Pedestrian Prose

[Sitaram]

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/newbies.html

Who is speaking? It can sometimes be difficult for the reader to track who is narrating a scene, as Pynchon will frequently and subtly shift between

i) narration by an external, impersonal narrator, of which there are several distinguishable by their tone of voice and their treatment of the subject;

ii) narration from the POV of a given character, achieved either by colouring the narrative with the character's 'voice'--adopting vocabulary, idiomatic tics etc.--or by narrating one of the character's passing memories or fantasies, usually with an accompanying change of narrative voice; and

iii) dialogue--often attributed but, when unattributed, so clearly demarcated thanks to Pynchon's mastery of accent and dialogue that the identity of the speakers is rarely in doubt.

We must learn the rules first before we earn the privilege of breaking them. An if we are one of the rare few who possess the genius to break rules in a consistently recognizable and beguiling pattern, then our lawlessness will simple become a new rule in the centuries following our death.

But, I do think it is important to point out that the rules of literature and poetry are not written in stone. If it were the case that the rules governing creative writing were immutable, then there would never have been the possibility for new genres and innovative styles to emerge. If we pick someone like e.e. cummings, or Herman Melville, or Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy), why certainly, what they were doing was innovative, unheard of, among their peers and readers, and sometimes it was the case with such innovators that their work was criticized and ignored for some long period of time before people realized the merit of the new genre.

Compare writing with walking. The day we are born we cannot even sit up, much less walk. At first, crawling is an achievement. Then, we become toddlers wobbling about. Eventually we feel confident enough to run and we begin to run about everywhere as though we had forgotten walking. As the years go by, we take up ballroom dancing or ballet or we train for marathons or 100 yard dashes. A very few of us become a Nijinsky or a Fred Astaire or a Bill Rogers (of Boston Marathon fame). Most of us simply become fairly accomplished, but one would not call us inspired. Mediocrity is an occupational hazard for us all. Than does not mean that most of us should be unemployed.

There are so many ways to walk and move: playful Simon Says umbrella steps, frightening Frankenstein Monster ploding, and thundrous, earth-shaking, Bambi-squashing Godzilla-Tyranosaurus steps.

In a Physics class, when we strive to understand the motion of projectiles, we do not hurl things at one another, but rather, we study graphs and lines and tables and equations; that is to say we study metaphors and projections and likenesses and snapshots of projectiles.

Let us explore this metaphor of creative writing in a metaphor of bodily motion. We sometimes say that a passage is very moving.

Everyone has a body, and every body has a neck, but six billion necks are not the neck of Nijinsky, for Nijinsky was one in a million.

Most of us have speech and language, but style must be developed through practice, exercise and example. Even if we develop an excellent style, we must also have something to say or communicate. And if we have something to say, is it something which needs to be said? Can we say something which has never been said before in a way that is new? And if we have something worth saying, and a worthy style, will there be an audience; will anyone listen. Sometimes an audience appears only years after the theater has closed.

Do you ever weep and thrill to your own words, trembling?


Treat yourself to this masterful essay on Nijinsky by an expert ballet critic.

http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/nijinsky/photographs.html

As you read, try to imagine the Nijinsky as an author and his performances as novels.

Nijinsky alters his neck to suit a character role. The change is striking in the Schéhérazade pictures – and Mr. (Carl) Van Vechten, who saw him dance the part, describes him as a “head-wagging, simian creature.”

...one is struck by their lightness, by the way in which they seem to be suspended in space. Especially in the pictures from Pavillon and from Spectre, they are not so much placed correctly, or advantageously, or illustratively; rather they seem to flow out unconsciously from the moving trunk, a part of the fullness of its intention.

in Faun – the space between the figures becomes a firm body of air, a lucid statement of relationship, in the way intervening space does in the modern academy of Cézanne, Seurat, and Picasso.

The plastic sense is similar to that of Michelangelo and Raphael. One might say that the grace of them is not derived from avoiding strain, as a layman might think, but from the heightened intelligibility of the plastic relationships. It is an instinct for countermovement so rich and so fully expressed, it is unique, though the plastic theory of countermovement is inherent in ballet technique.

The manner in which Nijinsky’s face changes from role to role is immediately striking. It is enhanced by makeup, but not created by it. In fact, a friend pointed out that the only role in which one recognizes Nijinsky’s civilian face is that of Petrouchka, where he is most heavily made up. There is no mystery about such transformability. People don’t usually realize how much any face changes in the course of a day, and how often it is unrecognizable for an instant or two.

Balance (or aplomb, in ballet) is the crux of technique. If you want to see how good a dancer is, look at his stomach. If he is sure of himself there, if he is so strong there that he can present himself frankly, he (or she) can begin to dance expressively. (I say stomach because the stomach usually faces the audience; one might say waist, groin, or pelvis region.)

have neglected to mention the hands, which are alive and simple, with more expression placed in the wrist than in the fingers. They are not at all “Italian,” and are full of variety without an emphasis on sensitivity. The hands in Spectre are celebrated, and remind one of the hands in Picassos ten years later. I am also very moved by the uplifted, half-unclenched hands in the Jeux picture, as mysterious as breathing in sleep.

Allow me to be your instructor for a moment. Here is your assignment.

1. Read the essay on Nijinsky.
2. See the movie, "Shall We Dance" with Richard Gere.
3. See the movie "Sideways".

Allegedly, Jennifer Lopez is quoting George Bernard Shaw in her description of the Tango, but I am still searching for the source.

(take a look at Fermat's Last Tango)

http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf174

Notice the extraordinary detail with which dance and wine may be observed.

You will see that even wines have body, nose and legs.

http://www.cookinglight.com/cooking/mp/wine/article/0,13803,661559,00.html

Now tell me what is the Space, Grace and Face of a novel? Show me the arms and hands. Identify analogs.

As Mr. Van Vechten wrote after seeing him in 1916: “His dancing has the unbroken quality of music, the balance of a great painting, the meaning of fine literature, and the emotion inherent in all these arts.”

Anything may serve as a metaphor for something else. This is the secret of Indra's net; an Escher's net of eyes, where each eye sees all eyes. We capture our prey with a net. The net is not the prey, but without the net we remain empty-handed and unfed.


I once heard a John Barth fan say "We hate third person omniscient, don't we!"

A google search on "hate third person" yields some interesting links:

http://belladonna.org/GreyBard/commentary.html



http://nycscribbles.com/index.php?p=159

Robert Pirsig explained why first person is the way to go. Go get the 25th anniversary edition of Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance and read the introduction. This is what he says:

Tate explained that James (he’s talking about Henry James and The Turn of the Screw, the crazy governess) was able to achieve this magic through the use of the first-person narrator. Tate said that the first person IS THE MOST DIFFICULT FORM because the writer is locked inside the head of the narrator and can’t get out. He can’t say “meanwhile back at the ranch” as a transition to another subject because he is imprisoned forever inside the narrator. BUT SO IS THE READER! And that is the strength of the first-person narrator.”

There are times and places where nakedness is appropriate or even mandatory; the operatorium, the bridal chamber. The author/reader relationship is a consensual one.

 

[Sitaram]

Scotty: Warping into Hypertext!

Reading prose is like taking a walk. We may walk to get someplace, in a most serious, business-like manner, with eyes straight ahead, looking neither to the left nor to the right, or, on more artistic walks, which we call "strolls", we have no particular destination but, rather, the scenery is our goal. But then, beyond strolls, are those hypertextual March Hare's who warp down Wonderland tunnels to wind up in Oz or Neverland.

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/newbies.html

Bear in mind then that Gravity's Rainbow is a hierarchy of narratives, rather like a hypertext in which a given line or paragraph at one level in the narrative can suddenly open up into a whole section of underlying expository narrative. Be prepared to switch to and fro from one scene to another at the drop of an allusion but expect also to find a coherent trail linking each such scene to a global narrative.