self-description as "'a poor person's doctor,'" but, as Kidder tells us honestly, "he didn't quite fit my preconception of such a person" (7).  What follows is a seeming paradoxical personality assessment that we will come to understand is part of the conflict within Farmer that drives him to perform his work:

[Farmer] clearly liked the fancy restaurant, the heavy cloth napkins, the good bottle of wine.  What struck me ... was how happy he seemed with his life.  Obviously [he] could have been doing good works as a doctor while commuting between Boston and a pleasant suburb—not between a room in what I imagined must be a grubby church rectory and the wasteland of central Haiti.  The way he talked, it seemed he actually enjoyed living among Haitian peasant farmers.  At one point, speaking about medicine, he said, "I don't know why everybody isn't excited by it." (7)

Although this description is intended to summarize the dichotomy of Farmer's personality, it becomes something more akin to a personal testament, crossing over into religious experience.  Kidder says that Farmer "smiled at me, and his face turned bright ... a luminescent smile.  It affected me quite strongly, like a welcome gladly given, one you didn't have to earn" (7).  This precise account is easily analogous with what theologians call Grace—that is, a spontaneous, unmerited divine gift.

    The concept and importance of grace is an idea which separates not only Roman Catholicism from the Calvinists and Protestants, but, in Mountains Beyond Mountains, can also be seen as what separates Farmer from his more urban and conventional fellow medical practitioners.  His acts of grace are seen by both those he works with and treats as being the reason he is considered to be not only happy—as exemplified by his point about being excited by his work—but also that dreaded religious term in the midst of a secular world: Dr. Paul Farmer is also a pious man.

    After Farmer secures a spot in a homeless shelter for an ailing alcoholic and drug abuser named Joe—secured with false promises that Joe will no longer engage in habits that Farmer himself enables Joe to continue—Farmer visits the shelter on Christmas, bringing presents for everyone.  Farmer's gift for Joe is a six-pack of beer hidden non-discretely in a paper bag.  In Farmer's method of healing, he considers a six-pack of Budweiser as the healthier alternative for the ailing alcoholic than Joe's preference of a 1/2 gallon of vodka.  "As Farmer was leaving the shelter, he heard Joe say to another resident, just loudly enough to make Farmer wonder if Joe meant him to overhear, 'That guy's a fuckin' saint.'"  Kidder expounds upon Joe's comment, "It wasn't the first time Farmer heard himself called that.  When I asked him his reaction, he said he felt like the thief in Hawthorne's novel The Marble Fawn, who steals something from a Catholic church and, before making his escape, dips his hand in holy water" (16).  Even as Farmer performs his acts of grace for those ailing souls in the homeless shelter on Christmas, he breaks the very rules that govern the addicts being taken in.  Farmer may be a saint for his manner of treatment, but his role of divinity is an iconoclastic one.  It is a contradiction he noticed in himself years earlier while still in Harvard medical school.

    There was a time in human history when mythology accounted equally for science and religion, but in more modern society, the two are usually viewed as being counterpoint, if not outright the antithesis of the other.  It was not a binary Manichaeism which Farmer ascribed to, and he makes this clear when he voices, "'the fact that any sort of religious faith was so disdained at Harvard and so important to the poor—not just in Haiti but elsewhere, too—made me even more convinced that faith must be something good'" (85).  Kidder weighs this animosity, telling us that Farmer "'was taken with the idea that in an ostensibly godless world that worshipped money and power or, more seductively, a sense of personal efficacy and advancement, like at Duke and Harvard, there was still a place for God, and that was in the suffering of the poor'" (85).  This epiphany then is when Kidder brings us to the rise on our own mountain trail where we see just ahead our intended destination—the summit of our thesis: the Matthew Passage.

    Dr. Farmer performs his medical work for the poorest, most diseased, and impoverished people this world has to offer.  This work is accomplished not because of, but despite numerous bureaucratic, political, and financial hindrances placed in his way.  Frequently, Farmer must leave the remote locations of his medical work to travel to Moscow, Lima, New York, or Boston, to obtain funding, medical supplies, or other materials.  In discussing this need to interact with politicians and corporate business personnel, Kidder perhaps inadvertently illustrates clearly the point Farmer will later make in a reference to the Gospel of Matthew:

When he was younger, Farmer used to come and go ... in jeans and a T-shirt, until he realized this upset his Haitian friends, who always dressed up to travel.  Then Père Lanfontant told him that if he was going off to represent them to the world, he should wear a suit.  Farmer owned two but had loaned one to a friend.  He preferred the black one anyway, because it allowed him, for example, to wipe the fuzz off the tip of his pen onto his pants leg while writing up orders at the Brigham, catch a night flight, say to Moscow or Lima, and still look presentable when he arrived. (184)

It is hidden here among these words in which Farmer displays his faith in such a profound and integral manner that it becomes blind commonplace in his everyday life.  Kidder tells us that Farmer has two suits, but had loaned one of them to a friend.  A page later—when Farmer relates his Matthew Passage—the connection is linked, and once noticed, becomes as if our perception is cleansed and we gaze into the infinite divine.

    Kidder describes a drive along a remote road in the Haitian wasteland and seeing emaciated beggars, barefoot children, and starving livestock.  Kidder makes a Biblical comment—"if you've done it unto the least of them, you've done it unto me"—meant to impress Farmer, and the doctor replies:

"Matthew twenty-five," said Farmer.  "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me." He went on, paraphrasing, "When I was hungry, you fed me.  When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.  When I was a stranger, you took me in.  When I was naked, you gave me clothes.  When I was sick, when I was in prison, you visited me.  Then it says, Inasmuch as you did it not, you're screwed."  He smiled, swerving around another giant rut in the road. (185)

This, then, becomes the mustard seed of all that Farmer does.  He finds joy, not in the suffering of others, but in his work to ease that suffering, even if that ease comes, as it almost always does, in a temporary form.  Instead of trying to find the loopholes in his faith—like that which might be found in a bigoted, derogatory man who lives his life deliberately blind to those who suffer around him only to make a death-bed conversion to his own Lord and Savior in a vain attempt for grace and forgiveness—Farmer enacts his faith with delight and graciousness, though the road he chose leads him through hardships he could have avoided for a much easier, much more comfortable path.  It is not the vague idea of grace and redemption Farmer deals with, it's the filthy, bloody sort that exists in the forgotten and ignored vectors of our planet.  The difficult sort that comes about when treating sick and tubercular patients in Cange, Haiti, or the seemingly insignificant act of loaning one of his two suits to a friend—"I was naked...and you clothed Me" (Matt 25:36, NASB).  Farmer lives his faith with deliberate joy, not with snide duplicity.  He does what he does not out of fear of damnation, but out of love.  Not love as some poetic ideal, but love as a verb of doing, of being.  Farmer welcomes those giant ruts in the road which he travels, and gladly swerves past them en route to the next place where compassion is needed.  He does not seek material rewards for his actions, as performing charity for recognition negates the intention and purpose of such work.

    Farmer's journey is our journey as readers, as people.  A trek up the crisscrossing path of a mountainside.  And Kidder has guided us through the Matthew Passage, we have reached a wayside on our trail.  A overlook where we can take a respite and look around to see from where we've come, to take in where we might go from here.  We may spend a while here to enjoy the accomplishments of our own hard work.  We see there is a path down the other side of this summit, and, in the distance, another mountain to climb; more ruts to traverse.  This is a geography we don't just look at, we have to read it.

    There is always going to be another mountain.

    There is never going to be some grand reward for this labor.

    We climb the next mountain because that's the path.  The journey is the reward, not some possible destination.  If we journey well, the destination will be gracious and welcoming whenever we reach it.

    There are more mountains beyond these mountains, another sick person along our path, another asshole who will snark about the world's problems without contributing to any solution, another situation that confounds/delights/infuriates/astounds/inspires and perhaps, sometimes, will make us cry.  No matter what anyone does—you, me, Tracy Kidder, or Paul Farmer—the poor, like disease and atrocity, will be with us always.  It's how we deal with what is inside ourselves where all work begins.  We must be healthy if we intend to for our work to help others.  Farmer could not treat his sick patients if he were ill himself.  He shows us that obstacles are to be overcome; fear is merely an opportunity to exercise courage.  And, as we climb the next mountain to find who might be ill, we may, at times, feel too much which will lead to frustration at the seeming futility of it all.  We rationalize the situation, and ask ourselves:

    —What can we do?

    Tracy Kidder has given Dr. Paul Farmer a voice to reply to us by example:

    —Do what we can.

    That, as Farmer has shown, is the quintessential essence of charity and compassion.  And the keys to the kingdom of heaven in this world.

    The view from this summit is divine, but now we must, like grace, descend again to take up our travels along the next path.



~•~

Sing to Me in Tongues of Fire

English 205
13 April  2010

Sing to Me in Tongues of Fire

    The oldest shared human experience is gathering around a fire.  Once gathered around the fire—for protection against what lurks in the darkness beyond reach of the fire's light—the oldest shared human interaction is the telling of stories.  These earliest human stories regard our place as humans in relation to the mutually non-exclusive worlds of nature and of the mysterious unknown.  It is in the liminal space where these two worlds come together and separate where we find the source of all human science, religion, story, and poetry.  In that space then, the fire becomes is the metaphor for the source of what is knowable among the mystery, and what is knowable is related person to person through the stories told.  Here is the beginning of the oral tradition which would, thousands of years along in human legacy, become the poetry of our culture.  Not the poetry of the written page, to be pontificated upon from towers of glass and steel, nor read silently in hip and trendy cafés of the Lower East Side, but the poetry of sound and movement, of science and nature, of oral traditional, of what Jimmie Killingsworth called, "the poetry of the body."  Dr. Killingsworth uses this phrase in direct application of the work of Walt Whitman, and it is with Whitman where we enter into the stream of oral poetic tradition.  First, we make the journey backwards, upstream towards that source of early humans gathered around a fire to tell stories of the things beyond the reach of their kenning, what evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calls "the river out of Eden" (qtd. in Drout 269), to discover anaphora as one of the key devices in making the leap from oral tradition to the written word, before a slingshot return to Whitman in order to follow the wake of his influence on those downstream from him.

    As we venture forth from this metaphoric realm of original stories, it is apropos to note that Whitman begins one of his better known poems with the titular line, "I sing the Body electric."  In doing this, he deliberately invokes one of the earliest-known epic poems to have made that leap from oral to written tradition: Homer's The Odyssey ("Sing to me of the man, O Muse" (Homer)).  Whitman is well aware of his place along the river of tradition and displays in the majority of his work, as displayed by his intricate use of cadence; of meter.  As Michael D. C. Drout observes, "One of the major features of any traditional poetic style is meter, however construed (whether by stress, quantity, syllable count, and other tradition-dependent criteria). Meter serves as an important feature of poetic, traditional language" (286-287).  Even though Whitman does not use intentional rhyme scheme, his meter is precise and carefully composed to reflect the traditional referentiality where his work resides.  Drout goes on to say that "if the meter is a marked feature of the poetry, then it is likely to be imitated, and in fact this is exactly what we see across oral traditions: meter is [...] one of the tests of traditionally of poetry" (287).

    This use of repetition is integral to oral storytelling.  Repetition in this manner is used not merely for alliteration but as a mnemonic to serve the purpose of iteration.  This can be seen in works ranging from The Iliad's seemingly endless "Catalogue of Ships" (which serves to familiarize the audience with the participants of the conflict) to the Torah's genealogical lists of who begat whom (which acquaints the audience with the integral ancestral heritage of the protagonists), to the religious refrain that begins each Sura of the Qur'an.  This sort of repetition shows the importance of the information given.  According to Drout, "important elements are more likely to be able to be re-transmitted and thus spread to other individuals. Thus this cultural poetics helps to explain how information gets put into and accessed from what Maurice Halbwachs in 1950 called the 'collective memory'" (283).  A most effective way to illustrate this is in the use of anaphora—a device Whitman excelled at and used often.

    John Miles Foley points out, as quoted by Drout, that anaphora can extend "beyond the poetic line into formula, scene, and theme."  Given this observation, we can easily find examples in Whitman's work of anaphoric themes (e.g. death, nature, the body).  But in using anaphora strictly in the verbal sense, it may just as easily be understood as to why it originated in the oral tradition: such repetition reduces the demands on cognitive ability to memorize a poem or story.  Since, according to both Drout and Foley—and indirectly by the research of Dawkins—such examples can be found in most every language and culture, we could look back at Dawkins' citation of the river flowing out of Eden to consider his hypothesis that such repetitions are a result of natural process, and part of the make up of human genetics.  This recalls our earlier point from Killingsworth, that Whitman's verse is a "poetry of the body," an idea Amitai Avi-Ram expounds upon at the beginning of his essay, "The Body and the Simulacrum."  "Traditional metrical forms," Avi-Ram tells us, "work by invoking in the reader a clear sense of rhythm, might more properly be called 'poetry of the body.'"  He continues, extending this concept to "ballads, hymns, nursery rhymes, and jingles [which] all seem to invite in the reader a sympathetic response to their rhythms in a way that can be and often is directly reflected in movements and feelings in the body" (93-94)  It is Avi-Ram's conclusion that Whitman's verses:

can be understood not as a simple liberation of the body but as a shifting of the body from a realm of direct experience available through palpable and audible musical rhythms in poetry toward an imaginary item which has only a problematic relation to the body itself, a being whose existence can only be inferred by thought. (94)

This being of thought is akin to the idea of the poetic body's muscle memory; in hearing the anaphoric repetition and the cadence of the verse, the body responds to and remembers that rhythm.  It is that memory that is exercised when repeating or re-reading that poem at a later time.

    But if Whitman's cadence and repetition are remnants of the oral tradition predating Homer, what evidence of a tradition exist leading up to his work?  Whitman certainly did not develop a spontaneous act of aesthetics and suddenly manifest this poetic device in the mid 19th Century after it lay dormant for 27 centuries.  As was stated above, Whitman was (forgive the pun) well versed in knowing his heritage.  Working back from Whitman's own age, we will cite three examples in the English language of works using this "poetry of the body"—the devices of alliterative cadence and anaphora.

    Not long before Whitman began his poetic career, the American Romantic Edgar Allan Poe often used (and some could rightfully argue, committed the perfection of it) anaphora, particularly in his poem "The Bells."  Poe not only uses anaphora to perfection in this poem, but uses the form of the poem itself to resemble the subject matter, with each successive verse he describes the bells building from tinkling sleigh bells to the deafening crescendo of a death knell.  Examine: (verse 1) "To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells / From the bells, bells, bells, bells, /Bells, bells, bells - / From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells."  (Verse 2) "To the swinging and the ringing / Of the bells, bells, bells, / Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, / Bells, bells, bells - To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!"  (3) "Of the bells, / Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, / Bells, bells, bells - / In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!"  Until, at last, in the fourth verse, the clamor is almost palpable—bringing us back to the idea of poetry as calling for the body to physically respond with movement:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

It is such an effect that following an aural rendition, that silence consumes the ear in the absence of the poetic chant.

    Another, briefer, example of this technique of repetition and sound, comes from William Blake in his penultimately famous poem, "Tyger."  His use of anaphroa is not only shown in the words, but also in the punctuation (emphasis mine):

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

    William Shakesphere, bringing poetry to stage presentations in a manner befitting the oral tradition of acting out stories for dramatic effect in the opening scene of Julius Caesar, when Marullus (somewhat rhetorically) asks after Flavius, "And do you now put on your best attire? / And do you now cull out a holiday? / And do you now strew flowers in his way / That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?"  In this example, the lines themselves do not necessarily call to the body to respond, but instead, the description is of a physical reaction within the body of the subject (Pompey's blood).

    Having stepped out of poetry into the narrative of dramatic theatre, we can reverse our chronological journey, and jump into the wake of Whitman's anaphoric influence, landing squarely in the middle of more blood (Revolutionary France) resulting from the pen of a English literary giant, Charles Dickens (again, emphasis mine).  "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..."

    A bridge between Dickens and Whitman, between England and America, can be found in the personage of T. S. Eliot.  Though there are several examples of anaphora in "The Waste Land," it is his use of this device in the infamous conclusion to "The Hollow Men" which is of interest here.  "Here we go round the prickly pear / Prickly pear prickly pear..." sounds like a nursery rhyme which calls to the body for response; to, perhaps, literally dance around this poetic prickly pear cactus.  The verse offers one of the most unforgettable conclusions in poetic lore, "Between the desire / And the spasm / Between the potency / And the existence / Between the essence / And the descent / Falls the Shadow... / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."  In a few short, starkly cadenced lines, we've been lead through idea, reality, conception, birth, and finally, not just death of a single body, but the death of the world, the ultimate call which leaves no chance for a bodily reply.

    This conjuring of massive annihilation makes the step from Eliot in the the early 20th Century, to Elie Weisel's description of holocaust in the middle of the century particularly apt.  In another use of anaphora calling to the body to respond, Weisel uses his phrase repeatedly in his narrative memoir, Night, to tell of how annihilation of many bodies caused the death of his God and his hope:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.  Never shall I forget that smoke.  Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.  Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.  Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.  Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.  Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.  Never.

Additionally, there is a trait in this similar to that of Poe's—the form of the piece resembling what it describes.  "Seven times cursed and seven times sealed," is invoked in the first of seven sentences, all of which begin with the binding phrase.  What Weisel does is not only invoke the wrath of God in his Biblical (Torahian?) narrative style, but he enacts that seven-fold curse through the idea of words as being magical, as is illustrated not only in the Book of Genesis from Weisel's religion (Tetragrammaton: the unutterable Name of God), but a common trait throughout myriad mythologies from Chinese belief in words having come from the web spinnings of spiders, to the Egyptian never speaking their secret names so as to prevent another from holding power over them.  Wiesel spells out the curse in words, sentencing them to the page.

    Between the time of Weisel's experiences and his publishing them, the poet Allen Ginsberg produced a work that shares so many similarities and connections to Whitman as to be almost innumerable.  The very title of Howl is easily seen to be connective with Whitman's "barbaric yawp" from the roof tops of the world (an image that, itself, appears in Ginsberg's magna opus).  The style and device connection is even more evident when Ginsberg, 46 lines in a row and more than a dozen additional to that, uses the pronoun/verb combination "who..." "...vanished/wandered/lit/studied/loaned/thought/jumped/lounged/disappeared/reappeared/burned/distributed/broke/bit/howled," to cite a few.  Ginsberg also is a poet who performed his work, not merely as readings from a page, but enacted with improvasational inflictions, music, and with bodily response to the poetry's call for movement.

    That call for movement from the sound of words itself reveals itself in the latter part of the 20th Century through the lyric poetry of modern music.  Where modern poetry has become introverted, read in silence far more often than aloud—moreso now than had ever been in the past thanks in large part to other forms of media as well as a change in attitude towards poetry itself.  This is where some songwriters have become far more the voices of poetic literature and oral traditoional than do the modern writers who claim the mantle of being poets.  Citing examples is intimidatingly plentiful, but we shall focus on an singular case, and one which is directly and texturally inspired by Ginsberg's Howl.

    Roger Waters, on the Pink Floyd album Animals, displays his poetic tradition proudly. On the lengthy song, "Dogs," eleven lines in a row all begin with a phrase that appears to be asking a question, but like its forebearer in Howl, instead makes an uncomfortable state of simple, if poetic, fact with a pronoun/verb combination: "Who was born in a house full of pain. / Who was trained... / Who was told... / Who was broken... / Who was fitted... / Who was given... / Who was breaking... / Who was only... / Who was ground... / Who was found... / Who was dragged down by the stone."  This despairing alliterative repetition is repeated in Waters' successive work, The Wall.  Anaphora shows up numerous times in not only the lyrical verses, but extends to repeated musical phrases—leitmotifs—as well.  Given our theme in the 20th Century examples, one verse in particular stands out.  Waters tells us sadly:

I've got a little black book with my poems in.
I've got a bag with a toothbrush and a comb in.
When I'm a good dog they sometimes throw me a bone in.
I've got elastic bands keeping my shoes on.
I've got those swollen hand blues.
I've got thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from.
    ...
I've got a pair of Gohill's boots
And I've got fading roots.

Amidst a rock opera concerning a child who grew up without a father (who was killed in World War II), we see this ancient device of anaphora and repeatative alliteration citing the exclusively modern paraphenalia of elastic bands, television, and a trendy shop for purchasing the latest in foot fashion wear, as well as the writing of poetry itself.

    In making this journey, we have seen how a poetic device which began shortly after humans first gathered around a fire as a memnonic to be able to recite the stories heard from others as stories of our own became a means to relate history, convery aspects of religion, instruct, entertain, warn, and finally to become the memnoic for silently calling our own bodies to respond to the memory of cadenced words when we recall, to ourselves, the lyrics to a favorite song.  The connecting historical tradition of  anaphora, rhythm, and the oral tradition of poetic storytelling has journeyed a long way since flowing out of that distant mythic Eden in our collective distant past, and splashes us continually, even right where we are sitting now.

Bibliography

Avi-Ram, Amitai. "Free Verse in Whitman and Ginsberg: The Body and the Simulacrum." The Continuing Presence of Walt Whitman: The Life after the Life. Iowa City: U. of Iowa Press, 1992. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. New York: Dover, 1992. Print.

Canada, Dr. Mark. "Walt Whitman." Mark Canada's Work. UNC-Pembroke. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Signet Classics, 2007. Print.

Doty, Mark. "Form, Eros, and the Unspeakable: Whitman's Stanzas." Virginia Quarterly Review, 2005. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.

Drout, Michael D. C. "A Meme-Based Approach to Oral Traditional Theory." Oral Tradition 21.2 (2006). Web. 23 Mar. 2010.

Eliot, T. S. Poems, 1909-1925. London: Faber and Faber, 1925. Print.

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl, and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights, 1996. Print.

Hall, Donald. "The Art of Poetry No. 1." The Paris Review 21 (Spring-Summer 1959). Paris Review. Web. 9 Apr, 2010.

Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Viking Press. 1996. Print.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text. Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina, 1989. Google Books. 23 Mar. 2010.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Avenel, 1981. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.

Waters, Roger. "Dogs." Animals. Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd, 1977. Album.

—. "Nobody Home." The Wall. Pink Floyd. Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie, Roger Waters, 1979. Album.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam, 1982. Print.

Wiley, Autrey Nell. "Reiterative Devices in Leaves of Grass." American Literature 1.2 (1929). Literary Reference Center. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.



~•~

Anaphoric Mnemonics

English 205
31 March  2010

Anaphoric Mnemonics:
When Words and Sound Become Muscle Memory

    If we were to travel, like Joseph Conrad's famous protagonist, Marlow, up the waterway of human tradition—what Richard Dawkins has called "the river out of Eden" (qtd. in Drout 269)—we would find that all poetry, all stories, originated with the sounds uttered by humans that would formulate basic speech patterns; the first words.  This repetition of sound becomes the basis for pattern-recognition and furthermore, that pattern-recognition becomes the the underlying foundation for anaphora and repeated metrical devices in poetry and storytelling.  Somewhere up that dark river of tradition we find the earliest human narratives were handed down, word-to-ear to be retold again and again through different peoples, different generations.  The earliest stories were repeated patterns told orally.

    When Walt Whitman begins one of his better known poems with the line, "I sing the Body electric" he invokes one of the earliest-known epic poems to have made the leap from oral to written tradition: Homer's The Odyssey ("Sing to me of the man, O Muse" (Homer)).  Whitman is well aware of his place along the river of tradition and displays in the majority of his work, as displayed by his intricate use of cadence; of meter.  As Michael D. C. Drout observes, "One of the major features of any traditional poetic style is meter, however construed (whether by stress, quantity, syllable count, and other tradition-dependent criteria). Meter serves as an important feature of poetic, traditional language" (286-287).  Even though Whitman does not use intentional rhyme scheme, his meter is precise and carefully composed to reflect the traditional referentiality where his work resides.  Drout goes on to say that "if the meter is a marked feature of the poetry, then it is likely to be imitated, and in fact this is exactly what we see across oral traditions: meter is [...] one of the tests of traditionally of poetry" (287).  If Whitman is our Marlow, then he has most certainly found Kurtz's outpost along our river of linguistic tradition.

    Perhaps more so than meter, the use of repetition is integral to oral storytelling.  Repetition certainly aids as a mnemonic, as well as to serve the purpose of iteration.  This can be seen in works from The Iliad's seemingly endless "Catalogue of Ships" (which serves to familiarize the audience with the participants of the conflict) to the Torah's genealogical lists of who begat whom (which acquaints the audience with the ancestral traditions of the protagonists), to the religious refrain that begins each Sura of the Qur'an.  This sort of repetition shows the importance of the information given.  According to Drout, "important elements are more likely to be able to be re-transmitted and thus spread to other individuals. Thus this cultural poetics helps to explain how information gets put into and accessed from what Maurice Halbwachs in 1950 called the 'collective memory'" (283).  A most effective way to illustrate this is in the use of anaphora—a device Whitman excelled at and used often.

    John Miles Foley points out that anaphora can extend "beyond the poetic line into formula, scene, and theme."  Given this observation, we can easily find examples in Whitman's work of anaphoric themes (e.g. death, nature, the body).  But in using anaphora strictly in the verbal sense, it may just as easily be understood as to why it originated in the oral tradition: such repetition reduces the demands on cognitive ability to memorize a poem or story.  Since, according to both Drout and Foley—and indirectly by the research of Dawkins—such examples can be found in most every language and culture, we could look back at Dawkins' citation of the river flowing out of Eden to consider his hypothesis that such repetitions are a result of natural process, and part of the make up of human genetics.  With this in mind, Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth's statement that Whitman verse is a "poetry of the body" could be considered critically and metaphorically, as well as scientifically.  "Traditional metrical forms," Amitai Avi-Ram states at the beginning of his notable essay, "The Body and the Simulacrum," "work by invoking in the reader a clear sense of rhythm, might more properly be called 'poetry of the body.'"  He continues, extending this concept to "ballads, hymns, nursery rhymes, and jingles [which] all seem to invite in the reader a sympathetic response to their rhythms in a way that can be and often is directly reflected in movements and feelings in the body" (93-94)  It is Avi-Ram's conclusion that Whitman's verses:

can be understood not as a simple liberation of the body but as a shifting of the body from a realm of direct experience available through palpable and audible musical rhythms in poetry toward an imaginary item which has only a problematic relation to the body itself, a being whose existence can only be inferred by thought. (94)

    This being of thought is akin to the idea of the poetic body's muscle memory; in hearing the anaphoric repetition and the cadence of the verse, the body responds to and remembers that rhythm.  It is that memory that is exercised when repeating or re-reading that poem at a later time.

    The connection between anaphora, cadence, rhythm, and the oral and written traditions of poetic storytelling is intricate and tight.  As these examples have shown, the tradition is as deep and vast as a river that flows from some mythic Eden in our collective distant past to right where we are sitting now.

Works Cited

Avi-Ram, Amitai. "Free Verse in Whitman and Ginsberg: The Body and the Simulacrum." The Continuing Presence of Walt Whitman: The Life after the Life. 93-113. Iowa City: U. of Iowa Press, 1992. NetLibrary. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.

Drout, Michael D. C. "A Meme-Based Approach to Oral Traditional Theory." Oral Tradition 21.2 (2006): 269-294. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.

Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Viking Press. 1996. Print.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text. Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina, 1989. Google Books. 23 Mar. 2010.

John Miles Foley. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1988. Web. 27 Mar. 2010.



~•~

Stories Told by Others as Stories of Their Own

ENG 363
March 5, 2010

Stories Told by Others as Stories of Their Own

    When sitting down after a holiday dinner with your extended family and the kids have gone to bed and the dishes are washed and dried and put away and the fire is burning finely in the hearth to keep at bay the cold rain and snow and another drink of whatever it may be your pleasure to have a glass of at such times and one of the elders of your family starts in on another story of the days that used to be there is rarely—if ever—an agent of the court at hand to insist the teller of such tales place their hand on the Good Book and swear before God and man that what they are re-telling in this family context is the Truth, the Whole Truth and nothing but.  Family stories are not the sort which are put forth before the bar to be judged for veracity citing witnesses and calling to hear from others who were involved in the plots revealed by the elder of your family when sitting down to share life's tales with their family on holiday evenings with a drink in hand and a fire in hearth.  Nor do we, as family members, readers, or other tellers of our own tales, expect such stories to be held up to the same scrutiny as testimony given in a room of polished wooden balusters and attorneys with shiny shoes and tailored suits.

    Family stories are given a certain leniency when it comes to the measure of veracity—and many times they are expected to stretch objective truth.  Tales grow taller, more dramatic, with age and each successive retelling.  Few people are satisfied or even able to tell the story of a family event from some time past without adding a certain spice, a certain dimension, to the narrative.  And the stories of family past in the trio of books we have journeyed through show—each with their own unique perspectives—that they are no exception to this expectation.

   Rooted Deep in the Pigeon Valley: A Harvest of Western Carolina Memories by Carroll Jones is centered on family stories; they are the focus of the narrative, plot, and theme of the work.  He sets out to give readers a comprehensive history of his ancestor.  Using them as such, it is understandable that Jones has based those stories he shares upon historical documents and personal diaries.  While neither is beyond reproach for pure validity, both are commonly accepted as being valid sources for historical information.  Diaries, although prone to the very exaggerations and subjectivity that separate family tales from sworn testimony, capture the voice of the person writing and the time period from whence they come.

   Upon introducing his great-grandfather, William Harrison Hargrove, Jones tells us directly, "I knew he was a Civil War veteran, but beyond that the details of his life and history were rather murky" (25), before leading through a whirlwind summary of his life's adventures —"His personal diary provides a record of his odyssey" (33)—leading up to the War Between the States, his time with the 21st Regiment North Carolina Infantry during the War, and his travels following it.

  It may come as no surprise that Jones makes Hargrove the hero of these adventures, complete with admirable character traits and few, if any flaws.  "It is a testament to William's character that he stopped off in in Petersberg to check on friends recovering from wounds and sickness in the hospital there.  He steadfastly remained at the side of the injured Garland Furgeson for almost two weeks waiting to assist his good friend home" (34).  Of course, no real, breathing person has a flawless life, but this idealizing is the result of selective telling. 

    Selective telling can come in different forms. One way is as Jones has done, taking all evidence at hand—historical documents and personal writings—and then picking which parts of the narrative to pass on.  Another is through assembled memory and habit of telling the story in a given manner.  This latter method is more indicative of Daniel Robb's shared family stories in Sloop.

    To his credit, Robb does tell us he fills in blank spots in the tales he passes along to readers, "There is a story my father has told me many times" (216), and starts off with the broad strokes of a story retold by someone who was not a participant in it, but quickly adds details to heighten the tension and dramatic effect of a situation where his father (as a young boy) and a friend take a boat out onto Buzzards Bay and almost sink it.  "'Keep bailin', man,' I imagine Jim sayin. 'We gotta keep bailin', or we'll be sailing her across the bottom.  And your mother wouldn't like that'" (217).  Robb contributes numerous details that he states are only "in his mind" (217) so vivid that they would likely not have been remembered by anyone actually experiencing the event.  But he does state that it is only his memory of the way the story was told and not a description of what actually happened.  "That's the story as far as I know it," he tells his readers, "It's the story I tell" (219).  In fiction terminology, this is the mark of an unreliable narrator.  But unreliable narrators are usually withholding a key piece of information from their audience.  In a non-fiction memoir, this device can easily raise questions about the veracity of anything the narrator imparts.  Complete with an odd comma inserted into his text, Robb does reveal his own unreliability: "I am not sure, that I have these stories exactly right, but that's how I recollected them for a while now.  That's how I tell them."  His memory, complete with imagined additions, replay the stories with details and information that certainly did not exist when they were originally told by the people they actually happened to.

    Perhaps the most authentic re-told family stories come in Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls.  Although the tales in Half Broke are a few shades more subjective than even Robb's partially made-up retellings, they come off sounding like just the sort one might expect from a family hand-me-down.  They adhere to neither historical veracity nor consistency between one another.  A story told exactly the same way twice is told, not from memory of the event (or story as it was originally heard) by out of habitual retelling.

    Walls narrates this "True-Life Novel" in the persona of her own grandmother.  This lends an air of credibility to the stories she relates which would not otherwise be present in the book coming from a more distantly involved narrator.  The family stores then seem to come from someone with direct personal interest in the events of these family stories rather than a removed descendent.  One example of this would be Walls (as her own grandmother) recounting "Dad's pa" serving under "Colonel Robert E. Lee ... stationed on the Texas frontier, fighting Comanches, Apaches, and Kiowa" (11).  Robert E. Lee had one of the most documented lives in human history, and a cursory glance at his military record shows that, while not an impossibility, it would take a most anguished stretch of the the concept of time and of the English language to have Robert Casey "serving" under Lee in that particular time and place.  Likewise would be the case of the family story told about Billy the Kid, "who had stopped at the Casey Ranch when Dad was a teenager" (35).  Although Walls does not provide the date of the narrative in which these stories were told, it is again factually unlikely that Adam Casey (Dad) was of the age where this was possible.  But, again, these are hand-me-down family stories, and they are told in Half Broke Horse under that auspice.  They sound as if they were originally told that way, and in an age long before the history of the world was accessible with a few keystrokes and access to the internet; they are re-told with the authenticity of a folk tale.  More intriguing then, are the conflicting stories about Adam Casey's temper and accusations he faced concerning a murder. 

    In what began as an argument over fence lines, Adam Casey was accused of murdering another man.  As Walls relates it, Adam "insisted he'd been framed ... and after serving three years in prison, he was set free" (8).  There are many reiterations that Adam didn't murder the man and yet successive unrelated stories Walls shares paint a contradicting portrait of the man.  One of these conflicting stories holds that "he had a terrible temper" and "impatience with folks who had trouble understanding what he said" (given that he had a limp and a speech impediment due to a horse having kicked him in the head when he was younger).  "He'd start sputtering and cursing, and ... pull out his pistol and plug away at things, aiming to miss people—most of the time."  One incident in particular Walls cites as having Adam so enraged as to attempt to murder a tinker who Adam thought "overcharged to repair the kettle."  Adam went to get his guns, but the Mexican woman who helped around the Casey house hid them.  "Dad worked himself into a lather, hollering about his missing guns, but I was convinced Lupe saved that tinker's life" (11-12).  This is not the description of a man who could rightfully claim innocence when accused of having carried out violent retribution upon another.  But it is evidence that all of the family stories as they came down to Jeannette Walls were ones that had been collected and compressed and retold by family members over the span of several generations.

    Just because the tales Jones, Robb, and Walls tell of their families have differing levels of credibility doesn't mean they aren't true.  There is a modern proverb from author Neil Gaiman which states, "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."  According to this, stories hold more longevity than factual events do.  Solidifying this point from another perspective is a line from a parable by lyrical poet and story-teller Robert Hunter: "Stories are as much a part of a human as their blood, their bones, their children, their lovers and their dreams."

    The family stories Jones, Robb, and Walls offer us are, by their very context and own admissions, not meant to be taken as literally and factually true.  They are, after all, stories told by others as stories of their own.  That makes them folklore of a sort, whether they remain within the bloodline of a family or are shared by someone in that family with an untold number of strangers reading the words on the page of a published book.  If fiction can be called a lie that tells the truth, can not the same be considered for the stories we hear on cold nights when we sit near a warm hearth with a preferred drink in hand and ears eager to hear the tales handed down one to another through the years, without holding them to the scrutiny we would wish from someone swearing before their personal Almighty that what they are telling you is as pure a form of truth as Socrates, Avicenna, Kant, or Nietzsche ever dreamt of in their small epistemological philosophies.

Works Cited

Gaiman, Neil. Sandman: Dream Country. New York: Vertigo, 1992. Print.

Hunter, Robert. "The Orfeo Files." Letter to Terence McKenna. May 1996. Online.

Jones, Carroll Clark. Rooted Deep in the Pigeon Valley: A Harvest of Western
    Carolina Memories. Wilmington: Winoca, 2009. Print.

Robb, Daniel. Sloop. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. Print.

Walls, Jeanette. Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel. New York: Scribner, 2009.
    Print.


~•~

The Epistemological Fountain of Pure Meaning

The rewrite of a previous paper for this class. Some schools of critical thought are cited incorrectly, but that's how they were on the original paper; I goofed.

English 205
March 2, 2010

The Epistemological Fountain of Pure Meaning

    Barthes and Freud walk into a bar looking for Meaning. . .  This could be the opening of a curious literary joke which unfolds in any manner of ways depending upon who and how it is told.  Similarly, any given text—be it humor, essay, novel, film, philippic, or cartoon—may or may not have a multitude of possible meanings associated with it depending on elements that can extend beyond what the text itself says.  For my own part, the method and degree of meaning I seek from a text considers such factors not limited to: how much interest I have in the subject matter; who wrote it; when and where I read in both the literal and metaphoric sense; what day of the week it is; and perhaps even which direction the wind is currently blowing.  Each text is approached in subtlety different ways to discover its meaning, but I am always open to the likelihood that there is something I may miss if not paying close attention.  Lately, I have equated this process to understand meaning to be analogous with watching bonus features on a DVD.  The movie is there to view without any background information, but should you wish to—as I often do—the option is available to delve beyond the film, learning details and influences that exist apart from the film, yet still carry influence upon its meaning and creation.  For current purposes, let us check out the bonus features of this process in an attempt to understand how we arrive at meaning.

    Of course, to understand the meaning of any text, one must first approach it using some sort of rubric.  In literary terms, this is done through through theoretical methods that inherently involve some sort of ideology.  These methods are like maps helping the traveler find their way through the wilderness of potential meaning.  The map is not the landscape, just as any meaning we might find is not the only meaning possible for a given work.  For instance, New Criticism is a method which places the rubric for meaning upon only the text itself; nothing of the author's intent nor conditions of their culture and circumstance can be brought forth to define the text's meaning.  Contrasting this would be the maps offered by the Deconstructionist theory, which places great emphasis upon outside influences defining what the text could mean.  Just as there are numerous possible types of maps—topographical for those who would trek by foot; road maps for those traveling by vehicle, satellite maps displayed with Google Earth for the armchair voyager who doesn't wish to leave their familiar environs—there are myriad literary theories which are used to unveil a text.  New Criticism and Deconstructionist theories are by no means the only ones available, but they are convenient because they act well as polarities to one another.

    The web comic XKCD by Randall Munroe comes with its own caveat in the fine print which appears beneath each strip: "Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."  Just from this text alone, the reader who ventures forth does so having been given the keys to understand the author is intent on challenging at least some of the conventions and expectations which might be brought along with a reader to the content of this web comic.  The January 13, 2010 edition of XKCD was called "Self Description."  Encountering such title—and wearing my trusty English Major Academic Thinking Cap®—I deduced a self-awareness of post-modernism which might demonstrate a certain incredulity to its own meta-narrative.  Which is an scholarly way of saying that I suspected the comic that day might mean it is deliberately going to play with the conventions of self-awareness and the regressive inversion of knowing its own audience is aware of themselves and the comic's own awareness of them being aware of its awareness, and so on down an infinite hall of mirrors casting reflections upon reflections.  In other words, the strip seemed primed to be examined for meaning via the New Critical method.

    Another trait of this web comic is that a meta-text (also called an alt-text or, ironically, a hyper-text) is displayed when the mouse cursor is placed over the illustration.  This text usually takes the form of a sarcastic comment about the subtext of the strip, or otherwise given meaning or complication to what is shown.  In this particular strip, the alt-text tells us, "The contents of any one panel are dependent on the contents of every panel including itself. The graph of panel dependencies is complete and bidirectional, and each node has a loop. The mouseover text has two hundred and forty-two characters" (Monroe).  Here then we have a comic strip that seems to be doing nothing more than making a rather facile comment upon its own contents, and offers little to suggestion anything other than that.  Being an ideological omnivore, I place attributions on it much like a Rorschach ink blot.  These attributions are highly dependent on if I have donned my English Major Academic Thinking Cap®, or I have just awakened and taken to the internet before my second cup of coffee in the morning, or how much cognitive dissidence I wish to express (that is, a deliberately contrary opinion akin to taking the role of being the devil's advocation; a literary heretic).  This is a strip which seems to provide no deeper meaning, but that could be precisely why it may offer some because, in life, literature, art, politics, what-have-you, initial appearances are rarely what they seem, and my brain is wired to instinctively wonder what else might be lurking there just below the surface.  It could be considered as its own rubric to how meaning is made via the self-explanatory graphs depicting the black and white nature of itself; to understand what something means, you merely need to read literally what is set on the page.

    But what of texts which all-but-prohibit some forms of critical analysis and seem tailor-made examples to encourage others?  Would a Marxist reading of "Jack and the Beanstalk" be possible?  Whereas the example offered by Randall Monroe's XKCD comic self-consciously strove to refer to nothing beyond the borders of its own frame, lending itself perfectly for a New Criticism analysis, it would only make sense to examine a contrasting text that would by necessity force a readers to look beyond what is given on the page to fully comprehend its subject (and thus the Deconstructionist theory would be far more applicable to analyze it).  Sticking with web comics, Tatsuya Ishida's February 19, 2010 comic strip Sinfest becomes a perfect example.  Each panel—indeed, even the featured quote above the artist's name—forces the reader to sources other than the text itself to glean what the strip itself is attempting to mean.  To my way of thinking, this would start with a panel by panel breakdown of the characters involved, and then an analysis of the signs and signifiers being presented.

    In the first panel, two characters are introduced—both of whom have appeared previously in the comic; one as a minor character and the other as a recurring secondary character.  The Gay Guy appearance a week previous to this challenged the moral attitude of the main character's hyper-heterosexuality.  The puppet is the clouds is the way Ishida represents the Judeo-Christian God (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoist ideologies all have representative characters as well).  God always appears as a hand-puppet in a derivation apropos to the context.  Following this introductory understanding of the characters involved, an examination of the second panel would involve God's hand-puppet wearing a shirt with an inverted triangle.  This symbol represents the pink triangle that was originally used to denote gay male prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.  About thirty years later, the symbol was re-used by the gay pride movement in order to replace the shame involved with being forced to wear it with displaying pride at publicly showing one's sexual orientation.  By the third panel, the reader is treated (or assaulted, depending upon one's musical ideology) with God-the-hand-puppet singing and mime dancing to the Village People's song, "Y.M.C.A."  Of course, the context of this connects to the Village People being a (mostly) open gay band and the consideration that YMCAs were, for a gay man in the 1970s, a place to cruise for other gay men.  The final panel has Gay Guy directly addressing God-as-a-hand-puppet with his question about loving everyone equally, a reference to the on-going struggle over homosexuality and Christianity; religious acceptance and Biblical condemnation.  God-the-hand-puppet replies with what can almost be heard from the written text as a Wildean-lisp as He "strikes a pose" and quotes a Madonna song.  The text above the artist's name quotes a song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which further connects this particular comic to the subculture of non-heterosexuals and, well, the just plain weird.  Without these off-the-page references, this strip could certainly be understood on one level, but the appreciation from such understanding would not go very deep.  Taking into account the sub-referential material involved, a greater understanding—and thus a deeper appreciation is, if not reached, at least offered by the additional information.  But what are we-as-readers to make of a subject without a definitive "text" from which to derive our meaning?

    Sub-references and subjective possibilities are the only things offered in any look for meaning in the case of author Philip K. Dick and his beam of pink light.  For purposes of brevity, this instance will be condensed and told as unadorned as possible.  Phil Dick himself wrote extensively about what happened to him—what he theorized happened to him—through the course of at least three novels and more than eight thousand pages of type-written notes (which Dick called his "Exegesis").  In February and March of 1974 Phil Dick had his impacted wisdom teeth removed and, on a particular afternoon, the pharmacy delivered his pain medication.  The delivery girl who came to his house wore an ichthys necklace.  Dick asked her what it meant and when she told him is was a symbol used by early Christians Dick saw sunlight glint off the pendant and, "In that instant … I suddenly experienced what I later learned is called anamnesis—a Greek word meaning, literally, 'loss of forgetfulness.' I remembered who I was and where I was. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, it all came back to me."  More than that, "as hard as this is to believe or explain, I saw fading into view the black, prisonlike contours of hateful Rome" (Dick).  In the following weeks, Dick experienced further visions, none of which he ever claimed to completely understand nor objectively define.  He did, however, spend the last eight years of his life writing about those experiences, examining what could possibly produce such events, and, in context to my own personal examination of deciphering what I encounter, what does it all mean?

    On one hand, Dick had been a heavy user of amphetamines in the years previous to his "mystical experience" and that fact alone was not lost upon him when he sought to attribute source and cause to his visions.  Likewise, he often considered the possibilities of a stroke or mental aberration as the cause.  But Dick felt the beam of pink light was ultimately a benevolent event, because he attributed to it the sudden awareness of a inguinal hernia in his five-year-old son (a condition which modern medical techniques had missed).  This layman's diagnosis saved his son's life.  This certainly was a factor in Dick considered as he hypothesized what it was that happened to him.  The most remarkable thing to me is that Dick never amassed the dogma in his own mental quest for meaning to categorically dismiss any possibility he could coherently structure, which included some outlandish theories such as a possible Teslaesque Soviet mind control beam, influence from an extraterrestrial satellite, and divine communication.

    Not that anyone has to take any of Dick's own theories into account in order to attribute their own meaning to the event as it is related through any of the various texts it is described.  This example places heavy emphasis upon the author of the text, and, as Dick himself would be quick to point out, the author is one of the least reliable sources for the information at hand.  This is a man who, upon returning home one night to find the safe in his work room to have been blown open and his papers ransacked, attributed variously the break in to the FBI, the CIA, the Hells Angels, neighborhood drug dealers, or even, as he carefully considered, that he may have do it himself in a fit of schizophrenia (a disorder he was never had).

    Given Phil Dick's wide range of meanings he deciphered from a singular event—from the mundane to the phantastic—who am I to say that the beam of pink light was merely a side effect of pain and prescription medication, or that Dick is a liar, or was residual after-effects to chronic speed usage, or that it never happened at all?  My mind is open to the possibility that something can occur for which I have no framework to define it.

    Meandering into this existential quagmire, we could easily and quickly become lost in subjective possibilities and never find meaning, let alone understand the epistemological fountain from which pure meaning flows.  To compel understanding from any subject, the Oxford English Dictionary is a hefty tome carrying the definitive weigh of clarity and a dozen pounds of etymological concrete meaning.  Under the entry for "meaning" the OED includes: "The action of MEAN v.2; moaning, lamentation," which refers to "a. To complain of or lament (something); to lament for (a dead person). b. To pity or comfort."  But then the most obvious meaning of "meaning" is not the initial—or even secondary—definition at all.

    This alliterative conundrum may seem to be a farcical endeavor, but it is purposefully used here to illustrate the point being made.  The meaning of anything is rarely, if ever, what is encountered on its surface, its face-shown-to-the-world level of intention.  And whatever it was that the author (that is, the creator or creators) of a particular text intends its meaning to be, there are certainly many other—and equally valid—meaning which can be deciphered from that text.  What meaning the (reader/viewer/listener) audience of a work thinks and takes from it is just as valid as what the creator of the work intended, just as the meaning of the same text for the same individual may be different in accordance to when and how they re-encounter or re-examine it at another time.

    All of which, in the case of Phil Dick and his beam of pink light, seemingly leaves us each to forge our own maps to define not only the texts we encounter, but also the world in which those texts exist.  In a scientific sense, we cannot with any degree of reason define and proclaim limestone rock is green jello and hope to convey that as being a valid meaning as to the nature of sedimentary rock.  But what it does reasonably suggest is that one person can read a Phil Dick novel and see his Penfield Mood Organs and Mercer Empathy Boxes as prophetic precursors to the currently ubiquitous small handheld devices with perfectly Phildickian names like "iPod" and "BlackBerry," while someone else reads that same novel and dismisses such notions due to lack of believable plot or emotionally uninvolved characterization.  Both are true subjectively, but the objective veracity—whatever that loaded phrase may be taken to mean—remains unchanged.  And an objective veracity to a subjective experience (which is what reading any text ultimately comes down to) is what Dick strove to discover and, with cognitive dissonance, understood to be an impossible quest.

    On some level, everyone seeks to establish meaning to what they read, see, think, and experience, whether that meaning comes from science, traditional, society, religion, kith, kin, hallucination, or extraterrestrial influence, we amass and attribute our own meaning to everything we encounter.  How we do that—how I do that—is specifically connected to what it is I am attempting to understand and define.  Like Dick's methodology, I formulate meaning based on perception, perspective, and assess its own internal merit.  Regardless of outcome, I then shift my own perception and perspective and formulate what I hope to be an equally valid and alternative meaning based on the same evidence.  Following through in this manner several times, I then conclude which meaning I wish to attribute to the text I'm assessing—dependent upon, as was stated at the beginning of this paper, a number of seemingly unrelated influences.

    A Barthsean scholar and a Freudian scholar are almost certainly not going to decipher the same meaning from Philip K. Dick's account of his anamnesis, nor am I going to take from it the same as what Dick himself intended when he committed his own experiences to the page and had it published.  Meaning exists in so many different ephemeral forms, none of which—according to my currently constructed model of the world—can objectively be declared to be more comprehensively correct than another.  So may be better delineated or be adequately explained than others, but all have the potential to be equally valid.

    So clicking back from our special features to the main menu on our metaphoric DVD, I check the calendar (for what day it is) and the weather charts (to see if it is safe to go outside).  But I need no weatherman to tell me which way the wind blows and, armed with a pen as my primary weapon and a lifetime of signs and signifiers at my behest, I journey forth to continue my mission of discovery: to seek out new texts and new literary theories (to boldly split infinitives anytime it is poetic to do so!), and to compound my attempts in understanding where and how I derive meaning itself.  Which, however it is done, will, undoubtedly, involve subjective sub-references to scores of differing sources, and be flavored with the many spices of wit and sarcasm and include jokes to be groaned at aloud and then repeated at soonest opportunity.

    Barthes and Freud walk into a bar looking for meaning.

    You'd think the second one would have ducked.

Works Cited

Belolo, Henri, Jacques Morali, and Victor Willis. "Y.M.C.A." Rel. Dec. 1978. Village People. Jacques Morali.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Doubleday, 1968. Print.

─. "How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)."
    In The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, ed. Lawrence Sutin. New York: Vintage/Random House, 1995. Print.

─. In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis. Nevada City, CA: Underwood Books, 1991. Print.

Ishida, Tatsuya. "Gay Puppet." Sinfest 19 Feb. 2010. Web. 19 Feb. 2010.

Madonna, and Shep Pettibone. "Vogue." Rel. Mar. 1990. Madonna. Madonna, Shep Pettibone.

"Meaning." Def. 2a & 2b. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. Print.

Munroe, Randall. "Self-Description." XKCD 13 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 Jan. 2010.

Peck, Abe. "Village People." Rolling Stone #289 19 Apr. 1979. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.

Plant, Richard. The pink triangle: the Nazi war against homosexuals. New York: Macmillan, 1988, Print.


~•~