Rabbit runs, and this dog hunts
I posted the third installment of the World War II story in Fictions. And it is still Monday.
One thing I would note for my readers is that I have made a slight change in the protagonist’s background. Originally, I had Henry’s family living in a residential neighborhood in Pennsylvania, which seemed out of sorts with the picture of him I was creating in my own mind. Additionally, I don’t know shit about the North, even though my wife was born and raised in Pennsylvania and I have spent a good deal of time there. The South is just more interesting to me. It’s what I know best.
So Henry is now from a little North Carolina town called Walnut Cove. He is not even from the town, really. His address is a Rural Route address with a box number.
It feels good to have spent a couple hours writing for you, tonight. I feel like I have made it over the hump of my initial frustration. I no longer feel the need to conform to strict rules of narrative structure, as if I were writing with pen on paper. I feel liberated almost.
My only remaining qualm about the blog structure upon which I am building my fiction is that it is not quite as fragmented and un-chronological as I would like. I want more disorder!
When I think about this fiction now, what I imagine is a web page, or a map. Something kind of like the idea-gathering I used to have my students do in Composition, in which they would write ideas, draw a circle around them, and then draw a line linking the ideas together. I think one word for that process is even called “webbing.”
However, I don’t know how that would translate into an actual, hypertextual web page, exactly. I don’t want “chapters” or a “table of contents” or anything suggestive of an author imposing order on his fragments. I want only relation. Relation is the only order in the Universe anyway.
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Have you made the changes in the original text? And if you did, what do you think about leaving the original in brackets? In that manner your writing process is right out in the open: we see in a very pomo fashion that your “book” did not fall from heaven, but was created. Postmodernists argue for this as ethical because most of us think that reality fell from heaven, rather than understanding that reality, like a book, can be changed. . .
Comment by Todd — Tuesday, 12 April 2005 @ 8:37 am
I did change that in the original entry (the second entry in which the Nazi tells Rann how much he already knows about him). I did not bracket it, though that might be a good idea. Actually, I had thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have an archive of the page as it exists (and changes) from day to day. I have already made other alterations. But I don’t know how that could possibly work.
Thanks for your suggestion. Actually, what I might try is the “strike through,” so that the original is actually crossed out but legible instead of bracketed, which might be confusing as to intent. Brackets, to me, suggest an authorial note or an intervention in the text. To others, I don’t know what brackets would suggest, or even if others would distinguish between brackets and parentheses.
And how does a Pomo writer indicate an addition, from scratch, without a corresponding cross out? A different font color or style?
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 12 April 2005 @ 8:51 am
In Dhalgren, words are crossed out as you say. That would work well. Derrida, who distrusts the metaphysical heritage of language crosses out words which he still uses: he calls this writing under erasure ( sous rature).
But you can do it in other ways, by adopting an editorial persona who intrudes and changes the text. Or provide a separate narrative of yourself writing the first narrative-this would be cool in particularl is some of the same themes in your first narrative interweave with the second.
Comment by Todd — Tuesday, 12 April 2005 @ 12:11 pm
I did the strike-through thing. I don’t know if I will continue in that vein, however. After a few hours of thinking about it, it seems merely pretentious, even confusing. An author cannot possibly track and record all changes to a document, so it seems to me there would have to be some measure of selection of which erasures to allow, and which to disguise. And assume for a moment that it were possible to track and record all changes (Microsoft Word can do this automatically, though I haven’t played with that feature), those changes would likely be so numerous as to present the reader with a confusion of strike-throughs and and additions. While such things may be of interest to the scholar (Pound’s annotated version of the Waste Land manuscript, for example), I don’t see that it serves much purpose other than entertaining a few pedants.
Of course, one could argue that the Pound/Eliot collaborative version of TWL is the “proper” or “true” version, or that it ought to be printed alongside the “official” version, or something like that. So I can see both sides.
So I don’t know. I’ll have to think on this.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 12 April 2005 @ 12:39 pm
I think you both are on to something with the brackets and the striking through original text. Not only will the work be fragmented, but by exposing your reader to the drafting/editing process, you are inviting your reader to become part of the creation of the work itself. In my opinion, each reader will be able to come up with his or her own interpretation; therefore, each interpretation will result in its own story. Additionally, the reader will not just be reading, per se, but participating in the work. Keep thinking about your approach and let us know what you settle on. I would be interested in hearing how you came to your decision.
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