Innovative Fiction Magazine

The Blue Violet Parameters of the Pentagonal Flowerfield

2020-01-19T14:17:00.028-06:00

Innovative Fiction by

David W Detrich

The tangled tall grass of the potential driveway runs up across the grassy green lot of the Summerland construct, as I meditate on the windswept waves of grass anticipated in blue which imply the future tense perspective on the mountain flowers which appear in intervals of swirling bluebells envisioned in a Surrealist pipedream, where the western hero dwells among the abstract pink petaled flower figures, who are preserved in the heart of the poet. The composition of the novelistic forms in lingerie is reminiscent of the arching back figurations where an erotic afterglow appears above the mountainous peaks of geometric rock portraits, which move amongst the characters of ancient fiction, creating a paradox in the blue violet parameters of the pentagonal flowerfield.

The creamy tan lines of the abstract curvilinear forms intensify into the volumes and color harmonies of wildflowers which augment the sandy foundation, creating an affinity with the novelist whose terraced steps represent the rock strewn path of a book lover. The paperback surface of the winding driveway is composed of a strata of silicate dust beneath the cadmium blue sky which symbolizes the idealism of the American innovator: emptiness drinks in the pleasure of forest green sensuality where a hot tub would create a place for deep relaxation in the blueberry mint waters which reflect the erotic nudes steamed in streams of sulfurous sensuality tangled up in the blue galactic swirls of intimate whirling whirlwind currents. which form a happening of sonorities among the constellations.

reflecting the nude couple steamed in Abstract constellations appear in the theoretical sky of spherical blue white cloud formations, equidistant among the embryonic astronomy of peacock blue shades.

Abstract constellations appear in the night sky equidistant among the embryonic stellar clouds of nebulosity in peacock blue brush strokes of halo rings which arch across the arms of the galaxy ascending in imaginary lines of possible interrelationships before the bed frame of knotty silver chrome reflective wood. The wine of wisdom flows forth from the crystal glass which creates the aromatic pretext for enlightenment with nuances of intense petite sirah flavor savored before the golden glowing colors of the western sunset, as the polymorphic figurations of the intellect enhance the monumental novel where the characters are envisioned as Surrealist objects: the violet blue gentleman of exemplary pastel chalk textures is juxtaposed to the intense colors of the red violet circle. The squared avant garde personage with mountainous shoulders that are terraced with vineyards takes a sip of the rich velvety wine, as the red violet circle transforms into a facial expression with red lipstick highlighting waves of brown hair that flows into afternoon auraglow of the oceanic sun tanned sea breeze atmospherics. The subject of this literary phantasy writes in a leather notebook with the bindings of nightfall words that describe the nocturnal fantasies of the sundance filmmaker, who is a construction of lightweight metallic surfaces ilumined in the candlelight. The curvaceous words of the blue curves approach the heroic abstraction of molecular identity, a portrait of the luminary intellect drawn in a multifaceted emotional vibrance of illusory brush strokes.

“The rockface figurations of the horizontal ridge form a photogenic promenade of nature trails rising before the aperture of the mountain abstraction where the exhibition of violet blue wildflowers creates a canvas of variable colorations suggesting the ancient novelistic synthesis of papcation of desire, who writes through the chalky blue mists of the immortals. The interpretation of these gospel passages with archetypal forms of abstract reasoning creates an intertextuality with the monumental novelistic structure, that has evolved into the esthetic theories of gnostic poetics written under the crystalline snowflakes which fall before the desk of Intellect,”the gentleman in the black formal shirt of a wine steward envisons a liknear sequence of brcation of desire, who writes through the chalky blue mists of the immortals. The interpretation of these gospel passages with archetypal forms of abstract reasoning creates an intertextuality with the monumental novelistic structure, that has evolved into the esthetic theories of gnostic poetics written under the crystalline snowflakes which fall before the desk of Intellect,”the gentleman in the black formal shirt of a wine steward envisons a liknear sequence of brooks tinged with the blue white blossomings of Magdalene, as the biblical scholar awakens to a sunrise of golden July auraglow.

“The novelistic phantasy composed of perceptible onomatopoeia excites the parallelepiped gentleman whose abstract physique is amomatic with the chaparral hillsides of cowboy cologne, his mind thrilled with the correlation of erotic imagery, so that the Cartesian storyteller exemplifies the self-reflexivity of implied meaning in the passages of purple prose: I love, therefore I exist,” the mathematical quantum chalk blue gentleman of translucent plexiglass actuality considers the Picasso lithograph under the illumined constellations where the finite geometrical angularity of the library bookshelves extend towards the stellar magnitude of accelerating spacetime serenity.

“The rings of Saturn encircle the luminous surface of the canvas defining the ultraviolet receptivity of the model, who ascends into the yellow orange poppies of California sunlight with the facial wanderings of a pencil drawn eyelash to illumine the starmap of heavenly blue morning glory exultation, where the precision of ideas portrays the sensual subjectivity of the 21st Century Surrealist novel,” the parenthetical moons of Jupiter orbit the receptive pastel blue lady of contemplative atmospherics, who is an assemblage of intimate cuthe heliotropic thesis of the Surrealist novel: an erotic collage composed of a grapeleaf green mixture of paints and luminaries telling the epic tale of the literary gentleman of chimeric blue aquamarine covers, who edits a magazine devoted to abstractions of the innovative novel.

The windowsill narratologist of literary eccentricities writes the betime story into the hopscotch structure of dimaond light which flows in streams of oneiric euphoria across the summer sky that is reminiscent of a Leonora Carrington novel, words written with pink seashells of dreamlike mountainscapes suggesting an unconscious archetypal metamorphosis of self traced into the inner circles of narrative strategy. The glass windows reflect the sunlit forest of green Fibonacci fronds of fern, as the heavenly bodies of the nude bathers enter the white circle of the hot tub where the breasts of the form sentences, which encompass the galaxy of the ivory milkmaid of purplish optical feathered buckskin, the utterance of mystical phenomena before the dance of attracting spheres in a superimposition of psychic impressions, with the miraculous return to reason of the macrocosmic ribbons in the poetic heavens of the candlelight. After a brief intermezzo the sylvan sequence of vocalizatons creates a contemplative atmosphere of blossoming art gallery cloud formations, near the watercolor stanzas of the observatory: the symmetrical silken feel of your cream white breasts, the quivering of the superfluidity of the golden spangled double aspect of the lens inspires the manuscript written with the dust of butterfly wings, deciphering a likeness painted across the heart shaped letters of the Surrealist novel,” the paleographic structures of the square shouldered gentleman of vanilla hue, Doves-on-the-Wind, encompasses the timber tones of subdued grays, he loves the summer tans suggestive of complementary colors, enchanting the consonant words flowing from the ink bottle of thrilling laughter.

The rings of the sunlit saddle woman of morning dove face, and the panting riders of the egg yellow

rves adorable in the lingerie of leopard skin which elucidates

syntehsis of sunlight drawn across the palette of violet blue glacial flowers, under the skylights of the eye shadowed celestial maiden, within the coordinates of Surrealist visibility, swirl a glass of inclining colors from the bottle green viticultural persona, a glass of phantoms and dreams,” the fancy signature of the zephyred nebulosity of Venus, who rides with rings and aureoles the purplish plum gentleman of penultimate psalmody, celebrating the wellsprings of eroticism above the forrested the mountainous introversions of the autumn.

The heart shaped feminine persona has written the history of psychiatry into the orange circles of the novelistic form, painted across the zoomorphic layers of the Surrealist portfolio, as the chamomile meditation soothes the writer of intelligent prose, whose margins form the frame of the canvas,” the speckled horse of the sunflower yellow gentleman of erotic intertwined wooden staff, brings gifts to the sophisticated delicate blue lady of the gradient color spectrum: some bread pudding for the nostalgia of radiant desire, and subtle works of the heart.

Sympathy in ascending steps of appreciation thrill the reader of the second draft novelistic structure composed of an associative verbal metamorphosis of vocabulary into the poise of redheads, the premonition of bluejays, and the freedom of the signature handwritten into the lucky assemblage of notebook pages, forming a quincunx of sophisticated rings in tatoos of passionate color, therefore the art of eroticism creates the recurrent theme for the ideations of love, magnetic gentleman of prosaic breeding,” the delicate figure of the ivory chess piece, a round matrix whose clasp the lover of books opens in the articulate coherence of literary authenticity, within the poetic circle of the luminous intellectual petroglyph. ivory complexion, with the apricot cowboy cologne of the chaparral lover.

The aurora of frills written across the vagabond visions of singcircle desert tones, sketching the chalk lines of the ellipse, which curve into the circumference of the sphere, where the gardener writes a series of chapters in symmetry with conceptual modernity, and the innovative marvels of the Surrealist novel, so that the salmon red of the chardonnay reflected bottle is synthesized into the wonders of the intellectual phenomenon, which compose the engendering of eroticism, within the lush monumental canvas of the differentiated blossomings,” the dreamy esthetics of the sunlight of Sol, whose origin of esoteric witticisms are delineations of these cavernous portraits, characterized by the profound awakening of erotic desire within the archetypal juxtaposition of blue feathers, foreshadowing golden coins modeled on the retrospective of the Surrealist manifestoes, which orbit the ribboned bareback rider in sanctuaries of sensory apotheosis.

The epigrammatic sparse Surrealist style of this novelistic exhibition of word objects is an exquisite fling for the lover of painterly technique, where the dream is put on a cloud-pedestal, the novelist who considers the lucscious heavenly palette of the morning glory cuisine of canary red window shopping, and a concise buttress of artistic vocabulary raised to the quintessence of pensive cream, to illustrate the lecture on literary characterizations of exemplary godliness, therefore the aniquities of graphic design anticipate the exquisite corpse with layered images: the flowery narcissism of Eden, with V shaped legs ascending to the pageant of erotica, disseminating fantasies of poppycock through tufts chronicled within the notebook pages of hardwood, symmetrical breasts implying a logomorphic zodiac of peaches and nectarines, the mummy of Michel Leiris sketched in transparencies of eye shadowing, petrified in the morning fog of pyramids rising from the stone walls, reminiscent of the silent black and white film of tresses in vogue with the characters of novelistic evolution, foreshadowing the animation of recurrent characterizations creating a composition of apricot orange beauty blossoming i Foreshadowing the conceptual nature of novelistic eroticism written into the Edenic garden of perceptible characters petrified above the desert island subjectivity of fog: the day after pill of innovative chalk narratives, ascertaining the narrative of prismatic light which flows through the mammoth mountains of luminous blueberry, persuading the woman with fawn boots of high heels, drawn with a parallel narcissism of honeyed tones, through the olive green color field disseminating wild flowers in permutations of multitudinous esthetic fissures, driving past the corral of horses differentiated in auras of extrasensory peace, promising in prayers the assemblage of stories in phantasms of surreality.

handsome bearlike gentleman of eligible storytelling meditates on a crystal glass on which is perceived a sensitive film of moisture showing the true potential of the star winemaker.

which analogical elucidation, suggestive of the boisterous model of consecutive exclamations

The monumental novel is written with the exuberant clique of the fashionable incredulous, who intermingle with the exemplary nightlife characters.n this portrait of a red violet curved ellipse.

David W Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he is revising a long Surrealist novel called Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available at Amazon.com.

Innovative Fiction as Self-Reflective Meditations on Visuality

2016-11-26T05:17:00.000-06:00

An Introductory Essay by

David Detrich

Innovative Fiction: Abstract Composition with Books

The intense golden sunlight lights up my inner mind, as I relax in the yellow orange spiralling of red blue colorations within the blue green whorls of the color harmony, envisioned as illuminations of metafictional self-reflexivity defining the abstract composition of Rio beach chair with a display of literary books, which I perceive in the sun disc shadings of October brush stroke nuances with white cloud portraits emerging into visibility. The light of the mind represents my being in relation to the sunlight which heightens the warmth of life energies, as the fall season turns cool with green trees becoming intense color fields of yellow gold in intricate leaf patterns in juxtaposition with the crimson red auraglow of maple trees emerging from the Winsor & Newton artist color palette...

an infinity of variations

intensifying into vivid shades

approaching the ineluctable

essence of artistic being

green lawn descending the hill

northern pine trees on sandy red soil

the past seasons fading in memory

the gloss of book cover textures

reflecting soft light tones

I notice the innovative novels stacked on my desk... becoming rectangular abstract simplified forms... a geometry of squared shapes... perspectives on the innovative metatext... as I carefully read through the works which signify the complexity of life stories transformed into the art of white pages in a time lapse sequence of animated typography which enhances the pleasure of esthetic appreciation. The innovative novels gathered here represent fictional works which explore the novel as a plausible narrative artform written with valid characterizations in precise descriptions, which make innovative fiction a meditative reflection of reality.

A valid characterization is true to life

like the crimson red sky this morning

intricate cloudwork of brilliant vivid energized red

the characterization of self is that of a perceiver

symbolic forms + / s reminiscent of rs

60s style spacecraft with groovy bubbles

nearing the rectangular large spacecraft entry

the paleontologist with an angular look

  a cap with long blonde hair flowing

in the style of Salvador Dali

the ancient face with squared hat

looking through the clouds

a saucer shaped hat with a round flat lateral view

the self is joined by a rock group

the perspective is photogenic red cloudwork

a novel like a cloud that changes

The innovative novelist is similar to a philosopher in the creation of a large work which shows mastery of the concepts of literature, and James Joyce has set the trend for modernism with his novel Ulysses (1922) which begins the section on Innovative Fiction. The large scale novel begins with the bard of Ireland, Stephen Dedalus, speaking with a medical student, Buck Mulligan, in the Martello tower while intoning the mass, and goes on to describe the events of a single day June 16, 1904 in detail, and continues with chapters which feature different modes of writing: historical, epic, poetic, dramatic, ending with the interior monologue of Molly Bloom written in unpunctuated prose. Finnegans Wake (1939) is another monumental novel which develops the historical mode of writing, having evolved out of the historical chapter of Ulysses, with language that is an expressionistic representation of a fairy tale reality. Innovative fiction has followed this modernistic trend with works which explore individualistic approaches to esthetic theory, often with a metafictional self-awareness of the fictionality of representation as an illusion of reality. When the novel becomes a presentation of reality, in the Husserlian sense, then it is drawing awareness to itself with typographic design and self-reflectivity.

presentation becoming representation

fiction evolving into metafiction

reflections of light as self-reflectivity

fiction expanding into the monumental novel

a multiplicity of narrative techniques

defining the 21st Century innovative novel

The innovative novel is similar to our own perception of reality with an attention to detail that becomes a phenomenological processing of sensual perceptions which represent the subject matter of the literary composition... an abstract composition with books... A phenomenological reduction reduces the phenomenon of our sensory perceptions into literary form, and the techniques of this reduction become a form of realism, abstract expressionism, or Surrealism. I think of the novels in this abstract composition as works of innovative fiction, well crafted in style and structure, which are deserving of critical attention from literary students and theorists, because they represent a serious effort to develop the innovative techniques of novel writing. The art of the novel has become the-art-of-designing-the-novel-as-an-art-object by placing it in the context of modern trends of esthetic theory...

a large horizontal format novel

written in hopscotch squares

with illustrations by Arshile Gorky

featuring meditations on psychedelics

a phenomenological approach

to the formality of the text

the theology of readings from the sacred texts

The red clouds dissolve quickly when I walk up the wooden stairs, and I look out the upstairs window where they have transformed into gray brush strokes... as if they were a momentary illusion... this phenemonon represents the temporality of the novel in which the time of the narrative event is calculated as duration, and the time of writing about the event is also calculated as duration, so that these two durations are not necessarily equal in length. If event/writing = time in the novel, then this equation creates the relativity of time where the duration of the event and the duration of writing may vary, so that one could write a monumental novel about a single day of experience modeled on the reality of Dublin, as James Joyce has done in Ulysses (1922). This is the phenomenological description of sensory experience which becomes a monumental novel that hopes to express everything about the reality of an event where the details of the scene approach infinity. This expansive quality of narration is what I call the fictionalization of reality, so that one can expand a description of a single day, or the significant events of a lifetime, into a multiplicity of chapters. The fictionalization of events creates a way of comprehending reality, and appreciating the esthetic qualities of human experience, so that one can experience love for life, as a way of representing dialogue and interaction with others, that one would like to present once again to the mind to savor the nuances of concrete reality enhanced with the flavorings of semantic density. Fictionalization of poetic prose creates a further equation of bringing the conscious intersubjectivity of inner thoughts to the page which take on the novelistic form of the innovative novel, as new perspectives on describing reality become the continuing development of the narrative form into a work of fine art with the space of the page entering the field of visuality. I have included numerous innovative texts in the Innovative Fiction section of this book, beginning with James Joyce, and evolving through Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin, Maurice Roche, Philippe Sollers, Nicole Brossard, Christine-Booke Rose, Claude Simon, Arno Schmidt, Marc Saporta, Julio Cortazar, and Ishmael Reed, Gilbert Sorrentino, William H. Gass, Raymond Federman, Ronald Sukenick, Matthew Roberson, Steve Tomasula, and Mark Z. Danielewski. These novels use the space of the page to convey typographical design, and began with the trend of theoretical fiction which uses linguistic theory as the subject for the novel, so that the innovative novel has entered the classroom as a genre that is worthy of consideration from young readers who are seeking works which exemplify the fine art of literary writing...

open structured novels

where the novel is structured by the reader

a book-in-a-box

where the pages can be shuffled

  close structured novels

with a determinate sequence of chapters

novels which use typographic design

to present a narrative

creating the visuality of innovative design

novels which are individualistic in approach

often written in poetic prose

the red clouds appear again in the October sky

with thick gray cloud layers that resemble

the smoke of burning oil wells from Mosul

the intricate pattern of reddish orange clouds

extends across the sky

with a Salvador Dali woman's face

smiling through the abstraction

with a central dark hat image

that appears to be a student

at his or her desk

a sophisticated woman with high heels

is seen projecting upwards

with a fine geometric pattern

appearing on her dress

similar to an Indian from Latin America

resembling an artist's model

the sky abstraction features reddish orange clouds

superimposed on textures of dark gray clouds

creating a modern art layering effect

the grayish clouds look like sinister air pollution

transformed into blue gray shades

with a half moon visible above the pine trees

A self awareness of the text as a work of fiction creates the conceptual foundation of metafiction with new techniques of presenting a narrative to the reader creating a sense of novelty using innovative concepts of perspective creating the visuality of typographical design affirming the definition of the innovative novel as something new. The avant garde has produced works which impress the reader with the creative imagination of the novelist to produce a novel which introduces new ways of perceiving the phenomenon of reality in a philosophical sense and to appreciate the text for its esthetic qualities which bring pleasure to the reading by satisfying the mind with the semantic density and literary quality of the fiction. Many of the authors in this collection of essays are Nobel Prize winners, who show a sincere dedication to innovative techniques in their careers as fiction writers, producing fiction which inspires us to show creativity ourselves as fellow writers as well educated readers as beginners just starting out.

As a literary blogger I would offer these book reviews for free, even when some literary magazines charge money for excerpts from novels stories poems interviews creative non-fiction essays and book reviews. The success of Innovative Fiction Magazine has been exciting with over 100,000 readers learning about the innovative fiction that makes life more interesting for those who would consider the valid characterizations the well crafted sentence structures the visuality of typographic design and the creative structural concepts for presenting the text. These essays are collected together in Innovative Fiction: Essays on Innovative Fiction, Big Sur, Surrealism, Art, Literary Criticism, and Philosophy, and are written in the short essay format which has enabled me to consider a large number of innovative works which represent a multiplicity of innovative forms.

My novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography represents an infinite regress of phantasm into eros which inspires the intricate narrative that intends to exemplify the visuality of its structure, and the Surrealist poetics of its prose style. The novel becomes an extended meditation on eros, a concept which Emmanuel Levinas has introduced in Time and the Other (1948) with a phenomenological analysis of eros as the satisfaction of desire, both in a sexual sense and as an appreciation of nourishment. The subject of my novel is eroticism that verges on the abstraction of Surrealist painting, so that the linearity of the narrative becomes vertical with the art image becoming more important than the action. This verticality is a way of transcending the mundane details of plot development in favor of a foreshortening of the linear dramatic action in an expanded narrative structure where the event = one year, and the time of writing expands to sixteen years, so that e/w = 0.0625. The horizontal structure of the novel has shown an expansiveness that balances the white space of the page with the density of the poetic prose which is presented to the reader as the black ink of the paragraph in a large horizontal book format. Temporality in the novel is intuited as an equation that time is passing in the presentation of a linear sequence of scenes with a timeframe that can be focused on a single event, or expand into a monumental structure like Bottoms Dream by Arno Schmidt which describes the conversations of a single day.

The imagery of eros becomes an sequence of painterly abstractions that parallel the work of Arshile Gorky, Joan Miro, and Salvador Dali, with novelistic writing that suggests an implicit eroticism that is careful to respect the confidentiality of the nightlife characters. The presentation of typography as a work of art enhances the visuality of the page which resembles painterly abstraction with blocks of type perceived as a new artform for the paragraph appearing in vertical columns with alternating blocks of type which add dimensionality to the page. With the use of wood block type fonts the innovative novel has become a semiotic art space featuring signs that convey visual significance, so that the horizontal space of the page creates an asymmetrical equilibrium which further enhances the pleasure of the text with heightened moods of typographic expression.

I walk out into the front yard

and look upwards to the blueness of sky

where a mirage of white satiny clouds

are resolving into an image

a tall mystical figure is seated

before what looks like a keyboard

he gradually drifts away

in slow kinetic cloud motion

wearing an old fashioned gray jacket

similar to Stockhausen

he transforms into a standing image

from a distance a mystical woman

holding a white flower

looks on at the keyboard player

while I perceive the musical scene

elevated above the houses of the fall landscape

which slowly evolves into white wisps

of drifting cloud

in a horizontal progression

of fine brush strokes

Big Sur Fiction: McWay Falls Abstraction

Meditative perspectives from the trail above McWay Falls / I look to the narrow waterfall flowing from the top of the elevated rockface ancientshower dreamstreaming onto the beige textured sand of the quintessential beach in the photogenic mindspace of the secluded cove. I think of A Confederate General from Big Sur which develops themes taken from the intertextuality of the subjective reading experience into a simultaneous synthesis of literary themes similar to the Nouveau Roman technique of generative grammar. An entire novel can be generated from the ideas of the collective unconscious which will use images from other texts to create a meta/text which is a text-of-all-texts that is composed of multifaceted reflections from other novelists. I prefer transformational grammar for my novel writing, which I consider a fictionalization of Surrealist descriptions that are based on art techniques and metaphor. Brautigan, Kerouac, Miller, and myself exemplify the trend of Big Sur fiction which portrays an intense effort to survive on a mountainous coastline which sets the mood for the romantic adventure of hiking on an elevated rock strewn nature trail, chopping wood for a fire, and sipping wine on a redwood deck overlooking the Pacific. While appreciating the esthetic beauty of nature the novelist may experience subjective moods of creativity, isolation, distance from the city, desperation, oneness with nature, and metaphysical insights.

The paintings of modern art have influenced my way of looking at reality, so that my novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights is written as an artist's book with a collage of chapters that have a natural continuity which evolved from a short story I wrote called Meditations at Big Sur. The novel includes chapters written in poetic prose that advance the plot line which has a time frame extending back to my early writings in college. The view from the beach is exhilarating with dramatic surftumultuous meditative moods with the waters extending northwards where you can see 20 miles up the coast.

to the left of the waterfall

a large structure like a hand or telephone

with some branches at the center

below two legs of a woman

extend outwards to the sand

a large dinosaur mouth to the left

a giant man at the top of the phone

like a jazz musician with a cool looking hat

while McWay falls flows in a narrow stream

from his saxophone or pipelike form

where a split in the pipe signifies

the legalization of marijuana

a black primitive head emerges

with white eyes and teeth

a tall figure with a tall hat

wearing a jacket with white sheep skin

above a covered wagon is emerging

which looks like a pink eraser

from an artist's pencil box

while a white horse is grazing

to the left of the giant musician

with black hat and white mustache

are some vertical towerlike forms

horns with a candle flame above

a white dragon head to the left

with an ancient man wearing white

seated on the rocks above

his complexion is a rich pastel brown

  a man with a lean figure

crawls up the ledge

he resembles the flow of the waterfall

as an abstract instrument form

the giant man resembles Charles Lloyd

whose album Big Sur Tapestries

celebrates the elation of the coast

an abstract bubble form clarifies

above an ancient hunting horn

in a vertical presentation to the side

I notice a giant head at an angle

next to the silvery stream of the waterfall

in front of the head an ancient animal

and to the right an ancient truck

drives up to the edge of the rock

beneath the truck a woman wearing

black leotards leaning back

with long flowing blonde hair

which forms a cloudlike circle

the sunlight refracts into green and red

prismatic lightwaves in multiple beams

from the camera perspective of the beach

I notice a giant rock to the left of the waterfall

with the seated figure of a woman in white

with a dignified man standing to the left

in a presentation of ancient dinosaur age culture

a giant rock resembles the hull of a ship

   with the trace of an Arshile Gorky smile

etched into the angular grayish brown rock

while to the right some dark shadowed rocks

extend westwards into the ocean

with trails running upward

to an elevated promontory

pine trees are critipositioned

on top of the terraced rock

where a natural gathering of tree figures

like the Three Graces by Pablo Picasso

resembles a group of young women

wearing leopard skin and chalk blue lingerie

conversing near the railing

I hike back up the trail from McWay Falls to my van of gold, while I think of Jack Kerouac's use of poetic language in Big Sur which I perceive as a casual notebook narrative based on spontaneous social interaction with the poets of the west coast. This novel is an expression of the City Lights trend of 60s interrelationships which foreshadow the early decades of the 21st Century with wine drinking, and now the legalization of marijuana in California. In Big Sur the narrator has written careful descriptions of his visit to Monsanto's cabin near the Bixby Bridge which sets the mood for a novel about an isolated man, inspired by metaphysical literature, hiking on the nature trails near the Pacific ocean.

I enter the traffic flow of Highway 1 winding up the coast through some rock canyon curves with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer setting the mood for intellectual adventure, as I drive past the rocky driveway leading up to Partington Ridge where Henry Miller once lived, whose Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch tells the story of the Big Sur art community in the early years of the 50s. This book is a potpourri of peaceful meditative insight which portrays the coast coming out of the quiet years of the beat generation which gradually develops into an American cultural scene with the fine art of cuisine, romantic lodging, and the American sublime of the literary west coast.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine, and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Out by Ronald Sukenick

2016-09-25T06:52:00.000-05:00

A Visual Meta(ph)or for the Innovative Novel: Out by Ronald Sukenick

A Book Review by
David Detrich

With a sense of optimism I watch the golden sunrise over the green leaves of the apple tree which form contrasting patterns of asymmetrical branchings with August moods of exhilaration creating a sense of nostalgia for the previous summers, where a back-to-school consciousness is now transformed into the reality of persistent creativity. The white cat with patches of caramel colored fur visits again this morning, I say Hello what's up? and the cat says with a small voice You, while brushing against the pole on the porch. Me, I say, Who are you? and with a philosophical look on his face the cat stops for a moment, looks outward with an intelligent expression, and then continues rolling on the concrete surface with pleasure, as if to say Isn't it good to be alive? I whistle to the cat, and clap my hands, while the cat runs in the house, and then quickly runs back out. Suddenly the white and caramel cat runs around the corner, and is gone, continuing the pattern of quick departures.

On the black footstool with Native American designs in symmetrical lines of gold and red the novel Out by Ronald Sukenick enters the range of visibility with its blue cover featuring the illustration of a road with white clouds of skywriting above, published by Swallow Press, the same press who published Cities of the Interior by Anais Nin. I am reading Out again, after what seems many years, having bought a copy in Berkeley years ago when I was working at a bookstore across from the campus, and the novel had just been published with fresh copies appearing on the used bookshelf. Those were the days of well designed book covers in special editions from small press and New York publishers which brought dignity, and a sense of excitement, to the new fiction being published.

Reading Out (1973) by Ronald Sukenick in my living room brings back the memories, and I recall that when the protests over American foreign policy in Viet Nam began in the 1970's the innovative novel was at the vanguard of the movement in social consciousness. From the first pages it seems that the characters of Out are involved in a counter offensive where they have reached an extreme political position by carrying sticks of dynamite.

It all comes together. Don't fall. Each of us carries a stick of dynamite. Concealed on his person. This does several things. One it forms a bond. Two it makes you feel special. Three it's mute articulation of the conditions we live in today I mean not only us but everybody the zeitgeist you might say if not the human condition itself and keeps you in touch with reality.
Out
Ronald Sukenick

If zeitgeist means the spirit of the times, then Out shows a sense of loyalty and teamwork from the beginning of the novel with the dramatization of political and sociological events used as a narrative conceit, similar to improvisational drama where an actor, or actress, portrays a dramatic situation as a form of expressionistic spontaneity. Ronald Sukenick has a flare for improv, which he calls slapstick, and uses this technique throughout the novel to create a sequence of fictional scenes.

As a reader one might think that we can't allow those who are disenchanted with society to disrupt our young good looking population with explosives. In Out a stick of dynamite is a visual metaphor for the structure of the novel, where 1/0 = 0 is transformed into decreasing blocks of writing, from nine lines to one line for the final chapter, and where the white space of the page produces the esthetic qualities of visuality, contrast, and asymmetry. Out is written as if the novel were a fuse ready to ignite, but instead is a way out of the urban nightmare that the narrator is experiencing in the Lower East Side of New York.

Warning: This novel contains descriptions of Graphic Violence.

Everyone is yelling. It sounds like someone has just hit a homer. Nightsticks flash up and down. One or two bottles smash. Several bricks fly into the air. Stones tin cans garbage. Two black teenagers holding up signs toward the wedge the lid of a trash can sails towards the helmets. An explosion resonates through the square. Another. Five or six more. The man running in front of Carl stumbles over a girl lying on the pavement swivels sidesteps the pileup bulling full speed past anyone on his way. Gas rises in slow creamy clouds jagged cumuli tumuli spreading along the ground. Carl rips around the corner slows to a walk. He has a sore throat. Sirens are coming from everywhere. At the next corner he stops to buy a paper. The headline says CROWD GASSED IN SQUARE FLEES.
Out
Ronald Sukenick

There is some justification to the radical position of those who were carrying sticks of dynamite at the beginning of the novel, yet we hope to see a more reasonable response to political injustice than what we see with Carl and his team of rebels.

Ronald Sukenick studied at Cornell, a scenic university in Ithaca, New York, which includes alumni Thomas Pynchon, Richard Farina, and William H. Gass. The Cornell school of literature showed promise with V. (1963) by Thomas Pynchon, a monumental first novel written from an informed perspective in a casual style of objective prose which influenced Ronald Sukenick and other writers at the time. Richard Farina was the next to follow with a masterful novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me (1966) written in a more subjective style, with poetic prose and imaginative dialogue, which continues the theme of campus life. Leading the Cornell avant garde with a modern masterwork William H. Gass published Willie Master's Lonesome Wife (1968) which features innovative typographic design with an erotic theme, once again a work which is a celebration of the academic lifestyle. The same year Ronald Sukenick published his first novel Up (1968) which continues the trend of realistic autobiographical fiction written in an objective style, similar to V. by Thomas Pynchon, yet the scene of writing has moved to the city where the charming professor is beginning his literary career.

After the critical success of Up (1968) where the New York neighborhood was beginning to show signs of crime, Out (1973) by Ronald Sukenick reads like a political and sociological nightmare in which things have gone from bad to worse. The events are written as examples of the dangers of the 70s lifestyle, and like the narrator, Gnossos, of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, Carl is an unreliable narrator, who is constantly changing his identity throughout the novel, as he morphs into new splinter identities, or alter egos. Carl experiences a series of hallucinatory visions involving violence and inner city crime from the Lower East Side of New York, and what disturbs some readers, is that he is on the verge of violent psychosis for most of the novel. This is similar to the character Square in Steve Tomasula's novel VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002) where scientific information has fallen into the hands of a madman.

The conflict with Jojo should have been resolved by giving him a dollar or two, so that he could improve security as a chancer on the streets of New York, rather than letting it become a problem when he is following him home. A chancer is someone who helps compatible people get together as a form of synchronicity in an urban environment. Learning the wisdom of the streets could have helped protect Carl from experiencing not only an arbitrary arrest, a theme mentioned in the first pages of Up, but death in a hallucinatory scene with a Frankenstein type doctor waking him up from a table. Out is not an easy reading experience, but for those who can make it through a series of violent scenes which represent a celebration of organized crime, enlightenment is finally achieved when Carl leaves New York, and begins hitch hiking across America where he meets the sexy Ova, who wears a see through blouse, and her companion driving a camper, a little further up a woman in Minnesota, and finally the Native American visionary Empty Fox in South Dakota.

here we are in the middle of our book speeding along on the breaking crest of the present toward god knows what destination after the first word everything follows anything follows nothing follows the world is pure invention from one minute to the next
Out
Ronald Sukenick

The narrator, Carl, who changes his name as he travels, experiences a conversion halfway through the novel when he finds someone, the reader, who appreciates his efforts to regain his sanity. I am a novelist writing in a different style than Out, having followed the esthetic theory of Surrealism in which poetic prose is more relevant than realistic descriptions of reality. The evolution of Surrealism towards the abstraction of modern art is what interests me, having studied art on a daily basis for years, the intersecting of two parallel lines of thought occurs in my reading of Out which produces a synthesis of new esthetic theory.

Of course but there are many disciplines you practice a discipline of abstraction I practice a discipline of inclusion. You practice a discipline of reduction I of addition. You pursue essentials I ride with the random. You cultivate separation I union. You struggle towards stillness I rest in movement.
Out
Ronald Sukenick

Now watching the 1974 interview with Ronald Sukenick and Charles Russell at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee I notice the calm literary rationale that is similar to my own esthetic theory, with an understanding of the techniques of fiction writing, that lead to innovative concepts in structure and characterization. Ronald Sukenick wears his characteristic vest with a moderately cool appearance, and charming smile, a look that will appeal to the audience of moderately cool readers, who are looking for fiction that portrays the events of the 70s from a sympathetic perspective.

Out is written as simple fiction in short sentences which bring out the conceptuality of the plot with short compelling propositions, while featuring a lack of punctuation, that is a form of literary collage. The colllage sentence is composed of simple phrases guided by an entrancing narrative logic, and by taking the collage sentence one step further, we can go from literay fiction to ultramodernist innovative fiction. Out is written with an insider perspective in the casual language of a faculty member who is aware of government agents, as if the narrator is trying to appeal to a literary audience which he may envision after the success of his first novel Up (1968). This appeal to the informed reader is similar to the Pop Art trend that was exemplified by Andy Warhol, author of A (1968), who favors images taken from popular culture that are often found in the American novel of the late 60s. The narrator states that he is not interested in abstraction as an esthetic theory, and prefers to add someting to reality as a form of literary creativity.

Ronald Sukenick has favored realism in his fiction with a self-awareness of narrative technique that verges on abstraction, yet his style is that of a precise psychological realism, where the narrator expresses the truth of reality in a careful analytic of plot, with a theory of personality involving motivation, formulaic rationales, and the effect on ego. Living not far from Ithaca, Jack Kerouac developed psychological realism in his novels, including Big Sur (1962) which represents a transition from the Beat Generation of the 50s to the Hippie generation of the 70s. Jack Kerouac portrays couples with a sense of inner truth that often comes from drinking wine while socializing with the literary west coast. Pablo Picasso also chose psychological realism as an esthetic theory in his paintings which often portray characters with a humorous precision of detail, creating painterly characterizations that express an emotional theme, abstracting forms which represent facial features, and using intense color to portray the individuation of the psyche, as Carl Jung would describe personality development.

Along with the Cornell school, Ronald Sukenick developed a style of characterization similar to the archetypal bohemian Benny Profane of V. (1963) with his Adventures of Strop Banally. The 60s occasionally feature the profanity of the common man written in a simple dialogue that is an appeal to a popular audience, and Out is the transition from satire to a literary novel which could be respected by the critics. The contemporary innovative novel has moved towards abstraction of character name and scene with the awareness of a more sophisticated audience. The Surrealists abandoned realism in favor of metaphor, the surreality of poetic prose, and painterly abstraction based on the esthetic theories of modern art. I have chose abstraction in my own novels, and rather than an abandonment of human experience, I consider it a more sophisticated approach to representation with characterizations that can be envisioned as abstract images from oil paintings, time lapse photography, and pastel drawings.

The narrator of Out understands the reader's situation, and has been won over by writing which shows similarities to his own fictional work. From blonde appreciation, to the soft cell, the mutual regard for a fellow writer creates the foundation for success.

Empty Fox wants to write a book.

I want to write a book like a cloud that changes as it goes.

I want to erase all books. My ambition is to unlearn everything I can't read or write that's a start. I want to unlearn till I get to the place where the ocean of the unknown begins, here my fathers live.

This is a translation in Lakota it's much better says Empty Fox he recites in a slow practical chant.

Without the wind
the kite is dead
With it
everything is possible.
Out
Ronald Sukenick

"To write a book like a cloud that changes as it goes" is how the Native American visionary Empty Fox states his esthetic goal, and this is the sentence that I always remember from Out. Standing beneath cloud banks in my front yard, I watch them resolve into a series of art images, becoming a shared experience which represents characters from ancient history. The meeting with Empty Fox in the middle section of the novel makes Out worth reading, and with the wisdom of the Native American perspective, South Dakota becomes the discovery of the historicity of America, where the narrator reveals a prophetic vision which looks forward to the next epoch.

Everything will wash away
It is good
A new race is coming
and the fire sings
Everything will burn to ash
It is good
A new nation is rising
and the wind sings
Everything will sweep away
It is good
Out
Ronald Sukenick

Looking ahead to the next decade, Empty Fox prophesizes that a new civilization will begin in America, and this may occur after an ice age in which new species of animals will appear. In a vision quest for wisdom, The Native American may study the ancient past, and even the future, and with the new epoch we may see the new human with a sublime complexion, and even some of the exoticism of the future primitive. We celebrate the future now by hearing some of its music, as we envision the gradual continental drift which signifies the triumph of civilization.

Hash.
Hash good we smoke. I get it ready he takes out a small pipe of blood red clay.
Use my pipe he says. It's special.
We pass the pipe back and forth after a while Empty Fox says now you are my friend Ron you are connected to me I am connected to you both of us connected to this place he smokes a while more the rest is postcards he says.
Out
Ronald Sukenick

As America progresses the law progresses with it, so that now marijuana is being legalized in several states, and along with it a new esthetic theory of appreciating literature with the heightened consciousness of marijuana. The smoking of the peace pipe is a way of creating friendship between people, and can help form an affinity group that becomes a way of life.

Esthetic appreciation for the sentence structures of Out becomes a writerly approach to interpreting a multiplicity of scenes which occur on the road, as the characters make their way across the country, an innovative novel which has inspired my own fiction writing, so that Out presents the reader with novelistic scenes that form a portrait of America in the early years of the 70s.
With its decreasing lines of type Out is meant to be an esthetically pleasing experience, and sets the trend for innovative fiction that is structurally sophisticated while exploring the way out of the intense urban lifestyle.

The entire novel Out (1973) by Ronald Sukenick is online at:

http://www.altx.com/out/out.html

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine, and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes

2016-06-11T05:56:00.001-05:00

The Innovative Text Envisioned with Esthetic Pleasure: The Narratology of Roland Barthes

A Book Review by
David Detrich

The green apple tree is engulfed with the water droplets of spring which signify the regeneration of life creating green leaf clusters of brush strokes converging on pink apple blossoms which contrast with the intense saturated pastel tones of the misty grey sky, as the laptop computer screen at the scene of writing is illuminated by an inner spiritual light which creates the cognitive impression of the Roland Barthes essay to produce esthetic appreciation for the innovative text in the mind of the reader. The whiteness of the page is illuminated with sentence structures that suggest subtle visual images leaving an afterglow of literary sensuality in the foggy morning light.

The alphabetical structure of The Pleasure of the Text is based on double word assemblages, like Fétiche / Fetish, where the French and English words create a meaningful pairing of signifiers that form a linguistic structure on which to construct the essay, so the essay becomes visible as a way of enhancing the pleasure of perceiving the conceptual. Eroticism in innovative fiction further enhances the pleasure of the text when the reader can appreciate the romantic interaction between the nightlife characters, so that by imagining the situation described in the text one can create an erotic fantasy that is a learning experience.

When Roland Barthes considers the novel Lois (1972) by Philippe Sollers he considers it a deconstruction of key narrative concepts, including the sentence structure itself. According to the back cover Lois is composed of six chants which begin with a legal theme, and continue the trend of Abstract Expressionism that was developed in Drame (1965) where incomplete sentences use the narrative technique of ellipsis signified by three dots ... which suggest the brush strokes of an abstract painting. This technique has influenced American innovators who are gradually becoming more abstract with the use of incomplete, unpunctuated, or poetic sentence structures, so that the novel is becoming a sophisticated work of art similar to an Abstract Expressionist painting.

Especially, of course (here is where the edge will be clearest), in the form of a pure materiality: the language, its lexicon, its metrics, its prosody. In Philippe Sollers's Lois, everything is attacked, dismantled: ideological structures, intellectual solidarities, the propriety of idioms, and even the sacred armature of syntax (subject/predicate): the text no longer has the sentence for its model; often it is a powerful gush of words, a ribbon of infra-language.

The Pleasure of the Text

Roland Barthes

Lois means law in English, and at worst represents a law community that is in violation of the right to privacy, and in rebellion against the written law. This defiance of law signifies collaboration with a hidden domestic terror network which is disrupting society, and is reflected in the literary text. The structure of Lois (1972) is being deconstructed into a series of six chants which are written in poetic prose, and is a continuation of Nombres (1966), and Drame (1965), both novels using ellipsis as an expressive form of literary abstraction, and are approaching the freer style of H (1973), a novel written in unpunctuated prose which can be imagined as a powerful gush of words.

For Roland Barthes tobacco smoke represents the intellectual shadings of pleasure which create a misty atmospherics to appreciate the nuances of the innovative text. I recall working next to a tobacco shop in Berkeley where the rich aromas of pipe tobacco flowed through the doorway onto the sidewalk creating the heightened perceptions of sensory pleasure for the study environment. Tobacco can be considered a pleasure product which stimulates the brain with Vitamin B3 nicotine, enhancing esthetic pleasure with a heightened sense of life energies for the smoker, who may be a university scholar or literary critic.

The text is a fetish object, and this fetish desires me. The text chooses me, by a whole disposition of invisible screens, selective baffles: vocabulary, references, readability, etc.; and, lost in the midst of a text (not behind it, like a deus ex machina) there is always the other, the author.
The Pleasure of the Text
Roland Barthes

The author may hope to be chosen by the fetish, and waits patiently for acceptance, either as a prospective author, or as a contributor to a literary magazine. The fetish is what inspires him, and the idea of a poetess thrills his imagination, a young woman who has become one of the main characters in his novel-in-progress, which is a monumental work of Surrealist erotica that embodies his appreciation for the fantasy figures that make up the cityscape of his psyche.

I am reading Circus (1972) by Maurice Roche which comes closest to the idea of a parallel text with the space of the page heightening the awareness of typographical design to express the precise narrative logic of the interactive text. Beginning with an enlightened perspective, the narrator creates individual typographical designs which focus on key phrases to intensify the meaning. The novel follows a two column pattern with variations in font that give it an ultramodern look, similar to my own novel-in-progress, and demonstrates the potential for the innovative novel to become a work of literary art.

Then perhaps the subject returns, not as illusion, but as fiction. A certain pleasure is derived from a way of imagining oneself as individual, of inventing a final, rarest fiction: the fictive identity. This fiction is no longer the illusion of a unity; on the contrary, it is the theater of society in which we stage our plural: our pleasure is individual—but not personal.

The Pleasure of the Text
Roland Barthes

The subject is an abstraction in the sense of multiplicity, with multiple characters, and an evolving identity, which create a sense of esthetic pleasure for those who envision a novel that is a rare genre of fiction: innovative, ultramodern, and individualistic in style. The plurality of the large scale monumental novel which portrays numerous abstract characterizations with the use of poetic metaphor enhances the theatricality of the fiction, which is written for the individual reader as a celebration of love.

Roland Barthes has written numerous essays including A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (1990), Writer Sollers (1987), and Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1981), books which put him at the forefront of narratology along with Gérard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov. The Structuralist and Semiotic critical theory of the 1970s produced an awareness of linguistic structures and sign systems which have become techniques used in the contemporary innovative novel, and the writings of Roland Barthes reflect relevant literary texts and new trends in critical theory while still remaining readable as a form of sublime creative non-fiction to be appreciated with a sophisticated sense of esthetic pleasure.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine, and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

2016-05-05T05:15:00.000-05:00

Being and Time: The Reading of Innovative Fiction from a Phenomeno(logic)al Perspective

A Book Review by

David Detrich

In a still life of wooden textures signifying the writing desk of the novelist with the abstract brush strokes of the grayish white laptop computer critipositioned on a pedestal at the center of the circle composed of lightwaves descending from the glass transparency of the window frame into the deskspace of intelligibility, the elegant writing of Heidegger is heard through the symmetry of black cloth textured stereo speakers, while the discerning eye focuses on the small green light of inner being. The philosopher/poet reveals the capabilities of spontaneous thought to express the phenomenology of being, as the ontology of what exists to the self in the world of Da Sein, defined as a state of mind called being there, the words flow into... the thoughts become... the writing is...

The still life olive green saucer above the circular form of the coffee cup is saturated with intense color, as multiple concentric circles are superimposed on the pottery mug, sensations which reaffirm our perceptual esthetic appreciation for the chocolate flavor structures warmed by the vigor of the heating element, which resembles a geometric maze of literary thought, while the rabbit below the pink window frame grazes on the natural green of edible plants. The nude figure returns from the bath to partake of the consciousness of self, what Kant considers a representation of the reality around us.

The "I" is a bare consciousness that accompanies all concepts. In the I, nothing more is represented than a transcendental subject of thoughts. "Consciousness in itself (is) not a representation ... , but a form of representation in general. " The "I think" is "the form of apperception that adheres to every experience and precedes it.?"
Being and Time
Martin Heidegger

The bare consciousness, feeling naked from head to toe, relaxes in the bath tub with the candlelight creating an oscillating aura of light on the star mirror, where the circular lights create a stage effect. This I transcends the reality of unawareness to become the bare consciousness of what I am. I think therefore I am, you say. Or I am naked, therefore I am, the nude consciousness declares. The deep relaxation of the hot waters creates steam vapors in the golden glow of enlightenment which creates an awareness of the bodily self which is composed of the sensual warmth of the natural energies. This oneness with nature places the human form in the sensory fields of interaction with the environment in a still life scene of the bath that is reminiscent of the hot tubs of Esalen.

In terms of care the constancy of the self, as the supposed persistence of the subject, gets its clarification. The phenomenon of this authentic potentiality-of-being, however, also opens our eyes to the constancy of-being-a-self, that is, in the authenticity of the being of Da-sein as care. Existentially, selfhood is only to be found in the authentic potentiality of the self in the sense of its having gained a stand.
Being and Time
Martin Heidegger

The self is contending with an invasive presence that attempts to dominate with a distorted older man's expression which implies jealousy for the younger generation. This unresolved Oedipal complex is traced to the source where the constancy of self is jeopardized in the mirror image. Younger men are following this invasive adult, and distorting the facial image. The self is hoping to triumph over this invasive presence to achieve its being-as-self in the hereness of contemporary American society, because the self strives to transcend the negativity of hidden opponents.

A negative consciousness can lead to pedagogy in the university where a professor expresses invasive thoughts, or prejudice towards the otherness of the students. This became evident after the Napoleonic wars in Europe which disrupted the generation of Hegel, and during the Nazi rule of Germany which further disturbed the consciousness of Heidegger to create a sense of existential angst, where feelings of impending doom shadow the scholarly environment. This emotional concern is heightened now with the news of domestic and international terrorism, yet the heroic forces of reason hope to defeat the unfairness of negative lawmaking and totalitarianism. A pedagogue cannot be allowed tenure in the university, and the society of hate criminals should be encouraged to behave in a gentlemanly manner in speech with respect to the right to privacy.

The primordial ontological ground of the existentiality of Da-sein, however, is temporality. The articulated structural totality of the being of Da-sein as care first becomes existentially intelligible in terms of temporality. The interpretation of the meaning of being of Da-sein cannot stop with this fact. The existential-temporal analysis of this being needs concrete confirmation.
Being and Time
Martin Heidegger

Philosophy gives meaning to life by making the thoughts about being-a-self intelligible to the writer and to the reader, so that from the perspective of one who cares about the events of life good advice can be given to the younger generation. The idea of falling prey to others in a world of terrorism has become relevant now that militant groups are infiltrating the virtual infrastructure of society that puts the constancy of self in jeopardy. Heidegger thinks through the variants in logical argumentation which comprise his theory of ontology, defined as what exists in the world around you, that can be perceived by sensory interaction and through the pre-existing logic of thought.

Temporality is the structured sense of the passing of time which one realizes is approaching the end of a lifetime, and the writing of books creates an analysis of the duration of time on a plotline, so that the confirmation of financial well being can lead to the time necessary for writing. This confirmation is based on a mathematical formula which predicts the probability of trading stocks and currencies, and frees the author from the obligations of labor.

Philosophy is good for the mind because it expresses a series of constructive thoughts which add up to an enlightened totality of consciousness that is noticeable with the German philosophers, who show a fatherly caring for the younger generation which is developing a more sophisticated perspective by drawing upon the concepts of modern education. Being and Time represents the work of a poet/philosopher with Heidegger's use of poetic phrasing, so that the reader of innovative fiction will realize that a more eloquent use of language creates a truer understanding of philosophical issues with an awareness of the worldliness of your reading in time and space.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine, and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory by Edmund Husserl

2016-03-25T07:13:00.000-05:00

The Idealized Abstract Characterization of Phantasy Envisions the Fictive Manuscript

A Book Review by

David Detrich

The conceptual form of the idealized figure works on the introductory essay to the monumental book of elongated novelistic paragraphs which is written at a steady pace quickening into a passage on Husserl, whose phantasy represents the cognitive potentiality of the perceiving mind to imagine scenes from the subtle reality of the nightlife which are portrayed to the inner consciousness, while the image conscious narrator recalls Surrealist paintings and the well illumined manuscripts which are the models from which the monumental book delineates an artistic synthesis, the blue tints of the winter snowscape create the mood for a closer study of the phenomenology of narrative technique which is a way of envisioning the pages assembled by the philosophical mind who considers the finesse of gestural expression.

Even if we do not distinctly note the inadequacy of intensity, we find something similar to what we find in the case of physical fictions. Painted colors are not exactly like actual colors. The difference can be perceived. In any event, even without actual consciousness of conflict there is a consciousness-characteristic that contributes to it.
Phantasy, Image Consciousness,
and Memory
Edmund Husserl

Painted colors impress the mind of the viewer with their emotional intensity creating an idealization of reality for the masterworks of modern art, where the colors convey intense emotions that appeal to the irrational mind of the novelist, whose love for modern art is conveyed in the emotions of erotic elation and esthetic admiration. This trend originated in the 1940s when Surrealist painting learned sophisticated color techniques from Abstract Expressionism, exploring intense saturated colors and the abstraction of the object as gesture. Idealization of the subject occurs in innovative fiction which transcends the reality it portrays as a genre that is more intellectual in description and dialogue, written with a narrative logic that is often based on a new esthetic formula. Innovative fiction is often more exciting than the reality it portrays transcending mundane description in favor of intellectual concept and esthetic appreciation which creates exultation in the narrative logic of the storyteller representing the transcendent vision of a personal mythology to the reader.

We also find recollection in phantasy, the word taken in the widest sense. In phantasy in the narrower sense the characteristic of belief is missing, whether entirely or with respect to the phantasied whole. A consciousness of time is implicated throughout. Even if I phantasy a knight in armor fighting a dragon, or a chariot battle at sea, I have a presentation of time. If I do not present the event as in the past, or as phantasied in the surrounding present, I nevertheless present duration, pro- cess... They are fictions; their time is likewise fictional.
Phantasy, Image Consciousness,

and Memory

Edmund Husserl

Belief in a valid characterization makes art and innovative fiction worth appreciating for their esthetic qualities as an affirmation of faith in the artist or narrator to portray humanity in a way that uses abstraction and the sophisticated techniques of the avant garde to create a lovable character. The innovative novelist may describe the situation of the plot with precise concrete detail, and with a sense of ethical integrity giving it varying degrees of abstraction. A false characterization of people that we see in law, law enforcement, psychology, psychiatry, social work, and religion goes against the good intentions of humanity which is often contending with a legal system which might be noticeably unfair, with false charges or inaccurate claims making up a large part of the psyche and its defenses. Fiction is often a more accurate perspective on life which can bring out the truth of reality for the reader to appreciate the validity of the characterization, and to describe events while respecting confidentiality. Humor in characterization adds to the validity of the work, something we see in modern art and Surrealist fiction, a perspective which may expand the meaning into visual metaphor and semantic density for the novelist at work, who portrays his characters with subtlety and a heightened awareness of fashion.

The consciousness of time in a narrative is based on the chronological order of events which become the beginning, middle, and end of the novel, or are divided into five books, like my own novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, each book with a different location and timespan. The consciousness of time in the narrative may be equal to the time of reading, or it may be condensed into a short summary, or expanded into a detailed portrayal of the events with dialogue and description. The time period of the events may be short or long, ranging from the mini-novel to the monumental novel in several books. Time may be the converging of a multiple perspective with a sense of simultaneity when considering the past of history, the present tense of narration, and future foreshadowing of the plotline which may extend into the distant future. Simultaneity is a technique used by the avant garde to demonstrate the complexity of reality with the consciousness of different time frames intersecting on the page with the use of semiotic signs, and antiquated, or futuristic language. The time frame may extend to the bronze age, or forward to the ultramodern in architectonic style where the structure of the innovative novel is as important as the narrative itself. The innovative novel may not tell a story when it appears to be the freer form of the representation of consciousness without dialogue or the descriptions of scenes.

The fictions of the 21st Century occur in the duration of time necessary to think of the story, and to tell it, either in visual or narrative form, with the added multiple time perspectives of simultaneity, a theory put forth by artists Robert and Sonia Delaunay. A time frame extending to the ancient past, to the present moment of writing and reading, while foreshadowing the future creates for art and innovative fiction a believableness that is the essence of the fine arts.

The use of woodblock type embellishments in the semiotic novel creates a sense of history with an archeological meditation on the signs and symbols of ancient culture, while futuristic typography anticipates the ultramodernism of architectonic design with writers of the innovative novel inventing new ways of reading the page.

How does a writer bring us to the point of actually producing memory in phantasy? Certainly in such a way that we intuitively witness certain events along with the hero, and the hero recalls these events in later parts of the fictional work. We then remember along with him. The example, however, is in need of more precise analysis.
Phantasy, Image Consciousness,

and Memory

Edmund Husserl

The narrator of the innovative novel has the ability to evoke phantasy by a careful description of events in which the privacy of those participating is honored, so that fiction can convey events without revealing personal information. This is the concept which distinguishes fiction from autobiography, as a form of storytelling which protects the privacy of the characters from those who would invade their desk space and collective unconscious on the pretext of law.

Fiction which does not pretend to be reality itself, but just a fictional representation of the drama of life may awaken the notion of phantasy in the mind of the reader. The esthetic pleasure that comes from phantasy is what makes reading an enhancement of the life energies of the mind. Fiction is enabled by the glutamine, gaba, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine metabolism of the brain which creates the dynamics of reading, as these signaling molecules create a pleasurable healthy sensation in the consciousness of the reader. This is the main metabolic pathway that includes relaxing neurotransmitters which make a novel seem interesting, and enhance the esthetic pleasure of reading.

Roland Barthes speaks of esthetic appreciation in The Pleasure of the Text (1973) with a structural analysis of the cognitive ability of the brain to experience pleasure while reading the innovative fiction of Philippe Sollers and Severo Sarduy. The novel Lois (1972) by Philippe Sollers is analyzed with this perceptive comment which comes close to the truth of its innovative sentence structure. "...the text no longer has the sentence for its model; often it is a powerful gush of words..." This is the poetic prose of innovative fiction which liberates the sentence from mere objectivity to create a more elegant prosody, and has become the unpunctuated prose of Pablo Picasso, Philippe Sollers, and Ronald Sukenick.

The pleasure of the text is not the corporeal striptease or of narrative suspense. In these cases, there is no tear, no edges: a gradual unveiling: the entire excitation takes refuge in the hope of seeing the sexual organ (schoolboy's dream) or in knowing the end of the story (novelistic satisfaction).
The Pleasure of the Text
Roland Barthes

My own writing uses the metaphor of striptease as a way of exciting the imagination in a phantasy about the fictional characters, who represent a step towards the Surrealist esthetic of the art inspired innovative fiction. The genitalia of the Surrealist imagination excites the mind of the reader who may feel the hormonal exultation of discovering the awakening of erotic desire, as the visuality of the text passes through the optic nerve to the visual cortex at the back of the brain, where it is processed, and then sent to the nearby hippocampus which may create a photographic memory of the text, and the erotic imagery which is associated with it. The amygdala senses the emotional content of memory which feels ecstatic emotions from eroticism, or the emotion of missing those who participated in pleasurable experiences.

The parallel in the sphere of memory (according to the view put forth here), then, is phantasy fiction. Included there is pure, “mere” phantasy. The elements are still memorial elements. The intentional whole, however, is characterized as “free invention,” annulled by conflict with memory and perception having the characteristic of certainty.

Phantasy, Image Consciousness,

and Memory

Edmund Husserl

Husserl considers conventional fiction to be a modeling of characters on reality with description and dialogue, and the free invention of phantasy fiction to be a technique of creative imagining, similar to the avant garde trend of Surrealist writing, which may be a form of pure phantasy based on metaphor. When one thinks of free invention I find that this is the essence of fiction to be free of an objective description of reality which may be too revealing, and which would produce autobiography. Fiction is a step towards the privacy and discretion of the narrator to tell a story without causing embarrassment to those involved, so that a romantic situation can be described without violating a sense of privacy for those who are the models of fiction. The step towards abstraction creates a phantasy where the mind of the reader imagines the scenes of the novel to be a freer subjective form based on the technique of metaphor or painterly images.

Within the sphere of memory, we again come upon fictions. Once more we come upon free phantasies and, in them, phantasms.
Phantasy, Image Consciousness
and Memory

Edmund Husserl

The memory banks of the abstract painterly form are composed of fictions, so that the phenomenal sensuality of life itself is perceived as a lengthy work of fiction that the novelist/reader has phantasized. Fiction is an intelligent way of portraying the events of a lifetime to oneself, or to an audience that knows the difference between fiction and autobiography. Edmund Husserl has written an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenology of image consciousness, which is defined as the awareness of the faces and personalities of others when we re-present images of dramatic scenes from our lives in retrospect. This is a function of the brain whose locus is the Fusiform Facial Area which is positioned behind the ear near the visual cortex which recognizes familiar faces and stores the information in memory. Image consciousness is what produces acceptance or chronic rejection, and is an important component of the psyche which leads to phantasy about these familiar faces or new and exciting faces.

Image consciousness has led to the infinite regress of phantasms which have become the subject of innovative fiction for the narrator of the monumental novel, who admires the philosophical direction of Edmund Husserl in Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory, a direction similar to Sigmund Freud in his analysis of the unconscious mind.

The stage of dreams, “which follow old facilitations,” was a stage of writing. But this is because “perception,” the first relation of life to its other, the origin of life, had always already prepared representation. We must be several in order to write, and even to "perceive." The simple structure of maintenance and manuscription, like every intuition of an origin, is a myth, a "fiction" as “theoretical” as the idea of the primary process. For that idea is contradicted by the theme of primal repression.
Writing is unthinkable without repression.
Freud and the Scene of Writing
Jacques Derrida

The stages of development for the narrator of the innovative novel become theoretical fictions that reveal the multiplicity of manuscription for the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who along with Sigmund Freud considers the concept of primal repression at the scene of writing. For the fine art of theoretical fiction that has considered eroticism as a subject for the novel, the repression of concrete details regarding genitalia has produced a polite genre of literary poetic prose which describes with precision the metaphorical abstraction of the drama of the nightlife with descriptions that verge on erotica. Repression of erotic energy is sublated into the literary work which occurs as a re-presentation of events which have always already been foreshadowed by the women who participate, creating a simultaneity of time perspectives converging on the text.

The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is as profound as the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, where the process of representation involves image consciousness which may become phantasy as a way of imagining events. Innovative writing is a way of creating theoretical fictions that illustrate linguistic and semantic structures in language guided by a narrative logic that transcends the reality of verbatim description in favor of a more creative functioning of the mind. The esthetic philosophy of the reader may gain sophistication with an understanding of the phenomenology of Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida, so that the literature of the 21st Century can be a representation of reality, or surreality, with the analysis of narrative technique that reveals the workings of phantasy as a way of imagining the text, as we experience the text through the signaling of neurotransmitters which enhance our sense of admiration and esthetic pleasure.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine, and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

The Phenomenology of Mind by G.W.F. Hegel

2016-01-27T06:32:00.000-06:00

Subtle Nuances of Intense Colorations Foreshadowing the Phenomenology of Consciousness

Metafiction by
David Detrich

The candlelight readings in philosophy create a satisfied consciousness for the model of narratology with a multiplicity of logical nuances perceived in an extended meditation on the nature of being, and the search through the intricate branchings of the virtual infrastructure for absolute knowledge, savored with a sip of the chocolate glimmerings of the French roast, as the new year begins with the exciting conclusion to The Phenomenology of Mind by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, so that the abstract delineations of the human form recalls that as a student he had bought the thick paperback translation of Hegel to go along with his hardback copy of Kant, books which represented the idea of intelligent thought lengthening into a monumental text written in the objective language of phenomenology.

The Preface: On Scientific Knowledge discusses the desultory assertions which lead to a consideration of anatomy as a way of perceiving the truth, and with the metaphor of a blossom Hegel considers the stages of development for the abstraction of characterization which foreshadows the esthetic trend of the 21st Century innovative novel.

These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole.

The Phenomenology of Mind
G.W.F. Hegel

The differentiations in compatibility with the idealized marriage prospect are presented in an erotic phantasy which develops into the elation of love for the abstract persona, who speaks with a warm tone of voice signifying intense the red orange brushwork of divinity as a spirited emotional vibrancy. The stages of life reveal the essence of self for the prospective partner, who may perceive the agreement in mood, and the compatibility of appearance, where the intense emotions may transform to the blue green serenity of the picture screen which signifies the rolling hills of the Upper Peninsula.

Religion, Being—not being in the centre of divine love, but the very Being of this centre, of the Absolute itself—from that point of view it is rather the opposite of the notional or conceptual form which would be required for systematic philosophical exposition.
The Phenomenology of Mind
G.W.F. Hegel

Theology and philosophy have become our emphasis this semester, as the symbolic form of the color field intensifies to an intellectual yellowish gray hue with a precise circle centered under the moving abstract birdlike forms which resemble a fleet of ufos moving gracefully in a precise formation. Jesus has revealed his own divinity as the absolute being of divine love which radiates this feeling of self-confidence, giving the modern mind a wisdom that is more enlightened than the tragic betrayal and crucifixion of the spiritual representative, who spoke with a sense of spiritual futuristic positivity.

The French and American Revolutions occurred in the years of Hegel's youth, and the Reign of Terror in Paris began in 1793 when the Republic decided to execute with the guillotine those who were enemies of the Revolution. In the present the abstract forms move across the color field of intense pink transforming into a deep red brilliance the words of The Phenomenology of Mind by G.W.F. Hegel, as the text is appreciated for its abstract esthetic qualities when accompanied by the abstract visual images of the graphics program.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1770 and is known for The Phenomenology of Mind (1807) which he was finishing in Jena, where he had been invited to teach by philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, when Napoleon arrived to fight the Prussian troops in the Battle of Jena above the city on the grassy green plateau. Hegel wrote to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer:

I saw the Emperor—this world-soul—riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it ... this extraordinary man, whom it is impossible not to admire.
Hegel: A Biography
Terry Pinkard

Although the battle went well in Jena, the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 to 1815 disturbed Europe, and removed the Holy Roman Empire from Germany while revising the maps of Europe. France played a dominant role in Europe which is composed of ancient kingdoms, where the European languages remind the student of the fairytale legends of dwarves and giants.

That the truth is only realized in the form of system, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit (Geist)−the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion. Spirit is alone Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which essentially is, and is per se; it assumes objective, determinate form, and enters into relations with itself−it is externality (otherness), and exists for self; yet, in this determination, and in its otherness, it is still one with itself−it is self-contained and self-complete, in itself and for itself at once.
The Phenomenology of Mind

G.W.F. Hegel

"The Absolute is realized in the form of a monumental book which is the grandest conception of all written in the spirit of a literary movement with a phenomenological perspective that creates the appreciative interrelationship between the esthetics of abstraction and the prospective reader, creating a love for the abstract vocabulary which resonates in the mind of the listener, who may find a correlation between the concrete particulars of reality and the idealized concepts of the intellect which represent a step towards the fine art of abstraction as a linear plot envisioned in the color fields of emotional intensity," the discerning mind of the painterly figure in blue velvet frock coat speaks to the cool northern wind brushing across the blue tints of the powdery white snow which reflect the blue wavelengths of idealized oxygen, as the rabbit eats from the blue reflections of the stoneware dish.

From the small school in scenic Tübingen to the urban environment of Berne where the Alps create a dramatic background to the philosophical thought of Hegel, the sensuous content of reality is something which forms a narrative line within the abstract reasoning of philosophy making the Phenomenology of Mind an intellectual adventure that is close to the spirit of Jesus when one considers theology and the divinity in mankind. The life of Jesus represents the spirit of positivity found in religion and in options trading, where the potential for wealth creates a sense of optimism that may help humanity achieve its goals of spiritual enlightenment and enduring prosperity.

The concrete content, which sensuous certainty furnishes, makes this prima facie appear to be the richest kind of knowledge, to be even a knowledge of endless wealth—a wealth to which we can as little find any limit when we traverse its extent in space and time, where that content is presented before us, as when we take a fragment out of the abundance it offers us and by dividing and dividing seek to penetrate its intent.

The Phenomenology of Mind

G.W.F. Hegel

The writing style of Hegel reminds one of the ancient cultures where the esthetic theory of Neo-Classicism prevails, and this trend can be found in the poetic writings of his friend Friedrich Hölderlin. The romanticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau inspired Europe, while the spirit of modernism is anticipated in a trend towards abstraction of philosophical thought which has become the idealized language of the conceptual. The idea of philosophy as a science is something Hegel develops in his next book the Science of Logic (1817) where he discusses chemistry and astronomy as a way of illustrating the concepts of philosophy where the infinite exists in relation to the particulars of matter.

Infinitude, this absolute unrest of pure self−movement, such that whatever is determined in any way, e.g., as being, is really the opposite of this determinateness—has from the start been no doubt the very soul of all that has gone before; but it is in the inner world that it has first come out explicitly and definitely. The world of appearance, or the play of forces, already shows its operation; but it is in the first instance as Explanation that it comes openly forward. And since it is at length an object for consciousness, and consciousness is aware of it as what it is, consciousness is in this way Self−consciousness.

The Phenomenology of Mind

G.W.F. Hegel

Infinitude reveals that the original estimate of psychology as a study of consciousness should be revised to overcome the fears of the beginner, who may take unnecessary precautions which represent the fear of the unknown. For the philosopher of consciousness to consider the esthetic theories of the future, as Hegel has done with an elegant formalism which anticipates those artists and innovative novelists whose works have been influenced by the trend of abstraction. From early modernism we evolve to Surrealism which is an esthetic theory that seeks the give a psychic reality to literature and painting with the technique of psychic automatism introduced as a way of approaching the transcendence dreamed of by philosophy, where reality becomes more meaningful in the juxtaposition of multiple layers of signification which create a psychic awareness of infinitude as a metaphor for an enlightened consciousness.

G.W.F. Hegel has made a profound contribution to philosophy with The Phenomenology of Mind which takes the lead in the field of phenomenology with his understanding of abstraction in both the study of being and in esthetics, so that the subtle particulars of logical reasoning create a linear plot development with a narrative time frame extending to ancient Germany in the usage of ancient language, and to the distant future when abstraction has transformed modern art and innovative fiction into a more sophisticated way of conveying semantic density and emotional intensity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Weimar was also writing world class literature during the years of the American and French Revolutions, and with the publication of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795) Germany produced a trend of intelligent cultured writing which contrasted with the Reign of Terror in France, so that a positive spirit prevailed that anticipates the cognitive psychology of today. Philosophy has developed from Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger to the work of Jacques Derrida, whose monumental Glas (1974) has brought philosophical writing into the context of innovative design with variations in typographic font as a large scale collage of three narrative essays. The writing of Hegel has foreshadowed the genre of philosophy as a fine art, so that we read The Phenomenology of Mind with esthetic appreciation for the universal education that it provides for the student of philosophy.

H by Philippe Sollers

2016-01-08T04:31:00.000-06:00

Polysemantic Brush Strokes of Garden Green under Gray Clouds of Synchronicity

Metafiction by

David Detrich

H is an innovative novel written in unpunctuated prose that sets the trend for contemporary avant garde fiction read under gray clouds of synchronicity today at the Crystal Falls library with the logging trucks rolling by inspired by the use of a continuous series of words which are grouped into polysemantic phrases the red heart of the abstract female figure transforming into sky blue textures that involve multiple nuances of meaning white moving trucks streaked across the blacktop a novel written at the time of the May 1968 Paris demonstrations where the street theatre of supermodel phantasms evolves into the fine brushwork of a Salvador Dali painting with the red brick facade becoming an illusory western town a literary work which transcends the synchronous reality of the nouveau roman in a clear pure flow of phrases reminiscent of bubbling pink champagne froth Philippe Sollers has written innovative novels that exist in potential as happenings of language that become part of an inter(text)ual consciousness Arditti quartet golden sunlight focused on the modern desk in the living room August cloud formations a mild front rolling in on feathery white winged brushwork

"Here's a novel written in unpunctuated prose that flows like a stream of cool water with deep orange oxide shades of intensity on the terraced rocks of the mirrored brook reflecting the consciousness of historical time qua the Irish mythopoetic nobility now become the people's literature written in a series of words which create a mossy green linear polysemantic composition," the abstract painterly form of the avant gardener appears as an outline of intense blue colorations juxtaposed to the chalky white pages of the novel H which appear with clarity in the northern light

"An innovative novel written in phrases that are free from the logic of linear punctuation increases the semantic complexity of language which reveals the creative potential of the word imagery with a multiplicity of meanings which reverberate through the mind of the multiple characterizations of the garden crew with the intertextual allusive intensity of the artisan phrased metatext," the time lapse blue textured figure of the novelist appears in a sequence of abstract dried flowers as he begins to read the text to himself before the round table gathering of the garden crew relaxing within the large architectural structure of the facility which at one time appeared to be a squared castle with identical flowers growing in front of the peaked walls a scene etched into stone focused in the direct northern sunlight

tragedy for the alighieri and sollers echo of the surname of ulysses sollus whole intact ars ingenious terrain worker fertile lyrae sollers science of the lyre daydreaming fifteen years beach winter taking care as coincidentally gonorrhoea building desert running in the dunes scent of pines underneath the branches
H
Philippe Sollers

"H fascinates the mind with the freer form of Abstract Expressionist prose creating word clusters of historical signification while playing upon the complexity of a larger semantic structure that expands the timeframe of the narration back into relevant scenes from previous centuries of the Enlightenment," the green plant shaped gentleman whose stalklike arms are similar in shape to the branching of neuron spines is seen gardening in the fine visual charcoal black earthy brown of brush strokes which form a symmetrical pattern of fine delineations

"H by Philippe Sollers sets the trend for the innovative fiction of the early 70s written from the perspective of 1776 when the constitutions of France and the United States of America were envisioned as an idealized form of government having evolved from the philosophical writings of John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu with rights for the people and freedom of expression," the novelistic painterly form is wearing his blue velvet jacket with silver buttons reflecting the spirit of romanticism with a wave of long brown hair flowing back into the reciprocal consciousness of other minds

demonstrative or meditative what's at stake is no longer one body but billions in the current sombreness let's cast here our blossoms and let's smoke in order to regain the testimonies they say that theology was immediately perfectly strange to him

Philippe Sollers

the moment of reading may exist on a chronological line that extends forward in time to the 21st Century where the Upper Peninsula outdoorsman is gardening in the golden glow of the early September sunlight as a likemindedness with the innovative novelist creates a series of parallel themes which generate a close reading with precise understanding for the spirit of American freedom to prevail as a properly aligned intelligent approach to living

we're in 1790 and the anecdotes arrive fairly quickly a small chamber during the thirty-six years with evolution towards catatonia dementia praecox exaggerated politeness unceasing volubility stereotypes your childish replies always negative the majority of sounds inarticulate unintelligible
H
Philippe Sollers

the perceptive mind of the European author will plan a defense for the fellow novelist while his American counterparts are non-committal with a low level of dialogue while the warm breezes of August remind the landscape crew of the back-to-school ambiance of a return to intellect from a non-dualistic perspective to defend the right to privacy of the innovative reader from an invasive force

"The narrator of H creates a new genre of novel writing called a summary storm in a teacup referring to the personal mythology of Arshile Gorky whose title for the painting Study for Summation suggests a summary of his earlier work while phrases like the freedom of atoms refers to the painting The Maximum Speed of Raphael’s Madonna by Salvador Dali. H approaches the esthetic theories of Surrealism from an individualistic Tel Quel perspective influenced by the formalism of the Nouveau Roman with the unpunctuated prose verging on the polysemantic wordplay of The Burial of the Count of Orgaz and other poems by Pablo Picasso," the relaxed abstract form of the book reviewer whose multidimensional mind is composed of significant passages of innovative prose considers the modern art references of the text which create an art conscious genre for the avant garde novel which parallels the mental imagery of Surrealism and modern art

"The literary scholars of Prague have set the trend for literary publishing with Equus Press leading the way in the translation of H a key work of the French avant garde novel which exemplifies philosophical and Abstract Expressionist esthetic theories from the experimental decade of the 70s and reads today as a significant step in the development of the unpunctuated text which evolved from a pre-existing model the Molly Bloom chapter found at the end of the monumental Ulysses by James Joyce," the theoretical construct of the narrative perspective relaxes on the black love seat which creates a symmetrical composition of elk antlers black bear and fish designs while the Musepaper interview with David Vichnar is heard disseminating from the speakers in wavelengths of audible sound across the sunlit room enlivened with the green shades of plantlife

an open field in all directions stars motion reply 1543 of revolutionibus orbium coelestium the dove returns with the sailors catagogy it's called sense of reflection for the sounds the voices or story dictionary
H
Philippe Sollers

the Latin language extending back to the austere olive green castle wall with a large wooden door that appears as an apparition once a year based on the precise angle of light when the chalky gray tones of the dovelike abstract form of the black velvet gentleman returns to the story dictionary a new genre of fiction where the timeframe extends in an infinite regress of intellectual phantasms back to the hilltop castle with moat as the glacier descends over the valley extending southward to the city of Ypsilanti

"The gothic style of the innovative novel is perfect in its cathedral echoed enunciation with the European awareness of monarchy creating the nobility of the monumental book which seeks to realize the esthetic ideals of the visible text for the 21st Century American innovative novel envisioned in relation to his own novel-in-progress which is written while reading through the time lapse series of magnified pages encompassing the Philippe Sollers paperback," the fellow novelist at his desk under the dark tones of the winter starlight turns to the work of the philosophers at the end of each day finding a line of development from Spinoza to Wittgenstein to Sollers in his study of the phenomenology of sensual experience and the esthetics of the fine art novel-as-philosophical-text

the colour of water and the colour of its container radiated point of contact libido viscosity iron is attracted by magnet but it has neither form nor figure that's why it looks like itself and nothing like the rest and that is the difference between the alike and unlike that makes likeness my oh my how unintelligible enigmatic you are
H
Philippe Sollers

"H creates an awareness of class taking the more democratic position of the people's literature where punctuation has given way to the longer sentence structure contrasting with the formal abstraction of my own novel The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending which has become more abstract not only in the Hegelian sense but as modern art abstraction," reading H at the laundry the abstract gray white form of the dove in western shirt transforms into a cloud formation above the sloping green trees of the ascending forest layered with a light powdery snow while he notices that the narrator of H is perfecting the subtlety of his prose the unpunctuated text envisioned as a series of concrete allusions which portray the double subjectivity

i can't stop dreaming about it a super-successful case of a total incomprehension and still you can't forget that if you look at it calmly ever since after-frost has mellowed it seems to you clear as day without obstacles listen how he's going there now the heroes are dead the islands of love are no longer recognisable
H
Philippe Sollers

the complimentary perspective of the narrator introduces the theme of the super-successful young man who has triumphed over literary disruptions while approaching world peace in a naive state of ongoing chatterbox humor while the European writer shows advanced attitudes in law and the defense of human rights which makes the reading of H not only the creation of a new model for the innovative novel but also a step towards responsible behavior for the world community

"The precise lettering of the novel becomes a sequence of painterly images which reveal the semantic play of phrases crystallized in the sunlight focused on the rectangular form of the white canvaslike textures of the paperback which enhance the esthetic appreciation for the innovative novel which is perceived as a masterful work with the subtlety of concrete particulars suggesting a novelistic sequence of visual phenomenon," the ardent mind of the abstract textured figure in vibrant blue scarf and black ski band admires the paperback novel while he savors the aroma of artisan bread fresh from the oven in a time lapse photographic lensing which magnifies the sensual qualities of northern surreality

A work exists by itself only potentially, and its actualization (or production) depends on its readings and on the moments at which these readings actively take place.

Philippe Sollers

the conclusion of the summer season occurs on the final warm day of August as the tall abstract structural arrangement of the idealist physique in the symmetrical composition of blue Levi shirt heatwave ambiance begins his new part time career of trading options as the philosophical question is posed does each reader envision the same novel when reading H so that the phenomenology of the literary text reveals the art esthetic of the narrator interpreted by the reader who may voice objections to the text suggesting that the ideas and images implied by the text are not possible in his or her own mind

the reader can develop a more sophisticated perspective by learning how to read and interpret the innovative text with esthetic pleasure by mastering the formula of the innovative novel Philippe Sollers used an arbitrary structure in Nombres (1968) where (1 + 2 + 3 + 4) squared = 100 which produced a numerical structure similar to the Tractus Logico Philosophicus (1922) by Ludwig Wittgenstein where the incomplete sentences of Nombres represent propositions about narrative reality which are close to phenomenological perception creating an abstract composition which is based on a formal logic of the continuing sentence which expands even further into an infinite sentence in H which is written in avant garde lower case lettering so that the converging lines of multiple writers of avant garde novels create a meta-text that include myself and James Joyce with his novel Finnegans Wake (1939) which has numerous allusions to innovative novelists

The unmistakable identity of the persons in the Tiberiast duplex came to light in the most devious ways. The original document was in what is known as Hanno O'Nonhanno's unbrookable script, that is to say, it showed no signs of punctuation of any sort.
Finnegans Wake
James Joyce

Written in unpunctuated prose the unbrookable text of H means a text that reveals the consciousness of a narrator who considers historical themes while mentioning romance rarely creating a contrast to those who write Surrealist erotica in a modern art context like my own novels The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending and Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography a monumental novel-in-progress which is a brookable text from start to finish in the sense of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake Roland Barthes introduced the theme of the pleasure of the text which is a key concept in innovative fiction that reminds us that a novel is meant to be enjoyed by the reader for a sense of esthetic pleasure

If I read this sentence, this story, or this word with pleasure, it is because they were written in pleasure...
The Pleasure of the Text
Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes considers the novels of Philippe Sollers in The Pleasure of the Text (1975) where he introduces the genre of the erotic innovative novel which creates a contrast between the objective prose of the Nouveau Roman and the novels and philosophy of Tel Quel with subjective descriptions of abstract eroticism in the brookable text defined as an imaginary landscape with a brook where one can have erotic fantasies the season changes once again from fall into winter with the snowfall intensifying the landscape into a brilliant powdery white surface of snow crystals similar to the confection sugar on brownies and chocolate cake as the abstract brushwork of the oil painted reviewer writing before a kerosene lamp to warm his hands while relaxing into an increased intellectuality after the end of his labors

the scene of writing having become the peaceful interior winterscape of creativity where H by Philippe Sollers represents the creative spirit fulfilling its esthetic ideals metamorphosizing from simple sentences structures into the more complex infinite sentence written with unpunctuated prose that expresses the historical consciousness of the European mind looking ahead from 1776 to the present decade of Paris news which reveals the good hearted society of music nightclubs and coffee shops disrupted by domestic terror H by Philippe Sollers suggests that we should be living up to the cultural ideals set by the previous centuries while exploring innovative formulas for the novel

Nadja by André Breton

2015-11-21T13:06:00.002-06:00

Nadja by André Breton: A Romantic Mini-Novel written in Objective Philosophical Prose

A Book Review by

David Detrich

Nadja (1960) by André Breton was published by Grove Press in a translation by Richard Howard of the original 1928 edition from the Librairie Gallimard: Paris, and with its cover design featuring large colorful letters Nadja intrigues the mind of the reader from the first page. It is a short novel written in the objective prose of a writer skilled at philosophy, with the stylistic eloquence and spirit of the Enlightenment, a short romantic novel in the tradition of The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nadja is an intricate description of the narrator's relationship with the alluring multifaceted character Nadja, whom he considered a potential Surrealist, and in appearance a very close match to himself, a short illustrated book written as a meditation on love which has become the first classic of the Surrealist novel.

The identity of André Breton is also complex, and with black and white photographs which reveal his exact image, Nadja becomes a meditation on identity throughout a series of pictures with the time frame of the novel extending back into the previous epochs of French history.

Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I "haunt." I must admit that this last word is misleading, tending to establish between certain beings and myself relations that are stranger, more inescapable, more disturbing than I intended. Such a word means much more than it says, makes me, still alive, play a ghostly part, evidently referring to what I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am.

Nadja

André Breton

The ghostlike apparition that André Breton has become reveals the subtlety of the European mind which has an awareness of the past tense of narrative time, a cyclical perspective which transcends the present moment of writing into a larger time frame extending not only to the distant past, but to the future moment of reading, when the novel comes into existence as a phenomenon of psychic interaction between the narrator, the character Nadja who speaks as a prophetess, and the reader who recognizes a significance to what is spoken in dialogue, and what is written as objective prose.

The beginning of Nadja is a discussion of esthetic theories of novel writing with the concept of characterization perceived as a multiplicity of personality traits, which is a foreshadowing of techniques developed in Surrealist painting, where a character transforms into metaphorical likenesses and resemblances to those women the narrator may wish to remember.

Out of one real character about whom they suppose they know something they make two characters in their story; out of two they make one. And we even bother to argue! Someone suggested to an author I know in connection with a work of his about to be published and whose heroine might be too readily recognized, that he change at least the color of her hair. As a blonde, apparently, she might have avoided betraying a brunette.

Nadja

André Breton

The exact identity of Nadja remains an enigma to the reader who may be happy to discover that the character Nadja is modeled on Léona Delacourt, who appears to be a very good match for the narrator, André Breton, in this autobiographical novel which begins on a small scenic island in the Seine, not far from Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, and just across the river from Shakespeare & Company.

I intend to mention, in the margin of the narrative I have yet to relate, only the most decisive episodes of my life as I can conceive it apart from its organic plan...

Nadja

André Breton

Once again I notice an allusion to my own large scale Surrealist novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, with its marginal typographic designs, a direction that André Breton might like to pursue himself, since we have both followed the trend of the romantic novel which describes a short relationship in detail. This convergence of narrative lines has produced a novel influenced by the philosophical writing of Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida as one line of thought, and that of Descartes, Goethe, Freud, and Bachelard, as another line converging on the narrative of Nadja. André Breton uses a multiple image approach to characterization, and an intricate plotline which is antiquated at times, wide ranging in galactic location, with a futuristic awareness of the writers of Surrealism, even the second and third generation Surrealists of the 21st Century.

But it is also, and perhaps, in human terms, much more, the relatively long but marvelous series of steps which man may make unfettered.

Nadja

André Breton

The innovative novel has become a series of steps to be taken as each decade produces more literary star performers, including the writers of the Fiction Collective Two, with the influence of Raymond Federman and Lance Olsen. This collective consciousness converges on the typographic innovations of Mark Z. Danielewski creating a contrast between objective prose writing, and that of subjective art oriented writing.

Nadja by André Breton has influenced my own novel-in-progress because I was reading the paperback edition at a cafe in Santa Cruz when I decided to write a Surrealist novel myself, which became Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental innovative novel written in two columns with color illustrations inspired by Nadja.

Nadja refers to a star which may be the goal of a lifetime of prolific writing, and her words may have prophetic significance in relation to an imagined starmap.

It was really a star, a star you were heading toward. You can't fail to reach it. Hearing you speak, I felt that nothing would hold you back, nothing, not even me... You could never see this star as I do. You don't understand: it's like the heart of a heartless flower.

Nadja

André Breton

Nadja realizes that André may not be good for her, since he revealed that he is already a married man, and here we perceive the foreshadowing of an unhappy ending, so that Nadja is attempting to avoid André on the street when they meet as if by chance.

She advances as if she doesn't want to see me. She seems quite unable to explain her presence here in the street where, to forestall further questions, she tells me she is looking for Dutch chocolate.

Nadja

André Breton

The plot of the novel is disturbed when Nadja tells a story about how she was involved in a cocaine bust, and hoping to profit from this transaction she was approached by a police investigator who gave her his card. Fortunately she was released from custody, but tragic results occur when towards the end of the novel she experiences a crisis which leads to her hospitalization.

Since recent studies have shown that cocaine has the benefit of enhancing nerve growth it seems the law is not in harmony with scientific evidence, and that cocaine should be legalized as a prescription drug in France, and throughout the world, so that harsh penalties will not adversely influence the plot of life.

I am reminded of Nadja's drawings often when I see clover leaves that resemble her heart shaped images.

The more Breton pulled away, the more Nadja's attachment seemed to grow. She began sending him letters, often decorated by strange drawings. One featured a "symbolic portrait" of Breton, as a lion whose tail ensnared that of a mermaid Nadja. Another represented "the Lover's Flower," made of two hearts and two pair of eyes, and bore the message: "You must be very busy at the moment? Find time to send a few words to your Nadja."

Revolution of the Mind:

The Life of André Breton

Mark Polizzotti

From the metaphysical prose of The Magnetic Fields (1920) with Philippe Soupault, to the Paris Dada influenced subjective poetics of Soluble Fish (1924), André Breton has introduced the Surrealist novel as a genre that is innovative in style, ranging from the poetic prose of metaphor, to the objective prose of philosophy in Nadja (1928), showing a dialectical balance between the subjective and objective in his literary works which span the decades from his first poetry collection Pawn Shop (1919), to the poems of Earthlight (1966). The prose poems of Constellations (1959) are inspired by a series of paintings by Joan Miró, and show that Surrealist writing is often conscious of the art esthetics of painting, which give it more sophistication in the description of reality. This superior perspective gives Surrealism a psychic reality that is often lacking in purely realistic description, and which makes Surrealism an enlightened movement in both literature and art.

With Nadja (1960) André Breton has written a short novel that is based on a relationship which inspires the feelings of love and attraction, with journal entries that create a sense of reality as it happens. While reading Nadja I looked up the places mentioned in the book to find that Paris is a city that is more beautiful than one might imagine, and has inspired many of the novels of Surrealism, and of innovative fiction, as the street theatre where things can happen for those who believe in love.

from Christmastown by Reid Matko

2015-04-13T11:52:00.000-05:00

Innovative Fiction by
Reid Matko

1 · an exploded and exploding body · a tucked and tumbling weave of voices · here · inscribed with another’s desire · from out

of the illusion of its unresolved control · where speech is

impossible · both in and out of the darkness · in the margins

of its demand · that it will always appear · between the two

it punctures · an exploded and exploding body · the illusion

of an event · inscribed with another’s desire · the body

and its unspeakable walls · here · a voluminous rapidity

of figurative thought · woven · a tucked and tumbling weave

of voices · one to another · a tetanic will · here · from out

of the illusion of its unresolved control · at the edge

of the soiled sheets of all of these dreams · both in and out

of the darkness · that it will always appear · between the two

it punctures · an exploded and exploding body · in the margins

of its demand · balanced on the tip of the tongue · where speech

is impossible · that it will always appear · from out of the illusion

of its unresolved control · here · one to another · the illusion

of an event · a tucked and tumbling weave of voices · the body

and its unspeakable walls · moving irresistably toward you ·

a voluminous rapidity of figurative thought · woven by the hands

of another · coming into the darkness · here · from out

of the illusion of its unresolved control · the illusion

of an event · inscribed with another’s desire · both in and out

of the darkness · a voluminous rapidity of figurative thought ·

here · where speech is impossible · a tucked and tumbling weave

of voices · woven by the hands of another · in the margins

of its demand · the illusion of an event · where speech is impossible · that it will always appear · woven by the hands

of another · the illusion of an event · balanced on the tip

of the tongue · both in and out of the body · where speech is

impossible · the illusion of an event · displacing · one

to another · here · that it will always appear · inscribed

with another’s desire · a tucked and tumbling weave of voices ·

spilling · in the margins of its demand · between the two

it punctures · from out of the illusion of its unresolved control ·

a voluminous rapidity of figurative thought · here · resolvent ·

spilling · in the margins of its demand · the illusion

of an event · inscribed with another’s desire · where speech is

impossible · a tetanic will · that it will always appear ·

Reid Matko has written this long fictional piece in seven parts. He lives in Minneapolis where is the editorial director of SCHISM (schismletternetpress.blogspot.com), a blog site exploring ideas and aspects of contemporary literature. He is a member of the Letternet Press / Open Drawer Publications collective (Letternet press.com), where his work can be found. He is currently working on a novel entitled A Popular Tale.

Glas by Jacques Derrida

2014-12-16T05:55:00.000-06:00

Glas by Jacques Derrida: A Trinity of Philosophical Essays Transformed into a Typographic Collage

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Glas (1986) by Jacques Derrida is an innovative collage of double columns each with its own typographical font, often with columns within columns, an innovative book which represents a philosophical glas defined as a mournful sound from a medieval funeral, or the soulful sound that a dog will make when someone dies. Glas is a masterful blending of theology and literature with meditations on Jesus Christ, the philosophy of Hegel, and the writings of Jean Genet which create a contrast between the sacred and the literary. Jacques Derrida has put some of his best thought into this monumental work which conveys information to the reader in an indirect manner with numerous moments of simultaneity revealing subtle nuances of meaning that make up a life story.

The translation of Glas into English reveals the work of two translators, each who handled a different set of columns.

The translation of Glas was a joint effort. Richard Rand provided the first draft translation of the column on Jean Genet and I of the columns on Hegel. I then integrated and reworked both columns for accuracy, continuity of language, and stylistics.
Note to the Translation
John P. Leavey Jr.

This reveals a double book theme, or a trinity of themes when the double text opens onto the theology of Jesus, whose words reveal a simple life story that concludes soon after he introduces the idea of sacraments at the Last Supper. Jacques Derrida is among the true believers who takes Israel seriously, and the life of Jesus reveals a young man whose single act of defiance in turning over the tables of the money lenders became a challenge to the religion of the temple, and the founding of a new religion.

"John says (2: 25) of Jesus that he knew what was in man; and the truest mirror of his beautiful nature is his discourse at the sight of immaculate nature." Not soiling this nature or becoming a child ("in my name,") is the same thing.
Glas
Jacques Derrida

Jesus is aware of the defacement in the mirror theme, and shows his disapproval, preferring as Hegel said the "truest mirror of his beautiful nature" with prophetic insight into the future dilemma of the divine image. This is a quote from On Christianity: Early Theological Writings (1948) by Friedrich Hegel which Jacques Derrida considers at length in Glas, interpreting the words of Jesus which prophesize future events, including the themes of defacement, the friendship of Jesus and John, and the beginnings of Christianity.

The place of the one who writes must always be sought, even if it is not fixed, if it lets no more than the replacement be caught. John does not name himself, but does not hesitate to point to himself, under his own pen, as Christ's preferred disciple.

Glas

Jacques Derrida

The friendship of Jesus and John creates a new branch of theology with a constellation appearing on the horizon as a visual sign of excellence, and Glas continues with the evolution of religion away from church ceremonies towards the popular culture of rock music. As Timothy Leary suggested in High Priest (1968) a new religion could be formed on the basis of psychedelic sacraments for a more profound approach to mystical self-realization and the envisionment of God. Where Jesus left off with a break from Judaism which seemed a historical necessity, a new religion could be formed that would bring intense metaphysical insight to the living experience as a living religion.

Like all new sacraments, the psychedelics require a new religion.
High Priest
Timothy Leary

In Glas Jacques Derrida has imagined a new religion which would be a religion of flowers in which love would prevail as the sacrament of choice. A religion of flowers is more a religion of love which is needed to have a living religion, where the sacrament could be lovemaking and eroticism. In looking back at ancient history he finds that the religion of flowers also follows the religion of the sun as a branch from the main hierarchy of spiritual interconnections.

Then in place of burning all, one begins to love flowers. The religion of flowers follows the religion of the sun.
Glas
Jacques Derrida

The sacraments of Christianity feature a host and a chalice of wine which are symbolic ways of having communion with Jesus, yet we can imagine other possible religions which may be independent of Christianity, or a branching from the main theological movement.

gl tears the "body," "sex," "voice" and "writing" from the logic of consciousness and representation that guided those debates.
Glas
Jacques Derrida

The philosophy of Hegel and Derrida, the literary writings of Jean Genet, and the evolution of Christianity are aspects of the phenomenology of consciousness which is represented on the page as a form of writing, a narrative, an essay of creative non-fiction, that is guided by a literary consciousness which has developed the linguistic concepts of Ferdinand de Saussure into what has become the semiotic novel, as a form of idealized book that Stéphane Mallarmé had envisioned, a book which is a monumental narrative written from the enlightened perspective. This is the reality of God reflected in the writings of philosophy, journal writing, and the innovative novel, a literary consciousness that guides the writing of thought which has taken on the form of collage, an esthetic theory that grew out of modern art.

The big O of the erect treelike gentleman before the pink sea shell figure becomes phrases of ahahahah word clusters suggested in the nodes of modalities which express the joy formidable of the energized bookworker * thoughtprocess * smileprophet who floats like a white fluffy seed on the wind towards the poetess of visionarytheory * lovepredictions * complementarycolors written into the holybook which the literary gentleman kisses with respect for the gifted belief in the generosity of God for his creation.
Dream the Presence of the Circular
Breast Starfish Topography
David Detrich

My novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography is a monumental innovative novel with typographic design that has developed the themes of Glas within the context of Surrealism, and the philosophical analysis of theology has suggested possible religions which are considered in the intricate poetic plot which has been written while reading Glas as an avant garde parallel text which set the trend for the idealized book as a work of modern art.

Glas (1986) by Jacques Derrida is this great book that could be written, and realizes the dream of philosophy to become a monumental work of avant garde writing that realizes the dream of esthetic theory in an idealized book that discusses the most relevant issues at length in an intelligent manner. The contrast of modes in a trinity of narratives reveals that the writings of Friedrich Hegel on religion have inspired the true believer Jacques Derrida to consider the themes which suggest yet a further development in the history of religion as a form of innovative narrative.

*
* *

Glassary (1986) by John P. Leavey Jr. with a foreward by Jacques Derrida is a large book which accompanies Glas as a companion piece which includes the essays Proverb: 'He that would pun...' by Jacques Derrida, "This (then) will not have been a book..." by John P. Leavey Jr, and Sounding the Unconscious by Gregory Ulmer. Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Glassary includes a glossary of terms from Glas, and as John P. Leavey Jr. suggests is a grouping of essays that it is not itself a complete book.

The law of genre is the same: quickly withdrawing, and not detaining the reader.
Proverb: "He that would pun..."
Jacques Derrida

The invasion scheme is enough to cause those who identify with it to consider withdrawing from their tough legal position. We are masters of the situation so that those who thought they were unnoticed have been traced and expressed verbally or in writing. The philosopher realizes the truth of the situation in relation to the virtuosity of the novelist's use of language, not punning as much as in some modes of writing.

...to defend certain norms, the free play, the complacent and slightly narcissistic relation to language, the exercise of virtuosity to no profit, without economy of sense or knowledge, without any necessity but that of enjoying one's own mastery over one's language and the others.
Proverb: "He that would pun..."
Jacques Derrida

This short essay is followed by the essay "This (then) will not have been a book..." by John P. Leavey Jr. which describes the reality of the Glassary which is that it contains a few short essays and a glossary of terms, similar to my own elaborate bibliography for my second novel.

The idea suggested by both Glas and the Glassary is that Jacques Derrida is writing as a predecessor to what comes after, even suggesting the large horizontal format book which can be filled in by those who follow, similar to my own monumental novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography which places philosophy and the innovative novel in the context of modern art, books which are taking on visibility as art objects, with Glas written as an art collage of philosophical writing, dictionary philology, and literary criticism. The 21st Century is developing the themes of Jacques Derrida, and the writers of Tel Quel, with the art conscious esthetic theories which have produced a sequence of innovative novels using typographic design to convey a sophisticated blending of narrative modes into a book arts masterpiece.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Ulysses by James Joyce

2014-11-29T06:07:00.001-06:00

Ulysses by James Joyce: A Monumental Innovative Novel Gradually Evolving into a Stream of Consciousness in Mixed Modes

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce was originally published by Sylvia Beach in Paris, and begins with the young Stephen Dedalus at the Martello tower as Buck Mulligan invokes the spirituality of the mass which represents Irish mysticism. The humor of the medical student and the bard create a contrast between sacred spirituality and a profane medical perspective that lasts throughout the novel, which begins as a literary portrait that is naturalistic in style, and gradually evolves into a general discussion of life in Ireland which is portrayed as a leading European culture with enlightened intertextual opinion. When the conversation turns to Hamlet by Shakespeare the novel transforms into literature at its finest with the psychogenesis of the father/son relationship described in the passage on the ghost of Hamlet's father. The narrative of Stephen Dedalus is that of an author writing in short sentences with em dashes, whose narrative is somewhat informal in perspective while considering the great themes of literature. This relaxed casual style makes Ulysses a pleasure to read with chapters written in various modes of writing: epic, poetic, historic, philosophic, dramatic, and interior monologue. The narrator experiences a conversion to innovative writing techniques that is similar to a religious conversion halfway through the monumental novel, and beginning in the bronze by gold chapter Ulysses becomes more poetic in style. The epiphany of Stephan Dedalus is a profound realization about esthetic theory that helps him evolve from the objective prose of the Irish pub to the poetic prose of the final chapters, so that Ulysses becomes the first monumental novel of modernism in the 20th Century.

When Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus have a dramatic conversation in the ancient tower it reminds us of Prince Hamlet of Denmark with a discussion of personal appearance as Buck Mulligan shaves, and holds out the small mirror to Stephen, we see that Stephen's style is "hair on end."

—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard! Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me?
Ulysses
James Joyce

The autobiographical self-portrait of Stephen Dedalus is modeled on the author, whose introspective fair skinned looks remind us that he is a literary person, and the mirror's reflection reveals that his own face is obscured by the jealousy of a hidden entity.

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen’s peering eyes.
—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.

Ulysses

James Joyce

This passage reminds me of my own theory of Michigan art with the shaving mirror reflecting an old yellow face where a young man's face should be, so that the literary community is disrupted by this type of invasive networking, while the esthetic theory of the innovative novelist is adversely effected by the looking glass.

Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.

Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.

—Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the riverbank.

But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts.

Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!

—The play begins.

Ulysses

James Joyce

The influence of painting is noticeable in my own work with the trend towards Surrealist imagery and abstraction, and conceptual doubleword clusters like Canvasclimbers refer not only to wooden ships, but foreshadow my own novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography which has become a monumental Surrealist novel similar to Ulysses in concept, having evolved in a similar direction perhaps with an unconscious awareness that an asymmetrical structure with mixed modes of narration will solve the esthetic goal of creating variations in chapter design. Using different modes of narration: epic, and lyrical mode of unpunctuated poetic prose my novel is a linear structure, and it can be either symmetrical like my second novel The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, or asymmetrical with a constantly evolving chapter design.

The discussion of the plays of Shakespeare in the library express the wit of Stephen Dedalus, who perceives the drama through the pre-consciousness of esthetic theory with the analysis of a composition as a way of envisioning a dramatic action, and with the essay Composition as Explanation (1926) by Gertude Stein we see that James Joyce has chosen just a few theories to develop after the years of Cubist abstraction produced the techniques of multiple perspective on the subject matter of the still life tableau, landscape painting, or the Cubist portrait. The multiple perspective can be applied to the modern novel when the narrator describes a single day in the life of the narrator through the use of varying modes of description in each chapter, which are modeled on the individual chapters of the Odyssey by Homer, a literary precedent which acts as an archetypal model for Ulysses.

There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking.
Composition as Explanation
Gertude Stein

The subject itself has changed with the move away from Cubist abstraction towards a large scale novel that focuses on a single day in the life of the narrator Stephen Dedalus, so that we are looking at a series of scenes which represent a change in relationship, and now the leading women are Gerty MacDowell and Cissy Caffrey, who are making a difference as the subject of the novel. The art conscious esthetic of Cubism found in the writings of Gertrude Stein impressed James Joyce enough to model the leading female character Gerty MacDowell on her.

Gerty MacDowell might easily have held her own beside any lady in the land and have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her.

Ulysses

James Joyce

The portraits of the young women are written in an elegant style with a realistic summary of their personality traits that is naturalistic, revealing the details of daily living without self-censorship by the narrator. This honesty towards sexuality and the intimate details of life may be the influence of Buck Mulligan, whose medical perspective impresses the youthful bard Stephen Dedalus, and leads to Ulysses being banned in America a few years after it was published, and confiscated when it arrived on our shores. After Random House began a legal defense of Ulysses, Judge Woolsey wrote an intelligent legal decision on this mildly erotic novel making it available to American readers.

From phenomenological law to theological spirituality Ulysses takes its first step towards the summarization of ancient history that James Joyce's next novel Finnegans Wake (1939) would become.

Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it?
Ulysses
James Joyce

The conversion to innovative writing occurs with the formal abstraction of concepts heard in the ancient language of Ireland, where well known philosophers and theologians have produced small kingdoms which introduce the theme of California vineyards. This loyalty has extended from the ancient cultures until now without our being consciously aware of it, and may be based on peer groups of compatibility. The poetic prose that begins in the Sirens chapter has always satisfied my sense of esthetic pleasure with prose writing in the poetic mode, and I have returned to Ulysses many times over the years.

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.

Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the.
Goldpinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
Ulysses
James Joyce

The poetic mode of the Sirens chapter has always seemed more interesting to me than the objectivity of dramatic dialogue, and the lyricism of this chapter is where I become interested in the prose style of James Joyce. In the nighttown chapter Stephen Dedalus comes close to my own esthetic philosophy of social interaction with an appreciation of the nightlife, while retaining his self-control among the opportunities to converse.

STEPHEN: (Looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklen-burgh street!
Ulysses
James Joyce

The frame of the narrative extends beyond Stephen Dedalus's own life into the life of other characters, including Leopold and Molly Bloom, a young couple who have attracted him. The final two chapters describe Leopold Bloom in an objective question and answer style that parallels the objectivity of phenomenology, with the final monologue of Molly Bloom written in an informal unpunctuated prose. Yet the idea of composition anticipates the ending of the novel.

when general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be some great fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was there from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the son then the same old bugles for reveille in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers walking about with messtins
Ulysses
James Joyce

Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce is a masterwork of innovative fiction that bogles the mind of the reader with a large scale structure composed of chapters written with individual modes of writing: dramatic, poetic, historical, philosophical, and interior monologue. Each chapter parallels the journey of Odysseus, and the reader may enjoy this classic approach to description while realizing that the psychological plot summary is written in the early years of the 20th Century when simplicity was gradually evolving towards the ultramodern complexity of the next century. I have returned to Ulysses by James Joyce many times since I first discovered it on the book shelf in high school, and now as I work on my own innovative novel which parallels this classic of modernism, I am glad that I have realized my dream of becoming a writer.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He is the editor of Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Yellow Back Radio Broke Down by Ishmael Reed

2014-10-05T06:11:00.000-05:00

A Cowboy Western Mono(logue) of Vernacular Witticisms in Yellow Back Radio Broke Down

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Yellow Back Radio Broke Down (1968) by Ishmael Reed is an innovative American novel written with the true spirit of creativity that blossomed in the late 1960s when innovative techniques were used to enliven the novel with a creative approach to dialogue, characterization, and typographical design. Yellow Back Radio Broke Down is an extended dialogue without quotation marks that creates a sense of the spoken word as a form of western American dialect portraying the black travelers of the west, who were sometimes unfairly treated by the western settlers. This novel anticipates the writing of the current decade with a wakeword approach to narration which brings out the literary wit of the narrator, who tells the story of Loop Garoo in this modern western, a genre that is known for its sense of verbal play, Joycean puns, and use of visual metaphor. Originally published by Doubleday in 1969, a new edition has been published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2000 with a collection of essays A Casebook Study of Ishmael Reed's Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down edited by Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure for the Center for Book Culture in 2003. Yellow Back Radio Broke Down continues the oral tradition of the black narrator, who reveals skills in jazz improvisation and verbal poetics, as he participates in the settling of the American west.

Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid.
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Ishmael Reed

The novel begins with a western narrator telling the story of the Loop Garoo Kid in a monologue without quotation marks, the spoken words of the narrative voice represent a summarization of the western plot which begins with an optimistic attitude based on an appreciation of eroticism and art esthetics.

She sent me a letter in the last town, Zozo. She wants me to come to her. The old man spends his time grooming his fur and posing for non-academic painters.
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Ishmael Reed

The introduction of the character Zozo Labrique, a black woman who is traveling west begins the plot of the circus which involves a Barnum and Bailey cast, who encounter an ambush further up the road. With the introduction of the character Zozo Labrique the novel should interest those who are looking for intelligent innovative characterizations in the American style.

Zozo Labrique lit a corncob pipe. She wore a full skirt and a bandana on her head. Her face was black wrinkled and hard. The sun suddenly appeared, causing the gold hoops on her ears to sparkle.
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Ishmael Reed

This portrait of a woman who intrigues the narrator soon turns to tragedy when the group of travelers are surrounded by bandits who open fire on the the encampment in a way which foreshadows the domestic terrorism of the 21st Century. The events described occur suddenly without any warning signs, as the traveling characters of the westward migration cross a death zone where anything might happen.

Loop Garoo was dreaming of bringing down the stars with his tail when all at once he smelled smoke. He awoke to find horsemen surrounding the circle. The children began to scream and some of their clothes caught fire from torches the bandits had tossed into the area. Rapid gunfire started up and the children fell upon each other and ran about in circles as they tried to break the seizure's grip.
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Ishmael Reed

After this massacre in which Zozo Labrique is shot in the head, and a circus clown is hung from a tree, the first section of the novel called The Loop Garoo Kid Goes Away Mad ends. The violence of the bandits parallels the border guards of the present decade where the logic of causality is not revealed in the writing of the novel, and this ambush seems a senseless act of violence.

The conflict caused by the Neo-Social Realist school of writing produces the dialogue between Bo Shmo and the Loop Garoo Kid, and the debate on literary style continues when Loop Garoo is buried up to his neck in the sand, where he is rescued by an Indian in a helicopter who offers him a glass of champagne.

Deserts are for visions not for materialists. Read any American narrative about crossing apparitions, ravens walking about as tall as men, the whole goldern phantasmagoria.
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Ishmael Reed

The Loop Garoo Kid has finally met someone sympathetic to his style after the desert strategies, with a trend in character names that is similar to my own narrator Doves-on-the-Wind from my novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography. The innovative novel has been influenced by the fanciful cosmology of Native American literature which is the realization of a lifestyle based on poetic symbolism involving the use of long phrases as conceptual art names.

Chief Showcase, Loop thought, remembering the Indian names he'd heard like Toohoolhoolzote, Looking Glass, and Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horse which opened up new possibilities of being named after phobias, objects, or even words that didn't mean anything but sounded like music.
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Ishmael Reed

This passage reminds me of the improvisational skills of the black jazz musicians who have developed performances based on esthetic theories that are free of the rigid classical constraints of note-for-note written scores. The psychogenesis of the novel reveals an evolution from a poem from objective description into poetic stanza structure, a neo-Hoodoo manifesto, and a talking book based on African talking drums. The step towards a poetic novel creates a richer texture of verbal imagery which parallels other avant garde movements inspired by Surrealism, and with the use of a freer Abstract Expressionism that often projects the thoughts of the unconscious mind outwards into an artistic musical or literary form.

You see, I'm Chief Cochise's cousin so that makes me Chief Showcase. Yuk yuk yuk.
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Ishmael Reed

Since this novel was written there have been similar crimes committed in Tucscon, Arizona, so that now we can solve this aggressive hate crime incident from the past. We see two convicted shooters who made the front page attacking women in a style similar to the traveling circus where the aggressors revealed a tough border guard mentality.

Another way Reed rewrites the Western novel is through the absence of quotation marks or any other device to indicate to the reader that there is a dialogue going on (which heralds The Color Purple by almost twenty years), just as there are no indented paragraphs. Actually, the whole novel is presented as a long narrative poem in five books, with short and long stanzas. More specifically, the narrative structure of Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down is similar to that of “Neo-HooDoo Manifesto,” a poem originally collected in Conjure (1972). This basically makes Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down a “Talking Book.”
“Scatting Arbitrarily” and
Blowing Hoodoo [Western]
Like Charlie “Bird” Parker:
Loop Garoo’s Be-bop/
HooDoo Improvisations in
Yellow Back Radio
Broke Down
Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure

The essays gathered in A Casebook Study of Ishmael Reed's Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down edited by Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure trace the history of southern narrative that began as an accurate journalistic account of the black people breaking free of slavery in America, and gradually creating their own esthetic theories which represent the genius of improvisational performance.

Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1968) by Ishmael Reed takes its place with the innovative novels of the 1960s which include The Exagggerations of Peter Prince (1968) by Steve Katz, and The Death of the Novel and Other Stories (1969) by Ronald Sukenick, novels which show a liberation from conventional realism towards a more art inspired writing using techniques that include tape recorded conversations that Andy Warhol introduced in his novel a (1968) which is composed entirely of tape recorded Pop art dialogue.

More recently Nathaniel Mackey in a four novel sequence entitled From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Bedouin Hornbook (1986), Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993), Atet A. D. (2001), and Bass Cathedral (2008) has brought poetic writing to the innovative novel with his own evolving personal mythology influenced by jazz and the abstract wake word culture of the west.

Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1968) by Ishmael Reed is a modern western which portrays the tragic drama of the migration of wagon trains across the states, as the lovable characters experience lethal encounters with hate criminals who may show prejudice towards the black settlers. With Ishmael Reed the innovative novel is beginning to show its potential for poetic abstraction with the genre of the modern western, where the personal charm of the poet/storyteller creates a narrative that is interrupted by the future conflict of immigration and legalization. American history is traumatized by a few cowboys who disrupt the peacefulness of the settlers, as they migrate across the desert sands of the western states, and Ishmael Reed has portrayed this drama in a novel that could easily be adapted to film with characterizations that verge on the Surrealist paintings of Salvador Dali while expressing the verbal wisdom of the west.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

August, 5 PM by Gabriel Toupin

2014-10-01T06:12:00.000-05:00

Innovative Fiction by
Gabriel Toupin

August, 5 PM

K whispers to us that once he stops breathing to scoop out his eyes and fill his sockets with Queen Anne’s Lace. J peels an orange by running her nail along the rind, juice weeps down her hands, smearing the dirt. G is lobotomizing a butterfly. D asserts that she was Botticelli and a damp cigarette and a missed call in her past lives. H grew a punctured lung and violet string that isn’t there. We continue peeling, pressing, prodding, and pissing our way deeper into an overdose but my morphology starts dripping along the side of some very cold iron. Y begins listing off every possible verb that could make somebody feel thirsty. U bruises a salty white hipbone with a throat full of cosmic blue silk. O is being molested by soliloquies. M is sewing rocks into a soft belly nobody could ever relate to. V pokes a very beautiful word she can’t think of into her skin. A crushed beer can and an optimistic future and the dust from a dirt road on mint leaves. Iced lemonade and a high school football star and a wasp nest. A spurt of semen. T divulges that he’s conquered God and put him in a mason jar but we’re not allowed to tell the leaves these things. Q tripped over an abstraction and broke his teeth. Beauty blisters covered in honey and a profound desire to unpreserve all that hasn’t been precious to me. R weaves roses through his broken spine and admits to having shoplifted glue to huff. Hot heroin and morning breath. I can’t help but feel a devastating need to express the feelings in my stomach.

The sky ruptures, choking on its own creation.

Gabriel Toupin lives in Detroit, Michigan where he is currently a full time student at Macomb Community College. He intends to pursue degrees in Linguistic and Cultural Anthropology at Michigan State University. He has no previously published work.

Turn of a Pang by Nicole Brossard

2014-09-17T09:04:00.000-05:00

Turn of a Pang: An Innovative (Mini)Novel Written in Poetic Prose

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Turn of a Pang (1976) by Nicole Brossard translated by Patricia Claxton was published by the Coach House Press, Toronto, a translation of Sold Out (1977) originally published by the Éditions du Jour in Montréal. The Blue Books (2003) by Nicole Brossard is a translation of three novels: A Book, Turn of a Pang, and French Kiss published by the Coach House Press, Toronto.

Turn of a Pang (1976) by Nicole Brossard is an innovative novel written in poetic prose about a redhead with a "sumptuous arrogant mane" of red hair, who inspires the reader in a literary mini-portrait condensed into poetic sentence structures that parallel the innovative writing of the 1970s avant garde by novelists who were writing in the wake of the wake. Although not included in the original anthology, Nicole Brossard produced three innovative novels now collected together in The Blue Books (2003) published by the Coach House Press, Toronto. The narrator of Turn of a Pang (1976) advances the plot from one time frame to the next, from Montréal in 1941 to the present moment of narration/reading, which creates a parallel text to another novel about a redhead, my own novel. Known for several collections of poetry that reveal a close focusing on the subject with a prophetic omniscience, this short novel by Nicole Brossard exemplifies the spirit of hospitality that makes Canada an exciting discovery for the reader of innovative fiction who has evolved in a similar literary direction.

But the redhead was only the redhead and thence came the difficulty of living the redhead to the full hiding under that head of hair, that sumptuous arrogant mane.

The hidden side.
Turn of a Pang
Nicole Brossard

The introduction of the redhead begins the poetic mini-novel with the realization that the redhead has just made a small cameo appearance in what could be the larger plot of life, yet she intrigues the reader from the first sentence with her sumptuous mane of red hair.

a midsummer quebec night's dream dimly lit and rather erotic when magical thoughts triumphed over those verbal battles busily waged by adults
Turn of a Pang
Nicole Brossard

A reference to the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream sets the mood for the lighthearted whimsical novelistic phantasm which is composed of a series of erotic memories, each trying to resolve the plot of life into significance with the good memories beginning to fade for the reader, who has progressed for several decades from a young literary enthusiast towards the fellow novelist writing with a similar visual spatialization of the page into art conscious poetic abstraction. The Abstract Expressionism of New York is an influence on the poetics of the innovative novel which shows a progression in style with Nicole Brossard, and other Canadian poets, beyond the Surrealist esthetics of the 1920s towards the informal poetic abstraction of the later decades of the 20th Century.

As for the evening's final words, they mingle strategically with the all-pervading smoke (swallow held lovingly in the throat).
As regards the redhead, there's only the color in the glint in my eye in the brightness of my smile cunningly arranging sexes and lips around silhouettes the time wouldn't survive the excitement would it and
Yes I was dropping softly nicely down
Turn of a Pang
Nicole Brossard

The vanity of cigarette smoke is reminiscent of the San Francisco nightlife which inspires my own innovative novel about the waterfall with red hair who visits the Upper Peninsula, and Nicole Brossard has written a companion piece to my own ultramodern mini-portrait, two novels with similar red headed characters which continue a literary tradition featuring erotic relationships. When the narrator of Turn of a Pang gives in to desire it reminds us of the affirmative attitude of Molly Bloom at the end of Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce, a character whose interior monologue created the first modernist portrait of a woman.

The trasparency in things opposed to verbal clutter; growing white dot surrounded with rusty red the white spreading lavish covering the red (which fades by degrees as a color become an obsessional presence / link / all of which belongs already like snow to nostalgia that never drains its source of meaning.
Turn of a Pang
Nicole Brossard

The poetic prose of Turn of a Pang verges on Abstract Expressionism with the space of the page representing a canvas where the unpunctuated sentences convey the suggestive brushwork of a sequence of images which create the parallel theme of a redhead, similar to my novel The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, which tells the story of the waterfall with red hair, who makes a cameo appearance in the larger framework of the converging plotlines which intersect on the vertical and horizontal lines of a graph. As in Oulipo a potential literature might grow from the original conceptuality of the mini-plot.

The short romantic novel of the 18th Century creates a literary precedent for the mini-novel novel of the 21st century with the description of a relationship between an enthusiastic intellectual novelist and a young woman. The spirit of 1776 still prevails in Québec City with the history of the founding of Canada after French and British colonization.

Visible (written thus: the body becomes visible through the power of imagery and desire) vivid river moulded in ink (flow as in fauna and flora fl.)
Turn of a Pang
Nicole Brossard

From Québec City and Montréal to the city of Windsor the mini-novel progresses with intersecting literary texts that embody a close awareness of resemblance, so that Turn of a Pang becomes an introduction to the nightlife. When like minded novelists envision the erotic avant garde mini-novel the result is a trend that has evolved from the early Greek novel, through the Enlightenment, to the urban nightlife of the 21st Century.

FIGURES

In the following section, I present five of Brossard’s figures—the spiral, vertigo and delirium, the horizon, the hologram and three-dimensional writing/reading, and rapprochement and the two-way passage—that I have chosen based on the frequency with which they appear in her work, the urgency that they carry in regards to her work and her aims as a lesbian-feminist writer, and their usefulness for readers who critically engage Brossard’s texts.
  Vertiginous Spaces: Reading and
Conceptualizing Space in(to)
The Texts of Québécoise Author
Nicole Brossard by
Benjamin Lee Taylor

The concept of figures is reminiscent of the critical writings of Gerard Genette, who published in the Tel Quel series, and whose analysis of figures has given the reader an awareness of visual and logical form in the innovative novel. The spiral represents the galaxy in the poetry of Nicole Brossard, and delirium represents the conflicts of contemporary events which can be solved with a rapprochement, a coming closer to agreement in our negotiations for peace.

NB: In a way, I could say that the text keeps moving or adding only through the play on words. For a great part of it, I was brought to write things only because of the play with words, rerouting their meaning, shifting constantly from one level to another level of meaning.

MD: How did that advance the text?

NB: You write one word, one sentence and you let it move through visual, homophonic, semantic resemblance, connotation. Most of the words have three, four, five meanings. I was trying to deploy each of them in one sentence.
  Double Change Interview
with Nicole Brossard:
On Translation & Other
Such Pertinent Subjects
Marcella Durand

Although frequently called a lesbian feminist writer Turn of a Pang (1976) reveals an appreciation for heterosexuality that Nicole Brossard has exemplified with the spirit of hospitality in the celebration of eroticism and the esthetics of female beauty. The provocative idea of the redhead with the sumptuous mane of red hair has produced a poetic mini-novel that reveals a close focusing on the subject in a small scale novel that engenders a series of erotic memory/images.

Turn of a Pang (1976) is among the masterworks of innovative fiction that create of a ratio of poetic prose to linguistic theory in relation to an enlightened intertextuality, that has inspired the avant garde mini-novel with the theme of erotic relationships. This intellectual trend has produced the poetic novel in Canada which has evolved into the visual semiotic text, and word conscious writing techniques, that have generated the semantic structures of the innovative novel. True to esthetic theory the Canadian poetic novel has triumphed as an innovative genre with The Blue Books (2003) by Nicole Brossard.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

2014-08-07T07:45:00.004-05:00

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar: A Monumental Innovative Novel Written as an Open Structure

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Hopscotch (1966) by Julio Cortazar was first published as Rayuela in Spanish by the Editorial Sudamericana, Argentina, in 1963. It was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa, and published by Random House in 1966, and then appeared in an Avon Books mass market paperback edition. Hopscotch won a National Book Award for translation in 1967.

Hopscotch (1966) by Julio Cortazar is a monumental innovative novel that represents an open structure which can be read in two ways: one is where the chapters are read in consecutive order, and the other is according to a numerical scheme that includes additional chapters. This is one of the great novels of Latin American literature written by an Argentine translator working in Paris, a novel that has evolved from the Surrealist prose of André Breton and the Surrealists into metaphorical descriptions of romantic encounters on the streets of Paris. The long casual sentences of Julio Cortazar create a monumental innovative novel that also shows the influence of the Nouveau Roman with a precise intertextuality that expresses the wisdom of a more mature perspective. The charm of the Latin American narrator, Horatio Oliveira, is evident in the literary mind that has developed a relaxed intricate style of poetic prose, while his conversations with La Maga reveal two characters that are closely matched in intellect which creates an ongoing Parisian romance based on their appreciation for cool jazz, Surrealist poetry, and modern art. The narrative perspective of Hopscotch shows an awareness of future readers who are envisioned in a larger time frame that extends to the 21st Century.

Hopscotch (1966) begins with a concept that creates two different readings of the novel, and may have grown out of the idea of a first draft and a second draft with additional chapters. The Table of Instructions creates a precedent for the innovative novel, so that a new way of reading can be originated by the narrator.

Table of Instructions

In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all.

The first can be read in a normal fashion and it ends with Chapter 56, at the close of which there are three garish little stars, which stand for the words The End. Consequently, the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience.
Hopscotch
Julio Cortazar

The open structure of Hopscotch allows for two main books which is similar to my own novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography that is a double text with the original draft elaborated by a second scene of writing at the upstairs window. With its reference to the three garish little stars Hopscotch is reminiscent of my own innovative word clusters which feature double words placed between stars.

Would I find La Maga?
Hopscotch
Julio Cortazar

La Maga is the leading female character who inspires the narrator Oliveira on his daily walks through the streets of Paris where they inevitably encounter each other along the banks of the Seine, and it is their interaction which makes Hopscotch interesting. In this way Hopscotch is similar to Nadja (1928) by André Breton which takes place on the streets of Paris with a metaphysical theme based on esoteric knowledge, so that when the narrator, Oliveira, visits the psychic Madame Léonie, who reads his palm, the reader is already in a receptive mood to the idea of psychic phenomenon.

"She is suffering somewhere. She has always suffered. She is very gay, she adores yellow, her bird is the blackbird, her time is night, her bridge is the Pont des Arts."
Hopscotch
Julio Cortazar

La Maga is a literary character modeled on Carol Dunlop, a friend of Julio Cortazar, who shares Oliveira's enthusiasm for literature and intellectual dialogue. The influence of Alexander Calder, known for his mobiles, is noticeable in Hopscotch which can be thought of as a large scale literary mobile with individual chapters generating a monumental open structure.

At the time I used to pick up pieces of wire and empty boxes on the street early in the morning and I made them into mobiles, silhouettes which swung around the fireplace, useless gadgets that La Maga would help me paint.
Hopscotch
Julio Cortazar

Open structures and mobile constructs are theoretical ideas that Sharon Spencer introduced in her book Space, Time and Structure in the Modern Novel (1971) published by the Swallow Press, a book which I still refer to in my own mind when it comes to analyzing the innovative novels of the late 1960s: Composition No. 1 (1962) by Marc Saporta, Collages (1964) by Anaïs Nin, and Hopscotch (1966) by Julio Cortazar, novels which exemplified the creativity of the psychedelic decade of the 1960s with the exciting new art movements of happenings, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, kinetic art, and book arts design placing the innovative novel in the context of modern art.

He was middle class, from Buenos Aries, had been to an Argentinian school, and those things are not dismissed lightly. The worst of it was that by dint of avoiding excessively local points of view he had ended up weighing and accepting too readily the yes and no of everything, becoming a sort of inspector of scales. In Paris everything was Buenos Aries, and vice versa; in the most eager moments of love he would suffer loss and loneliness and relish it.
Hopscotch
Julio Cortazar

The narrator, Horacio Oliveira, reveals his Argentine perspective which becomes the psychogenesis of the structure for Hopscotch, an autobiographical narrative divided into the Paris chapters, and the Buenos Aries chapters, each section creating a doubling of the novel into the eventual two main structures which could be further doubled onto infinity.

When one begins to read Hopscotch for the second time, that is, with the "expendable" chapters interspersed with those that more nearly contain narrative, he immediately understands that Cortazar is attempting something like the total truth by multiplying and varying the perspectives from which certain fixed characters and situations are seen by the reader. No incident, character, situation, or attitude is allowed to remain in the very incomplete exposure of Oliveira's single perspective. Each must be seen again—and in a very different light—from the new perspective that is embodied by the perspective of the "expendable" chapter with that of the original portion.
Space, Time, and Structure
in the Modern Novel
Sharon Spencer

I have returned to Hopscotch (1966) by Julio Cortazar many times over the years, from my college days when I discovered the innovative novel, to the time spent on the west coast where Hopscotch represented a monumental novel that one reads a first time, a second time, and onwards to an infinite number of readings.

This reminds me of a fictive anecdote when my copy of Hopscotch fell into the washing machine one day in Berkeley, and as I took it out of the wash the pages were saturated with water forming a kinetic book sculpture similar to the Marcel Duchamp photograph with soap suds in his hair, the pages were folded back into a mobile construct which fit the idea of its open structure, showing that reality sometimes produces a similar chance phenomenon which illustrates an idea.

Hopscotch (1966) by Julio Cortazar reveals the desire for a multiple perspective from a writer reflecting two cultures, similar in style to Octavio Paz of Mexico, a Nobel prize winning poet who was influenced by Surrealism, while much of Latin America still shows its influence, bringing Latin American consciousness and narrative charm to the modern novel where one can create their own path through the list of chapters, or write an innovative novel that parallels ideas in modern design.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

How It Is by Samuel Beckett

2014-08-01T07:56:00.000-05:00

How It Is: An Avant Garde Novel(ist)ic Text Written in Unpunctuated Prose

A Book Review by
David Detrich

How It Is (1964) by Samuel Beckett is an innovative novel written in unpunctuated prose that tells the story of how the narrator exists before Pim, during Pim, and after Pim, surviving with a sack of tins which may be keeping him alive during the occupation of Paris in the years of the second World War. This is the minimalist narrative strategy that Samuel Beckett is known for in his plays, and when he developed his novel writing techniques with the use of unpunctuated prose he went to the forefront of the new avant garde with an Existentialist style based on the philosophical concept of existence. The minimal existence of the narrator is contrasted with the sophistication of his omniscience which enables him to tune into a literary network for survival during the events of World War II. Innovative novels written in unpunctuated prose anticipate a new poetic novel where the objective prose descriptions of the Nouveau Roman have become more intuitive, more creative in sentence structure, and more subjective in expressing the contents of the unconscious mind. Samuel Beckett was an Irishman living in Paris and writing in French, where he associated with the Nouveau Roman novelists, and along with fellow Irishman James Joyce, developed a more abstract approach to the novel. How It Is (1964) is an innovative novel written in unpunctuated prose that brings out the complexity of meaning with a freer syntax, a style that artists Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró used for their journal writing experiments in prose.

how it is I quote before Pim with Pim after Pim how it is three parts I say it as I hear it

How It Is

Samuel Beckett

The structure of the three part novel is revealed in this unpunctuated sentence while the reader may ask the question Who is Pim?, and what type of internal monologue is the narrator listening to? The name Pim is reminiscent of the collaborative text Pin and the Story of Pin (1986) by Kurt Schwitters and Raoul Hausmann, so that the identity of Pim may be a subtle reference to the Dadaist text. Perhaps the narrator of How It Is (1964) is being guided to safety by the Dadaists, and he may be listening to a communications network that produces an awareness of what is going on.

here then part one how it was before Pim we follow I quote the natural order more or less my life last state last version what remains bits and scraps I hear it my life natural order more or less I learn it I quote a given moment long past vast stretch of time on from there that moment and following not all a selection natural order vast tracts of time
How It Is
Samuel Beckett

The intertextuality that is introduced here implies that the text is addressed to a reader, perhaps a fellow novelist, who has written about a vast stretch of time, which reminds me of my own first novel. Following the trend of the artists who were writing poetry and journals in unpunctuated prose, led by Jean Arp in the Cloud Pump (1920), Pablo Picasso in The Burial of the Count of Orgaz and other poems (2004), Joan Miró in his Selected Writings and Interviews (1992), and Anaïs Nin whose journals The Diary of Anaïs Nin (1966) describes the years 1931 to 1977, inspiring the artists of the 20th Century who kept poetic journals written in unpunctuated prose.

my head where is my head it rests on the table my hand trembles on the table she sees I am not sleeping the wind blows tempestuous the little clouds drive before it the table glides from light to darkness darkness to light
How It Is
Samuel Beckett

The cinematic effect of this passage reminds me of time lapse photographic images which could produce a poetic film with the visible passage of time conveyed in the changing of light to darkness, and the free syntax of the unpunctuated prose creates a transition from objective description to the poetic usage of the art inspired writing, that brings the novel to the sophistication of modern art.

it dies and I see a crocus in a pot in an area in a basement a saffron the sun creeps up the wall a hand keeps it in the sun this yellow flower with a string I see the hand long image hours long the sun goes the pot goes down lights on the ground the hand goes the wall goes
How It Is
Samuel Beckett

The idea of death occurs in a dying age with the symbolism of a flower representing memories of someone, and as the sun creeps up the wall it creates an intense image for the memory banks focused on a yellow flower as the hand works at horticulture, while the photogenic day transforms into nightfall with the passing of time from a heroic age looking ahead to another heroic age, or an abject age looking ahead to a future abject age.

Raymond Federman worked as Samuel Beckett's secretary in Paris, similar to the role Samuel Beckett played with James Joyce, and we might introduce the esthetic theories of abstract painting here which become relevant in the context of literary abstraction.

Standing in front of these paintings it is the form, the composition, the colors that move us and stay with us rather than the represented subject and the meaning of that subject, if there is a subject.

This is even more so when looking at an abstract painting. It is the geometry, the colors or lack of colors that touches us since there is no real subject, no story, no melodrama in the painting and therefore no reference to the real world.
The Imagery Museum
of Samuel Beckett
Raymond Federman

The esthetic theories of abstract painting can be applied to the techniques of the novel writing with the use of visual paragraph form, with the composition of the page into contrasting sections of type in an equilibrium with the white space of the page, and with the use of colored ink for semiotic images. I have followed this trend of abstract painting in my novels The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, and my novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography.

from The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending by David Detrich

Raymond Federman gave a lecture at the Kunsthalle in Vienna on the occasion of a Samuel Beckett and Bruce Nauman exhibition in February, 2000, where he implies that there is no real subject, no story, no melodrama in abstract painting. The innovative novel reflects this lack of story in favor of a novel without a subject, where the introspective thoughts of the narrator make up the entirety of the novel. This is the turning away from objective description with dialogue which creates a drama, towards the contents of the unconscious mind, which may be composed of random thoughts, literary chat, meditations from the scene of writing where the narrator sits before the window creating a specific genre, an artist's journal, a time traveler's novel, a spatial design for fiction, an ultramodern novel written in minimal squares.

sometimes in this position a fine image fine I mean in movement and color blue and white of clouds in the wind sometimes some days this time as it happens this day in the mud a fine image I'll describe it it will be described then go right leg right arm push pull towards Pim he does not exist
How It Is
Samuel Beckett

The freer syntax of unpunctuated prose has produced a masterwork of innovative fiction with How It Is (1984) by Samuel Beckett, a novelist who has also written Nohow On (1989), a collection of mini-novels which includes Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, and Worstward Ho. These stories have developed the abstract style envisioned by Raymond Federman, and refined by Samuel Beckett into minimal characterizations illustrating the postmodern trend of narration as a way of describing an abstract painterly or cinematic image in short sentences. This simpler abstract style verges on dramatic writing, on second generation Surrealism, and on phenomenological details in philosophical writing which may have evolved from his early interest in Existentialism.

Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, and for those who seek a more abstract novel that follows avant garde trends in introspective writing How It Is (1964) represents the esthetic ideal of artistic sophistication brought to the genre of innovative fiction, where cinematic techniques reveal a time lapse chronology of events which create a filmic or painterly image, so that the innovative novel has become a work of modern art.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Gold Fools by Gilbert Sorrentino

2014-07-12T08:07:00.002-05:00

Gold Fools: An Innovative Western Written Entirely in the Inter(rog)ative Tense

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Gold Fools (2001) by Gilbert Sorrentino was published by Green Integer Press, Los Angeles and Copenhagen, in a small paperback format with 368 pages. Although small in size this is a monumental innovative novel that is written entirely in the interrogative tense that represents a narrator who is asking relevant questions which become the narration of a modern western novel. The ranchers Bud Merkel, Nort, and Dick Shannon meet prospector Hank Crosby who questions the ethics of the ranching operation. Gold Fools is written in the genre of an innovative western, along with Yellow Back Radio Broke Down (1969) by Ishmael Reed, two novels by California writers who represent the verbal wit of the American cowboy as a subject for the innovative novel.

Gold Fools begins with a quote from Tristan Tzara which expresses the transcendent perspective on reality where the narrator is superior to the events which occur. This is also a universal perspective where things remain constant in the larger scheme of the meta-plot, where the plot remains the same.

Everything happens in very idiotic fashion. That's why everything is the same.

Tristan Tzara

Gold Fools begins with a short summary of the plot in which a failed venture in ranching finds the men sitting before a campfire, and soon the reader discovers that the novel itself exists as an extended plot summary enhanced by a series of investigative questions which create a polyvalent perspective by approaching the subject from a multiplicity of angles, a technique used by the Cubists and Italian Futurists.

Were Nort Shannon, Dick Shannon, and Bud Merkel exceptionally morose as they sat before the small bunkhouse and about the flames of the blazing campfire? Was their recent failed venture in ranching all over, and did Bud, in particular, think it time to pack it in?
Gold Fools
Gilbert Sorrentino

With the introduction of the gold prospector, Hank Crosby, the minimal plot is revealed in a series of questions that suggest their western ranching efforts were possibly unethical or illegal? The narrator considers the moralistic questions of the western lifestyle from an informed perspective.

Did Hank Crosby almost immediately tell the boys that he was a prospector for desert gold? Why, according to western belief, is such a prospector absolutely the worst kind? Why did the boys tell Hank that their days as cattle ranchers were, well, a bust?
Gold Fools
Gilbert Sorrentino

In the context of the western novel Hank Crosby acts as a guiding spirit for the young men who consider the question of morality that is posed here once again. It seems that even in the old west the boys were contending with a rugged frontier approach that verged on outlaw strategies for financial success. Who could resolve this moral dilemma while bringing America back to the enlightened spirituality that would make it a leading nation?

Why were there so many cruel remarks floating about on the frontier, and so few kind ones? An abundance of pizen whiskey and loose women? Did Hank, just for an instant, consider making the laughingly contemptuous boys eat lead?
Gold Fools
Gilbert Sorrentino

The rivalry between two political parties may divide the country into too noticeable a negative vote creating an unnecessary divergence of opinion, so that it seems America should be unified to solve the dilemma with a larger affirmative majority.

Was this a likely story? What was, given the era, another likely story? Has the ancient art of storytelling been lost? How ancient is ancient? Do the Irish tell wonderful stories? What are broths of lads?
Gold Fools
Gilbert Sorrentino

A likely story could occur in Northern California where the art of storytelling is inspired by the rock canyons which suggest ancient art from a time in the Late Cretaceous when the coast of California was considerably inland from where it is today. The lads would be inspired by a broth that brings a sense of romance to the old west where the desert scene becomes a mountain range that is not far from the border of Nevada.

Did the fellows echo, in slightly deranged unison, "DESERT GOLD FEVER?" before falling all about in delighted confusion? What did Yellin' Watson do while this minor bacchanal was in progress? Can desert-gold fever lie quiet in the blood for years, and then suddenly break out, like impetigo?
Gold Fools
Gilbert Sorrentino

This passage is the first climax of the novel when the boys get Desert Gold Fever, and while feeling optimism at the prospect of financial success, the narrator considers a sub-plot of dormant health conditions which may effect the realization of their dreams.

Gold Fools (2001) by Gilbert Sorrentino, a novelist and poet who taught at Stanford University, was published towards the end of his literary career after writing many well known innovative novels, including Splendide-Hôtel (1973) and Mulligan Stew (1979). Most readers may recall the large deluxe paperback edition of Mulligan Stew by Grove Press, where Gilbert Sorrentino had worked as an editor, a novel which is a parody of the literary establishment featuring rejection letters and a humorous characterization of the innovative novelist's effort to succeed in American literature.

My sense of the formal is that of a structure or series of structures that can, if one is lucky enough, generate "content," or, if you please, the wholeness of the work itself. Almost all of my books are written under the influence of some sort of preconceived constraint or set of rules. Some of these are loose and flexible, like the time scheme in Steelwork, and others are quite rigorous, like the alphabetical framework in Misterioso.
The Write Stuff
Gilbert Sorrentino
Interview
Alexander Laurence

Gilbert Sorrentino was influenced by the theories of Oulipo which used a set of arbitrary constraints to write a novel, and the idea of generating content may have come from the linguistic theory of generative grammar where one linguistic structure will suggest the keywords which become the thematic plot of the novel. The Nouveau Roman writers have written novels based on subject matter that is generated by arbitrary thematic complexes.

The idea of generating a novel from a set of vocabulary words is a theory that I have used in my novel The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending with the constant variation in characterization that has evolved out of Surrealist and modern art techniques which include the transformation of the abstract characterizations into art images, pencil drawings, oil paintings, time lapse photographic images, and kaleidoscopic digital animation sequences.

Gold Fools (2001) by Gilbert Sorrentino is guided by a simple narrative logic that will appeal to the young reader as the narrator asks questions which reveal a sociological perspective with an awareness of social conflict produced by the intermingling of different ethnic groups, with a historical awareness of German and Italian culture, and with the innovative use of language, including coined words or western vernacular. You might compare Gold Fools (2001) to Alphabetical Africa (1974) by Walter Abish, a novel based on alphabetical constraints, to An Honest Ghost (2013) by Rick Whitaker, a novel based on quotations, and to Yellow Back Radio Broke Down (1969) by Ishmael Reed, a modern western based on a poetic monologue.

The idea of writing an innovative novel in the interrogatory tense has produced a masterwork that has more literary significance than usual because it is exploring new techniques in narration, and the innovative American novel is a genre that Gilbert Sorrentino has excelled at with Gold Fools (2001), a novel that reveals a compassionate intellect exploring themes from the American west.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Willie Master's Lonesome Wife by William H. Gass

2014-07-04T13:26:00.001-05:00

Willie Master's Lonesome Wife: An Erotic Mini-Novel Featuring Innovative Typographic Design

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Willie Master's Lonesome Wife (1968) by William H. Gass, first published as TriQuarterly Supplement Number Two, is an innovative mini-novel which features black and white photographs of a nude model, who resembles a modern Madame Bovary or Molly Bloom in a text written as an interior monologue, a narrative technique that reveals the female perspective, as Babs considers the concept of eroticism envisioned in a sequence of male acquaintances who make up the contents of her psyche. The innovative design of the text includes variations in type font with alternations between serif, bold, and sans serif fonts, and with the use of line bending typographical effects to create optical typographic phenomenon. The technique of reverse lettering creates an effect similar to Echos (1979) by Maurice Roche, where one page echos another, a trend which is reminiscent of the Op Art of the 1960s. For those who enjoy eroticism Willie Masters' Lonesome wife reveals the mind of a woman who similar to Molly Bloom from the final chapter of Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce, a psychological technique that reveals the contents of the unconscious mind of a muse who compares the appearance of several of her lovers, as she finds her own favorite among the prospective bachelors.

She had so wanted lobes when she was young. To dangle diamonds from, and pearls in petals of silver, spills of crimson glass or wheels of polished jade or even jasper, a match for her hair.
Willie Masters'
Lonesome Wife
William H. Gass

The idea of wearing earrings inspires Babs in a poetic passage that anticipates the innovative fiction of the 21st Century, while most of Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife is written as a typical William H. Gass story with references to an ancient epoch of American history, a perspective that he used in Omensetter's Luck (1966) by William H. Gass, and reminds us of the Boston school of American literature with authors Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allen Poe.

Well you've always had your own wash working for you, sloshing about—an inland sea foaming up against its rocks (how grand that's put, how grand), and you don't mind it. You don't go hithering and thithering, do you?
Willie Masters'
Lonesome Wife
William H. Gass

The inland seas of America were evident during the dinosaur era, and with William H. Gass the chronological time frame of the mini-novel extends back to ancient times with a continuity of love embodied in the erotic muse Babs, a woman who inspires the men to accomplish the deeds of a provider for the family.

It's called the wine of love because, when drunk, it signifies the wine of acceptance. That's my theory. There's no woman who's not, deep inside her, theoretical. That's why we love in men, not them, but place and reputation—money, honor, age, effects, and aura—radiation; not them, but their love, we love—our idea and transubstantiating notion of them. That's my theory.

Willie Masters'

Lonesome Wife

William H. Gass

Love for the men who love Babs is the theme of this erotic story, and theoretical fiction creates the added intellectual fascination that leads to acceptance. The theories of the semiotic novel when applied to the ribald tale, a genre associated with the literature of Playboy, create a humorous approach to sexuality that liberates it from secrecy or the repressed contents of the unconscious mind.

I dream like Madame Bovary. Only I don't die during endings. I never die. They fall asleep on me and shrivel up. I write the finis for them, close the covers, shelf the book. But I don't understand what excites them in the first place. It's nothing about me; it's not me they love.

Willie Masters'

Lonesome Wife

William H. Gass

This intertextual reference is to Madame Bovary (1856) by Gustave Flaubert which inspires the modern novel with its portrait of a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, and a century later Babs cannot understand what excites men when they interact with her, and feels she is writing the book for the men, deciding on the ending, shelving the book for them. This is where the muse Babs feels she is determining the plot of the mini-novel, and that she is helping the author become a success in life.

This is called abstraction, sometimes love, and always the art of writing, whereby ideas taken like a cutpurse from the coat and trousers of particular Beings become general representatives of all of the same kind... Thus the same color being observed today in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers the appearance alone, hard, soft, or liquid elects it a representative of all of that kind, chalkwhite, snowwhite, milkwhite white as the moon on the mail...

Willie Masters'

Lonesome Wife

William H. Gass

Abstraction in fiction has evolved from 20th Century art producing a more sophisticated mini-novel with the use of innovative typographic design, and the inclusion of black and white erotic photos. The stream-of-consciousness interior monologue of the muse Babs expresses a well developed esthetic appreciation for art. The narrator has married a topless dancer, and is exploring sexuality from the perspective of the avant garde text which embodies alternating type fonts and special effects.

The typography of Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife is quite literally a vivid experience for the reader. The visual effect of the text often functions as importantly in the work as what the words connote. Gass is demonstrating and emphasizing the physical presence of language on the page.
Frontiers of Fiction:
The Theory and Practice
of William H. Gass
William Neal Ellis

The visual avant garde text Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife by Wiliam H. Gass is a classic of 1960s innovative fiction, a trend that is evolving into a more sophisticated blending of art and fiction in the 21st Century novel when graphic images can easily be included in a text with the use of Adobe software. We also see the liberation of sexuality with the celebration of eroticism in a theoretical fiction that uses erotic images to enhance the pleasure of the text. Innovative erotica that uses photography and typographic design has become the semiotic mini-novel which places Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife (1968) by William H. Gass at the forefront of the innovative graphic novel.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Compact by Maurice Roche

2014-06-25T08:09:00.000-05:00

Compact: a Typo(graph)ical Innovative Novel that Develops Contemporary Musical Theory

A Book Review by
David Detrich

Compact (1988) by Maurice Roche was translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti from the original Éditions du Seuil (1966) novel which appeared in the prestigious Tel Quel series edited by Philippe Sollers, and is published by the Dalkey Archive Press. This is a first novel that uses innovative typographic design with alternating type fonts while utilizing the space of the page for an enhanced visuality. In the 1960s when the novel became innovative in design, it also became more sophisticated in narration with a break from the objective descriptions of the Nouveau Roman which verged on scientific or crime writing to become writing In the wake of the Wake, as David Hayman put it, in the TriQuarterly 38 issue dedicated to novelists who were influenced by Finnegans Wake (1938) by James Joyce. The narrator of Compact is recovering from a mysterious health condition called amourosis caused by travel in time and space, and the black humor of the novel implies that the scene of the writing exists as a complex of puns: cranium, body, and pen demonstrating the generative techniques of the Nouveau Roman, yet creating a new genre of avant garde fiction that has become the semiotic novel with the use of visual signs in the graphic design of the page.

You shall be made sleepless even as you are left sightless. While you're penetrating the darkness, you'll penetrate into the night, getting in deeper and deeper, your already failing memory growing proportionally weaker as—at the end of a long lethargy—you become conscious of your condition. (How will you tell day from night?)

Compact

Maurice Roche

The passage from one scene of writing to another often brings us the more advanced in literary style, and we can be thankful that Maurice Roche has written this well crafted novel with a poetic density and visual complexity of thought that places it at the forefront of the avant garde in the 20th Century novel.

Cardinal Richelieu raises his marshall's baton to bless the armies "A measure for nothing...the father, the son, three, four!—Pacem in terris—God damn them! cries General Custer, charge! with drawn swords!")

With finger and cod-piece I conducted these paintings in rhythmic figures which became tighter and tighter (in an arithmetic progression) and, by degrees (in the same progression inverted, I forced a slow chromatic ascent, in a gradual increase (on each level a luctual inflection) up to—
D-sharp
Compact

Maurice Roche

The location of Compact is within the mind of the reader/narrator, where the you refers to an imagined character who will perceive this city from a hallucinatory perspective, where every thought may be incorrect, each idea appearing to be false or illusory, or a variation on a master plot. The wise reader will realize the deception, and not be fooled by an unfair critique which may lead to unusual consequences.

I was "down the drain," completely washed out. Among all the accumulated acts of my life, I looked for one that I could really live by. And I wondered if this present event actually belonged to me. It fermented under the lid; but I had serious fade-outs in the dome! Where had I gotten? I certainly identified with someone. I was elsewhere; in a murder

at the center
on either side

Compact

Maurice Roche

When the narrator realizes that he must find "one that he can live by" the novel reaches its second profound moment of realization, because he is trying to chose a direction to follow which involves a literary trend. He foreshadows the novels of Raymond Federman who also writes with innovative typographic design, and whose life was influenced by war.

("—...I was a war-godmother...a son in the war...another war...always war in one's lifetime..."
his/her shattered laugh whose splinters seemed to chase after each other and fit together badly in the end
"—I wrote asking him to send me love letters
Compact
Maurice Roche

In a war which side should the narrator chose? Without studying closely he seems to be attracted by the black flag of the pirates, with the glamor of the black culture. As the novel progresses the narrator is indecisive in his perceptions, wanting to stay true to his own ideal of a well-managed society, yet perhaps feeling swept along in the momentum of political events as he transcends the reality which is not up to his expectations.

I felt it from left to right, knowing all the same that the firetruck was passing me (going down Boulevard Saint-Michel) from right to left; I mentally strained to re-establish its true direction, but the best I could obtain was a superimposition of two contrary movements irresistibly pulled toward the right
at the same time the whole thing, pulling away from itself, formed a precious object in microstructure;
Compact
Maurice Roche

When the narrator mentions the Boulevard Saint-Michel one is reminded of the short story Blow Up (1966) by Julio Cortazar in which a photographer is walking along the boulevard while taking photographs of Paris, and later makes a photographic enlargement which suggests a potential story to his mind.
Compact turns to other themes including the Japanese doctor who collects tattoos, and shows a complexity that is much greater than the average novel creating a masterwork of the avant garde. The narrator considers the transvestite theme developed by the Cuban Severo Sarduy who wrote Cobra (1972), and Christ on the Rue Jacob (2005), when Maurice Roche was hosting dinner parties in Paris for guests Severo Sarduy, Roland Barthes, and Mark Polizzotti.

"he makes small things on large scale—which doesn't keep them from becoming frightening!

"he crushes words until they're reduced to a crackling of dried ink; — ..."onnyuonnthunntrovarrhounnstawn"...
Compact
Maurice Roche

This passage is reminiscent of my own monumental Surrealist novel-in-progress Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topopgraphy which uses art imagery and abstraction in a way that is similar to Compact with its ongoing eroticism, its knowledge of contemporary classical music, and its linguistic theory inspired by Julia Kristeva and the Structuralist movement.

first step: mark the difference of the present THEORETICAL FICTION to come, perverse/pervasive difference, unique principle (to be) followed:
A Reader's Guide to
Circus and Codex
James Leigh

Compact (1988) and the novels of Maurice Roche are the innovative models (to be) followed: by the new generation of innovative novelists. Substance, a review of theory and literary criticism, published the Maurice Roche issue in 1977 which includes articles and texts by David Hayman, Claudia Reeder, Stephen Heath, James Leigh, and others.

Compact (1988) reads like the first step in the direction of abstract innovative writing that was followed by the C series of novels Circus, CodeX, Camarade, and the M series Memoire, Macabre, and Maladie Melodie, which represent a life's work of innovative writing that explores archeological and musical themes, novels that are deserving of translation into English, and of further critical attention. Compact is a theoretical novel at the forefront of the avant garde along with the novels of Philippe Sollers, Arno Schmidt, Claude Simon, and Ronald Sukenick. Reading Compact today is relevant for those who are considering the unrest caused by rebel movements, and the romance of life in Paris, where the narrator considers classical music theory in the context of fiction writing while foreshadowing the semiotic novel of the 21st Century.

David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He edits Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Party Time by Tantra Bensko

2014-05-16T09:03:00.001-05:00

Innovative Fiction by
Tantra Bensko

The man in the yellow suit is out of place. Eaves drip water like thin clay off spiked houses with fleshy turrets. No where do the animals play. They stay indoors, staring out the rare openings to the outside world that are left unveiled. The moon rules here. The sun is given no quarter.

Yet the man in the yellow suit skips. This has not likely been done before in this town that is not his town. But no sirens go off, no dogs are set loose, and no one comes to slit his throat. He gets away with it. He swings on the lamp post and whistles a jaunty tune. He rises like a teen ager on the balls of his feet as he steps forward, which raises and lowers him in the air. He surveys the scene with his head held high.

His name is Clyde Hancock. He is not a spy.

Not in the usual sense. More like a voyeur for pay. His trips into the town bring him to the most gruesome scenes imaginable, and he makes the most money on those. He knows well how to hide in the shadows of bushes besides windows to peer inside. People of the town, which is called Naryway, don't even register yellow amongst their bushes. It's like when natives saw no ships as ships approached to kill them all.

Again, the rain comes as it does every night at this time, and that allows him to run to a building to hide under the tattered overhand. He waits out the quick rains often in Naryway. He meets the best people that way.
Tonight, it is an owl that greets him there.
It almost flies away but he walks up to it slowly enough, becoming more saturated with the rain by each flat and careful step. He wants to reach out and touch it, to pet the beige feathers. The giant owl turns its head completely sideways to look at him and his cheerful blond hair. The owl eyes are on a vertical axis, with the head bent so. They are yellow. They blink.

The owl spreads its wings, and juts forward, grasps onto his jacket and tries to become it from the inside out, throwing him on the street, in front of an oncoming car. The car swerves and hits a mailbox which has tied to it 24 black, brown, magenta, and royal blue balloons signifying the birthday party for a little girl. The balloons bob and pop, and some unravel to float into the sky, some pieces are shriveled like areolae and anuses on the cobblestone.

The driver gets out of the passenger side and pops a balloon with his teeth.

Clyde rises, and flips his head around in the rain, water flying out from the spikes his hair makes.

A person of indeterminate gender comes out from the doorway Clyde had been standing in. This person prefers to be referred to as an other. The two men stop moving. They stare at Other. They decide it's a man, and they prepare one set of muscles. They decide it's a woman and they prepare another. They are both stuck wavering in between, unsure how to smile.

The birthday girl runs out from the house. She pushes Clyde down back onto the street. Water rushes over his face. "Now no one will know how to find my party!" she yells at him.

He gets up and says, "I'm sorry. I'll be your birthday balloon." He rips the address tag off the crumpled mailbox and puts it in his mouth. He stands by the crumple of mailbox pointing to her house, his eyebrows raised, eyes wide open.

The owl is nowhere to be seen.

The driver kicks the mailbox, and then his car. He then stands stylishly. He is still undecided about Other. Other walks toward them, swishily, waving its hips widely in the dry oasis under its umbrella. Other is clad in clingy grey wool. Other only goes so far as the edge of the street, with its rushing water. Other stares at them, pulls back its sleeve, shrieks ear-shatteringly, holds up its hand to the sky.

The owl lands on it.

Clyde runs. The owl flies after him, holding Other with its claws, smiling under the jiggling umbrella. The little girl and driver grab onto balloons and set them loose. They float through the air after them, the wind being in their favor, sometimes. The girl bangs into a building, and slides down, letting go of her balloon. The driver continues on.

He gets caught on a phone line. He will remain there for a week.
But no one will know it. Everyone who lives in Naryway forgets everything overnight, every night.

Only Other is left to sell the information to. And no way the owl will let that occur. The owl reaches into Clyde's neck. Now, Clyde will not be able to report to the members of the melee what has happened to them. As always in Naryway, none of them will remember it the next day. The owl will get away with murder another time. It will eat the memory of the incident, sucking it through Clyde's gaping, bloody throat. Clyde will not make money on this evening's voyeuristic venture.

Tantra Bensko is the author of Lucid Membrane (2011) and Collapsible Horizon (2012). She teaches Experimental Fiction and Fiction Writing through UCLA Extension Writers College. In 1989 she was awarded an MFA from the University of Iowa. She lives in Berkeley, California.

from Itch by Steven Seidenberg

2014-05-10T10:59:00.000-05:00

Innovative Fiction by
Steven Seidenberg

Many failed attempts. Perhaps this is the first. Of my many failed attempts, perhaps this is the first. The first in what will soon appear a series of such failures—surrendered to the obloquy of having yet to happen, or having happened…I say surrendered, and I say attempt, the language of a game which attempts…I say the saying and the saying says…

Perhaps this is the first of all the many claims to primacy required to claim any claim to primacy a proof, an incidental figurement of problems and procedures near to happening…near to constituting happenstance as it stands fore right now…

If this is sure the first where there has not yet been a second…If this attempt to…If this trope yet amounts to the surrendered primogeniture of other tropes predicted to surrender sometime soon, then how can one presume to think…to mean those varied instances within the nearing preterit and certitude of having passed and purposed themselves into…

If this is sure the first of what I know will soon be many…But that’s not where this portent finds its bearing—so its aim. What saying this is first without first having said that this is something…something like…that this that I will soon contrive as something like the subject of…of this and this alone…

What saying this presumes is that its referent is this saying this—the saying that this saying this presumes, if it’s not clear. One ought not need proclaim that such an act of proclamation is occurring—is transpiring—by virtue of the saying of it in its present term, but thinking of it so and still adducing it as primary allows that what will follow has since discharged its effects, a shouldering of contraries that I can’t yet…can’t here…can’t yet to here abide…

One might well think to countenance this sort of vain perversity—and the speaker thus inveigled to presentiment by the pose—in hopes that such regard could thereby supervene the parallax through which this dreary précis is ostensively reviewed, and I have—or will admit to—no clear motive or intention to do otherwise; one might do so, but why take on the trouble of resisting so much contrary resolve…

It’s not that there’s no evidence to justify describing this the first of many failures all the rest of which have yet to be construed, but rather that the aftermath that this failure maintains vows neither to be recently accomplished nor begun, a failed attempt by dint of this attempt to claim a first successful failing to…to…It’s clear even to me you have no reason to be sure…

o

And do I now—or still, I’ll risk—have any sense what pratfall I have since proposed as primary—the first first in the series, as though the very first of all? The first to send me canting down this course without a recourse; to have at once succeeded in the taking of this seeming leave as though it were a trail? Seeming, I declare, to crudely intimate a truer drive, a yet unnamed ambition in this… from this deftly garrulous repose, this feigned rapport, despite the fact—which you may well have missed—that I’ve done only that to make it so. Suggested that it’s so. That I’ve done nothing more…have proferred nothing more than the suggestion that it’s so to make it seem so…

If it appears I have a purpose that’s unwittingly concealed by my advancement towards fulfillment—towards arrival in the form I will uphold—then it’s arguably best for me leave off leaving off with it, and forthwith leave off leaving off with it for good. For the good of all concerned, myself not least among them. Neither most, I’ll tell you now, although I might be wrong…

Having made countless attempts at an accounting of the countless, each attempt is equally a failure, a dead end. This may well be the first of all such minor supplications, whether you or I will ever come to know it so before…before what will come after this, whatever that that this is—or will by some yet unknown means become when it’s revealed. Whatever will come after this will make of this before the very first of all my failures in the endless seriatim that will surely follow after, as one conceives the chain of chance arrayed within the bane that set it off…

That failure results from failure and success from success may seem more of a posture than an inference, or a premise proved; one can readily concede success where there seemed failure in the offing and… What matters in this instance—this measure of the case in point by pointing to it elsewhere, to the elsewhere it implies, if not unwittingly presumes—is that my many failures to enumerate my failures are enough to countermand what yet appears the future failure of the path we’ve started on…we’ve started down…

Of my many failed attempts to name my many failed attempts, this one, I assure you, has proved to be the very first, so equally convincing my importunate receivers—importunate, no doubt, but no less welcome a contrivance of the form of this address…the address of this form, which is…So equally concerning to whomever should accept this affectation of a prelude—of what I hope will someday seem the prelude to a finished tale—is that there are still countless deviations from my purpose still to come…

But if they’re still to come, you ask, how does he know they’ll happen? Is he the sort of dullard who sees catastrophe at every turn? Alas, it’s not for me to blunt the edge of such accusatives—to countenance an ancillary predicate of character that I can’t say I wouldn’t scorn were I but judge and not accused. I can say that the proof of my ill humor won’t be found in the veracity of my anticipations—my near announcement, if you will, of some last resort. And even this capitulation won’t suffice as an appraisal of the stratagems thus strategized, and aiming towards…

The problem has to do with the foreboding I still feel for those same acts that I allege to have completed—to have left behind; the rupture, it appears, between my image of…my reverence for a series of events I’ve claimed concluded and the accompanying announcement of that imminent catharsis as though it had preceded all the rest by its design…

Yes, yes, you say, what of it; who needs this hardly bold expatiation on the evident…the ostensibly self-evident paradox of a past presumed preceded by the inherence of its now. The difficulty, I suspect, has more to do with this regression to the first of all my inferences—the gist of our acquaintanceship, both in fealty and a ray—while the incident such desultory debitage implies is still in medias res; that once again the this of which I speak can’t be identical to this instance of my speaking it, and yet I’m more than willing to proceed with my account…

Perhaps you see this this as but a retrospective prologue, a second thought appended to what’s first come first—the first into which this appendage leads us, as a pathway; the first that draws our pathway to its finish, as a line. And while I think I’ve long since shown my sympathy with the argument—even argued it beyond what I imagined the peculiar skills of those who I imagined firstly raised it, whoever you or they may prove to be, or serve to court—in answer I can only say…can only claim it’s not the case; that the paradox must not…will not yield to resolution if I’m to have my way—whether in the end I have my way or somehow, some way don’t…

I may not have my way with this or that digression, accepting that my way is not laid out before it’s had, but it’s still in agreement with those same preconditions that determine what the making of an ought will…must avoid if it’s to prove desideratum in the end. Again, I am aware of the discordance of this idiom—without, that is, a sense of fore or a the fore or aft I’ve started here…this herein with—but such awareness does not sway my addled inclination to continue on the way that I’ve continued in the past…

I’ve found no way to properly delineate the passage, other than this manifestly inconclusive pose—a pose that hardly strikes despite the absence of its obverse, the sense of having up till now eluded all fidelity to posture or device. I’ve come upon this aggregate—or gleaned it from the whole—by claiming to describe my breaking free of its arrears, a subtlety of affect even I can’t adjudge due. As though one might already have concluded that my competence to prosecute the yet unstated point of this reprise is at the limit of what’s possible for any sort of intellect to prove. Even I, I say again, am fairly sure the confidence this surety suggests is not quite warranted…will be revealed unwarranted by avowals still to come…

Whatever this state is—this state in which you’ve found me, which might as well be understood the state in which I’m found—it is by implication the emergence of the whole towards which this pretense of an ego strives. Whatever I’m suggesting is the purpose of my purport, the action of purporting it to not yet be complete must be included—must be signal—and this is still the least that I’d expect myself to show. To be, rather. That I’d believe I’m being, whether knowing that I’d been the being-thus that I’ve become or…or not; such transitives can’t be resolved by any other means…

Whatever this position now—this truncheon of a pause—it is what it will be, and nothing else, and nothing…It will be nothing more than it will be, it stands to reason, but that it will be more than it’s been yet—than it’s become—reveals another problem in the shape of it’s becoming so—it’s next capitulation to the open, to the clear…

This it which I am now and surely will be by default assumes that if I speak of some identity beyond the narrow scope of merely speaking of it so I will be speaking of the same intrinsic speaking out again, that I’ll find that I’m speaking of the same I I referred to when referring to the I I’ve spoken as up to this point. Such a spastic torpor can’t help but to usurp the soon to seem invariable accidents of agency despite the selfsame difference—the insuperable exclusion—of what I’m speaking of from what I speak of through, by which I mean the I I seem to point to with the same portentous whimsy I employ in the apparent speaking out I’m speaking now…

Let us say, for the sake of argument…for all it’s worth…for the sake of all it’s worth…Let us say that we’ve conceived of no such grand distemper, and so have left off leaving off without a thought to this delay—to the trouble this excursus is attempting to elude, if not yet resolve into a ready aim…

If I were to here suggest that what will happen next, or rather…or at the least…or at the least and rather what events that, having happened, I’ll soon narrate to an otherwise inconsequent assent…

If I were to here address the preface that sits fore this ever tractable look back as though I’ve always known how it will turn out, so presuming the existence of the addressee that you have quite surprisingly—and with the embarrassment, I might add, most usually attendant to such ill-apportioned and impossible wants—allowed yourself to seem, almost to act; should the telling of the tale in some way come to rule—or decidedly affect—the substance or the nature of that turning, then the moment of transition from account to mere performative will be signaled by a shift in the character of said terminus, or the telling of it as…

o

Should it come to the fore that this very act of coming to the fore plays some…plays any role at all in the resumption of my purpose—the fulfillment of my ends, and so the promise to move on—then I would grant no quarter to those abstract insubordinates, an ideal that I have not yet pursued, or framed as cause. In the absence of a way to fully demonstrate my point, I’d justify its discharge by dint of the same instrument that’s led me to accept the imposition of objections from the auditor, objections I’ve already raised myself. What I’m trying to say is…

o

I expect you’ve found yourself beset by such change deportment many times before our meeting at this amicable stand, and so I ought not need continue my portrayal of the state I think you’re more or less most suited to live in, but I’ve come to accept that supposition of the kind oft proves imprudent, which in this instance is more than likely equal to untrue. In this instance indicates the premise is untrue, and as such seems an impulse quite imprudent to engage…

o

So how, you want to know, have I achieved this grand assize? To answer would amount to the confusion of my means with my ends, at least my ends with my beginnings. I suppose I’m only willing to suppose your acquiescence…I only here make mention of your willingness to suppose such wrenching suppliance in me at this first pass—this first pass through—in order to allay the damp of those for whom it seems a second nature, that they might come to tolerate the repetition of implicit terms…

So. What I’m trying to say…to prove is that one can still rightly minimize—still sacrifice—the moment of confusion that’s coerced this wayward turn, the moment that’s confused me by compelling such contradictory ends. One need but think the guarantee by which I introduced myself mistaken—a fault that, understood as such, ought have no further impact on the this tittle of carousing goads…

o

Merely to attest that what’s to happen next—so far as it amounts to a performance of that happening by being self-identical with fact—is a description of the many failed attempts I’ve made at doing anything… anything other than attempt to describe my many failed attempt whether any such attempt proves failed or not, would relieve the sort of reader I imagine I would be from further concern. It’s only by beginning with an ending my beginning, in effect, still brings about—and by virtue of referring to some happenstance made real by the disclosure of a reference to that happenstance itself—that I’ve found reason to take issue with the primary this terminal incipience preempts…

It isn’t much to say that any scene made uninhabitable…made practically unbearable by a premise whose insistence trains a contrary resolve need but ask of its presumptive inculcator the extraction of said premise in order to continue on to more propitious ends, but I do not do so—I do not say so—because I think it less than obvious to those who’ve come to view it as an easy perch, a place to rest…

And it may be thus—less than obvious, that is; it may well prove a tricky feint for those who’ve happened on it without previous and parallel pursuit. But I say it, alternately, because I can thereby ensure that those wise patrons still immured within my peerless and incorrigible brood will know I have not foisted said first premise falsely, without having concluded that within that premise something still left unresolved resides; that I am not as ill-equipped as any thinking otherwise—any thought that I’ve pressed on because I know no better than to do so—might reasonably suggest to all those listless mountebanks who have hearkened to the song…

If one might grant the vision of this tell-all—of this telling, really, that what’s been told therein may still amount to only part—as such a missive subornation, then I think the interlocutor to whom that missive points is halfway won. Her sympathy, that is, might be conditionally proved. And this point, rest assured, can only be rejected—let alone compelled into some promissory calm—by an equal adherence to contradictory ends; a registered receipt of what’s been pledged as unreceivable, if for no other reason than its having not been mailed. If there are any so inclined, I’m happy to declare, they’ve surely put the book down long ago, before they started, and so I have no need to try to keep them in the fold…

Halfway won, I say, the very state in which I found you, as you know with near certainty by now. I’m sure you don’t conceive yourself as much further along in your attempts to train your quizzical departure into either an acceptance of the voyage still to greet you or—more likely—the contempt of one convinced to move along. Which is to claim…to here admit that I’m aware your being halfway lost has happened…is happening in answer to this salutary salvo, a practice I’ve adopted to promote such pained rapport…

All the same, I won’t predict that you’ll accompany my soon to seem insufferable delays with anything but halfway measures—that your continuance amounts to…will ever amount to less than the acceptance of the intimacy of my discharge, as a missive intended for you alone. And even granting your adherence—witting or otherwise—to such contrived resolve, the pose is only possible if you’re able to allow that I’m as…that I’ve proved myself just as aware of the iniquity—the contraindication by which I’ve sworn to make haste towards the prospect that this contrary portends as ready aim, as clear result…

To summarize again, and this time for the first, this failed attempt plays precursor to all the many failed attempts it will soon serve to iterate…to unconceal to those who’ve found the strength to tag along. Attempts at what, I realize, you have yet to be enlightened; let it suffice to say that you will find out in due course…

a la Hopper (2010) by Clinton Van Inman

2014-04-29T07:08:00.002-05:00

A Watercolor by

Clinton Van Inman

a la hopper (2010) drawing / watercolor by Clinton Van Inman

Clinton Van Inman was born in Walton-on-Thames, England, graduated from San Diego State University, and has been an educator for most of his life. He is currently a high school teacher (planning to retire at the end of the year) in Tampa Bay where he lives with his wife, Elba.

A Mental Odyssey by Richard Beckham II

2014-04-13T08:20:00.000-05:00

Innovative Fiction by

Richard Beckham II

At my cubicle, the cheap partitions are made of loose fuzzy carpet pinched to wooden boards. From inside its dusty walls I use mental chopsticks to stack a pyramid of daydreams. There, in my cubicle, I must escape. But objects, not people, trap me.
At Coachella people trapped me, back when Rage Against the Machine performed. For hours in the sun I stood smashed on all sides by bodies. After each band that preceded Rage the crowd squeezed in a little tighter, pushed more towards the center of the anarchical universe. We were all so packed close together that I couldn’t put my arms down. Someone threw an empty water bottle and it hovered on people’s shoulders. At one point I was able to crouch down and take out some water from my backpack. There was another world below the waistline. A subterranean world. It was muffled, cool, and shaded. It stunk of sweaty feet, beer, and wet grass.

In some bizarre future all of Earth would be like this, this compact mass of flesh. Over time our shoulders would fuse together. And some god-like technology might fly overhead, tossing rations of food and water to the mass of flesh with a billion mouths. Babies would be borne by women who have never known what it’s like to sit. Slowly the ground would give way and the flesh would sink. We would become heads in the ground. All sustenance would enter through these heads; faces in the muck would pass along all knowledge and communication. Perhaps with the right conditions and the right vibrations in the air our heads would become stone, on which the grass of new hillsides could take root. But my desk is smooth and flat and there are a few marks on it: like fingerprint smudges in ink, spots where the keyboard rubs against the laminate. Then there are all those mounds of dust in the corner of my desk behind the computer monitor. I look at those mounds and they become mountains.
So in my mind I step lightly over the rocks at the crotch of those mountains, along the shores of soft cocoa beaches, tickled by the salt in the air. And the expanse before me unwinds into a chocolate tongue as long and wide as the Amazon. Every taste bud on the tongue only registers sweetness. The sky becomes ultraviolet. Pink and orange clouds dab powder from out of the horizon, rising steadily as smoke from a legion of invisible trains. All the colors dabble above me, highlighted by blond tresses that cling to the sun amongst the shadows. They take pause like an ocean wave in a photograph. I soar. I flip upside-down.
Then the world’s chocolate tongue is above my head. I tiptoe on a strand of neon hair. I hop from one sunbeam to the other, leaping towards the land above me—the rocks along the shore and the chocolate tongue. As I watch the tongue sway, I can almost feel its sensual musculature. I drop down on it, on all fours. The tongue ripples and begins to fold on me.

Heavy. Sweet. Rich.
Chocolate envelopes my body. A warm velvet bath.
Infinite smooth tongues.
Curves of supple skin.
We make love until we die.And while I’m dead I travel eons through sand and dirt, beneath Earth, of the earth, and I become grass—a patch of grass beside a rock, where a man is full of sorrow and grief, shame and remorse. He wears a dark gray suit and tie. Designer cologne wafts in a cloud around him; beads of sweat upon his brow.

“Please, rock,” he speaks out of breath. “You have to hide me. I can feel it coming on, in my bones, like a metallic snow storm moving in around me.”

The sun is too large for the sky and the grass is high. Nearly unbearable brightness strains his eyes, almost as if a flashlight shone down a hall on the dark side of the moon.

Panic.
“I can’t hide you,” the rock cries.

As I watch the scene the wind enters and pushes against the man like Sisyphus. I see the wind bend a current of air and a murder of crows above me are a fish school, circling, with gills in their eyes.

“What’s the matter with you, rock,” the man begins to cry.
“Don’t you see I need you? Oh Lord!” His breath bates.

The air turns cold but the sun grows hotter. A huge magnifying glass above a tundra gust.
As grass, I am all grass. So as the man begins to run, tie flailing, I listen to the thump of his feet, the soles of his rubber shoes. I find him as he reaches the river. Joy almost fixes upon his face. In his eyes is nearly an expression of relief, an expression of hope.
But the river does not flow cold clear water. Out of its rocky flow is warm sticky blood. The river bleeds onto its shallow shores and stains its rocks.
The man cannot quench his thirst. The man cannot find quarter there. His breaths are heavy and each breath feels as if it’s his last. The sun drops a little more and the wind wraps around him, a slow anaconda of lava. He must run again.
And I follow. Every blade of grass that is me bends with the wind that propels this man, with sweat now streaming down his face.

The smell of an oven and sunburnt skin.

He loosens his tie as the bright blue air begins to sway as fire. The man runs to the sea and prays for answers and sanctuary. His hopes pile high, like stacks and stacks of fine china. Stacks decorated with intricate flowers by his mother and grandmother.

Picture frames, glass trinkets, and family albums fill his arms in sacrificial pleadings to something he doesn’t understand.

But the sea…

The sea is bleeding. His hopes and pleas shatter upon the pebbles of the shore. The water softly bubbles red and foams atop the sand.

Immediately the man turns and runs back to the river.

The wind furls through his hair and sweeps hot dust off the earth. The man tugs at his tie and tosses it onto me, the grass. He rips off his button-down shirt. Sweat glistens in the nearing sun off the contours of his back and down his chest. Thinking not of his breath, but of his vision, he sees the world narrow and tower above him.

The bloody river is now boiling.

He does not fall to his knees. With his fists he does not beat the flesh that is me, that is the ever-growing grass. But instead he runs some more, back to whence he came.

As he runs he fumbles with his belt and nearly trips. He unfastens the belt and whips it off behind him. His pants fall down but his legs keep pumping until the pants drop on top of me. So he runs and runs as fast as he can. Until he reaches the sea once more.

He shrieks and collapses.

The wide sea, the vast horizon, is boiling and the sun is as wide as the sky.
On his back, he rips off his shoes and socks. Now wearing only his underwear, he wails very briefly. The most personal confessions of his soul escape his lungs in a single babbling scream. As the bloody sea boils and fizzes, pops and reels, spilling its dark stain upon the stretches of the Earth, I wave my hairs a little and tickle his wrists. Then the serpentine wind quickens and wraps around him again. Fear and panic set him off running.
There must be a place he can hide. Maybe there is someone who can hide him.

So he runs to the Lord, Who floats in a patch of purity of the sky.

And the man cries, “Please hide me, Lord! Don’t you see I’m praying? Don’t you see I’m praying down here for you to help me?” The man weeps on his knees with his hands clasped. The wind twists around him, warmly but coldly.

And the Lord says, “Go to the devil.”

The man tears off his last dignity, his only remaining garment, and he runs for his last time, praying to be out of the light, out of the unforgiving sun. Tears blow dry off his face. The sun is two inches from his forehead.

I follow the man, blade by blade, as he runs to the devil.

The devil is waiting in the only shade left upon the face of the Earth. The man sees a smile in the darkness as he catches his breath. The shade exhales moistly upon his face.

“Power!” the man yells out. “Give me power, Lord! Let me be Your instrument!”

The devil smiles and says nothing. A tree, the only tree, extends its branches and the devil’s shade expands over the man.

The man, still naked, reaches his hands toward the sky. His neck stretches back. My soft blades bend away from him, ever so quietly. An innocence rains down upon the man as he reaches out towards the devil with his arms. Then both shadow and light vanish.

And all is a prism and all the colors blend. There is no dirt, nor Earth. Everything is pure and beyond those meager fabrics. We are the music and the refracted light that dances in space and instance.

But back at my desk, in my body, the fuzzy walls are still standing and the mounds of dust still lay there as they were. The people are silently working. Then somebody sneezes in the row next to me. In my mind I see the sneeze particles shoot into the world.

The particles drift off and I see the vast waters of the Earth, the waters that drowned the forgotten friends of Noah and Manu. The waters rise and swirl into vapor so that the light from Beyond may create the tapestry of Nature.

Having died, I know of all ways. And the land upon which we walk is no more than the bottom of the sea. For green is blue when the day is gray. A waterfall is both brutal and soft. It is the river and the ocean—but the tiniest spray upon one’s cheek.

Such is music.

Then the idea of color soothes me as I look up at the small piece of glass at the top of my cubicle partition. The air conditioner above my desk hums. I click a plastic mouse for the nth time and a pilot automates my body while the florescent lights wave their flickering wand over my skin.

I open my mind and see a computer screen.

The internet is our god, storing our memories and thoughts, knowing all. The smart phone is our artificial brain that we must carry around at all times, to communicate with this god.

The modern generations will never die as long as this god exists. And there are penguins who march toward frozen mountains, away from their colony; scientists call them insane.

Then my heart jolts my loins. I click the mouse and I’m at home. My wife and I are on the couch, where her body curls around the front of mine. The softness of her blue cotton robe clings to her contours just enough for my hands to acquiesce my thronging.

So I wrap my arm around her shoulders and squeeze her close. Beneath her soft robe and her thin undershirt is her body, a lithe jewel. Inside the jewel are electric tropical clouds. As I look into her eyes my stomach drops and we pull gummy kisses from each other. We want to siphon all of each other’s atoms, trade them quid pro quo, or exchange our lives in one shared underwater breath, locked together at the mouth. Pisces.

We swallow each other. My hand slips through her robe, across the smooth watery jewel of her skin, and down to where the parting connects. There is a charge to the static of the air. Two oppositely-charged magnets begin to obey their purpose.

We step into the shallows of a sugary beach and dive, only to resurface after touching the imperceptible bottom. Without speaking we know that one day we’ll drown.

While I’m in bed, waiting for sleep, somewhere a giant hand sprinkles tinsel that melts upon our eyelids. The hand brushes our cheeks and wraps us in another universe—starlight and stardust, emptiness, all of which we are. This same hand is the hand that paralyses as it revives, inspires growth as well as rest. The same hand cradles in infancy as it does in old age.

But for now the hand won’t come.

The clock is red. It pierces the digital minutes as they flick away. As do the stars in the clear sweeping skies of Nebraska blot out in my mind. I tick off each star one by one with just a flick of my finger. Scores upon hundreds.

My wife breathes like a cute sighing vacuum. I want to give her all that I am and I selfishly wish for her to do the same. Even in the absence of the sun she glows, nestled in sheets and tucked beneath a down comforter.

The smell of her toothpaste, the sparkling bristle-tipped sky above Nebraska, and the stark color of my alarm, rolls over my mind like the tracks of an armored tank. On my back I see the popcorn ceiling and it becomes the jaggedness of the Ivory Coast, while the streetlight through the blinds sharpens its intensity and pours down like a pool of watery-orange juice that has opened its trapdoor.

I am sticky from that watery juice. I kiss my wife’s neck and drape my arm over her. A thin orange film rises off of me and seeps through the open window. Part of me climbs with it, out into the night. And the giant hand sweeps up the film while the mobile of the sky spins gently, weaving our fantasies.

We are infinite and nothing can take that away from us. Time is relative and meaningless.

I am: an idea.

Richard Beckham II is the author of two novels, Frog in the Pot, which is about an alcoholic's quarter-life crisis, and, The Tale of Mu, a mythic fiction fantasy novel about Lemuria. He has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and he also paints with oils in Seattle, where he lives with his wife. More information about Richard can be found on his blog, Think by not Thinking, at www.richardbeckham.com.

Metamorphic Fictive Transformations of the Soft Voice into Syllogistic Interaction by David Detrich

2014-01-18T13:56:00.001-06:00

Preview: Will appear in 20 seconds.

Metafiction by David Detrich

Metamorphic Fictive Transformation of the Soft Voice into Syllogistic Interaction is an introductory essay to the screenplay version of The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending by David Detrich. It is an innovative semiotic Criti/Fiction that has a four part asymmetrical structure which features the narrator in ruffled shirt: the tuxedo pirate / starman / cowboy who admires the story * dancer * intelligence: Me. The plot outline is summarized by a butterfly, as the tuxedo starman contemplates the face of the upturned flower petaled beauty. The typographic design revolutionizes literary publishing with the turn of a page.