“Will the protagonist of the Search succeed in becoming a writer? God save us from another story about a sensitive young artist trying to find his way! Poems about writing poetry, novels about becoming a novelist, literature preoccupied with the life of literature– what form of narcissism could annoy a discriminating reader more than this aesthethic self-absorption?”

That quote comes from the first chapter of Roger Shattuck’s excellent book Proust’s Way. This passage might contain the only exclamation mark in his entire study. He goes on in that paragraph to describe the ways Proust mitigated the irritation factor that could be caused by the reflexive plot. Point granted: A writer who wants to avoid annoying her readers should take heed when tempted by the self-referential lure. If this kind of story was an “outworn plot” in 1909 when Proust started his masterpiece, then surely it is hazardous to employ nowadays.

And yet, as I thumb through the Collected Fictions of Jorges Luis Borges, and specifically the renowned stories from his 1944 collection called Fictions, everywhere I look I see “literature preoccupied with the life of literature.” How is it that Borges could write reflexive literature (literature preoccupied with the life of literature) again and again and manage to make the stories surprising, original, fascinating? Let’s look at one from Fictions and dissect some lessons.

Step one: create an atmosphere of exoticism that contrasts starkly with our mundane “real” world. One way to generate an air of strange otherness is through the use of names. The first story in Borges’ collection is Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.  Tlon refers to an invented planet, Uqbar to an illusory country, and Orbis Tertius to a massive encyclopedia surveying Tlon.  See? It’s strangeness. Or you could use a ready-made name that is already synonymous with exoticism, like Babylon. It’s the story The Lottery in Babylon that concerns us here.

Step two: add bizarre, yet plausible, details into the narrative that heighten the strangeness, the otherness, of your story world. The opening paragraph of The Lottery of Babylon does this with just the right touch of economy and wizardry. Here is the first sentence: “Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave.” Babylon, proconsul, slave. Even if we are a bit familiar with the place-name, and have an idea that a proconsul is some sort of leader, the meaning is strange. How can a man be president and slave in one lifetime? Moreover, how can every citizen in a country claim the same cycle? The second sentence emphasizes the point, “I have known omnipotence, ignominy, imprisonment.” And sentences that follow in that first paragraph give specific examples to make this strange world colorful and concrete: “Once, for an entire lunar year, I was declared invisible– I would cry out and no one would heed my call, I would steal bread and not be beheaded.”

Step three: begin to seed–slyly! subtly!–bits of information into the narrative which hint at the possibility that this other world, this fictional Babylon, might not be so different from our own. Borges begins this process–slyly! subtly!–with the first sentence of the second paragraph, “I owe that almost monstrous variety to an Institution–the Lottery–which is unknown in other nations, or at work in them imperfectly or secretly.” The rest of the story concerns how the Lottery came to be and what it consists of. We learn about The Company, the powerful, secretive organization which created the Lottery and supposedly still manages it. The narrator is knowledgeable but not omniscient. At one point we are told, “I have but little time remaining; we are told that the ship is about to sail– but I will try to explain.”

Last step: further blur the differences between that world and the real world until the reader concludes it is at least in the realm of possibility that they are us. The last paragraph collapses the two worlds until The Company is either eternal or extinct. Chance is providence. Contingency is by design.

                          

Captain of our fairy band,

Helena is here at hand,

And the youth, mistook by me,

Pleading for a lover’s fee,

Shall we their fond pageant see?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

One must imagine here a double game.  Puck speaks of the lost, love-hungry youths and their “foolish show”, as the Riverside notes edit “fond pageant”. But through him, through these lines, Shakespeare is tapping us on the shoulder, telling us that we are the fools that Puck speaks of. After all, aren’t we mortal? And don’t we play the fool when we’re in love? We come to the theater, or read, to observe others from a distance, in order to judge, weigh, and consider their actions. And then, suddenly, we find the playwright in our lap. It is a sly, playful trick showing us the mirror and the wink.

In the space remaining, I want to display a much more naked example of self-referential literature but this time with a poem. It is called “The Prediction” by Mark Strand. For convenience, I print it below, but due to a technical limitation it is without stanzas. You can find its true and original form here.

By Mark Strand

Isn’t this a poem about the writing of a poem? I feel part of it’s magic comes from the loop of meaning it brings back to itself. However, if  “The Prediction” was merely that, or primarily that, what power would it have? Isn’t it also a meditation on our mortality? When given a moment to stop and reflect, we consider our own frailty, our limitedness, our tragic, doomed condition. Poems are like people: in a stillness, the page is white and life can enter into it (pond water reflects the moon’s whiteness, like a mirror, and that milky color is like the fertile ground of a white page), but with time all things pass and become dark.

In the second and final part of this blog next week, we will look at an even more bizarre bit of self-referential writing in a short story by one of the masters, Jorge Luis Borges.

                          

By Prescription Only: Expectation

We’ll be kicking off our second themed writing showcase on June 21st (check out Privacy, the first one, here).

That’s all this week. It’s the weekend, time to chain-smoke and watch plants photosynthesizing.

                          

(Grace Purcell) Yes, the formatting was difficult. When the book was uploaded to CreateSpace it often changed the format on some pages and this was challenging to solve. It was my first time using CreateSpace and I am not very familiar with formatting so this presented some difficulties. There were also some issues with filling out tax forms. The company is a USA based company so if you are not American you are eligible to not pay taxes, however you need to complete various tax forms in order to be exempt from this. The tax forms were complicated and so far I have not been able to complete the process and as a result I am paying 30% of the profits to the US government.

(PJR) Has writing this book helped you in any way?

(GP) Writing the book has been my saving grace. Nelson’s death was sudden and deliberate. I struggled with his death having no purpose and the book allowed me to try to make sense out of his death. It was a way to release my emotions and reach out to people who were experiencing loss like me. It helped me feel connected to people rather than alone.

(PJR) What hopes do you have the book? Do you think that it will help others who are contemplating suicide or who have lost a loved one to it?

(GP) I have high hopes for the book. I hope it will help those suffering from depression by reminding them that they are not alone, that help is available and that moments good or bad are just moments that will pass. I hope it will help anyone contemplating suicide to remember those they love and realize that their choice will affect so many people, some they may not even have considered and some in devastating, damaging ways and those who love them may never heal. I hope it will help those who have lost their loved ones to suicide by understanding that loss connects us all and that we are not alone in our pain. Finally, I hope it will honour Nelson’s memory and life by sharing his story with the world. If even one of these things is accomplished by publishing this book, it has been a success.

(PJR) Your book might inspire others to share their real-life stories. Do you have advice for anyone who’s thinking about doing so?

(GP) My advice is to be honest and forthcoming with your story. Real-life stories are powerful because they connect us all through our experiences but to do that you need to be willing to freely and honestly share your experience. If it is a painful story, this process can be extremely difficult. Although writing can be therapeutic it also forces you to relive difficult times. For me, I wrote the book shortly after losing Nelson and was still in shock and denial about his death. This allowed me to write it in a very blunt, detached manner. Afterwards, I put the book aside for about 1 year as the thought of sharing the story with the world was intimidating. After 1 year when I began the publishing process, reading the story again was very hard for me. It brought to the surface again many memories I had repressed. However by experiencing my tragedy again through my own words, it allowed me to heal and for that I am grateful. If you are thinking about sharing your story, take your time and follow your instincts.

(PJR) This book was born due to unique circumstances, a response to a tragedy in your life. Do you have any plans for another book?

(GP) This book did result from a tragedy in my life and was not something I ever planned to do. The book is my grief, my healing and my attempt to try to reach out to others feeling loss and devastation. At this time, I have no plans to write another book but as this experience has taught me, we often do not know what life has in store for us.

That wraps up Grace’s interview next week. Her book is available in various formats on the The Book Rack. We’ll be back next week.

                          

(Grace Purcell) Actually all of the characters in the book are pseudonyms. This story was started by Nelson who hoped to share it one day in order to help other people suffering from depression. After he died, I wanted to finish what he started but was concerned that some people involved would prefer to maintain their privacy and keep identities confidential. For that reason, all names in the book were changed.

(PJR) How did the project come about?

(GP) As I mentioned, the book was actually started by Nelson and it was his dream to publish it. He died before his dream could be realized so I felt it was something I wanted to do in order to honour his memory. I actually began writing my part of the story only weeks after Nelson died. It allowed me to express my emotions which were raw and encompassing. In the end, the book was a healing process for me that allowed me to start to cope with and understand my loss in some ways.

(PJR) So, when did you realise that you had to finish what Nelson had started?

(GP) I actually realized this within a few weeks of Nelson’s death and started working on the story right away. Over the next year, I worked on editing and making changes as needed to the story. However, after the story was completed I put it aside for a year before publishing it. I think I needed time to come to terms with publicly sharing a story that was so devastating to me.

(PJR) Was it difficult to go back over such painful memories?

(GP) When I initially wrote the book I think I was still in shock and hadn’t fully accepted Nelson’s death. The book was cathartic and helped me cope by giving me a purpose. A year later, after I had put the book aside, I began to complete the final steps and read it a few more times before publishing it. At that time, it was difficult to rehash the painful details of Nelson’s death. I found myself feeling overwhelmed with emotions again and realized this book was one of my last tangible ties to Nelson. It was difficult to finally let go.

You can read the final part of Grace’s interview next week. Her book is available in various formats on the The Book Rack.

                          

From next week, we’ll be interviewing Grace Purcell whose book Reflection On Lives Lost is available on the Drugstore Book Rack. Grace’s work of non-fiction is both harrowing and uplifting and not to be missed.

Finally, our By Prescription Only themed writing showcase on Expectation kicks off in June. Make sure you stop by to check out the essays and short stories from our contributors.

It’s Friday. Don’t drink too much. But if you do then enjoy it while it lasts because tomorrow’s gonna hurt.

                          

(Nick) Thanks Paul! Before I give an answer let me google “cosh.” Joking aside, I really appreciated the opportunity to post on Drugstore and even came to see the cosh as a beneficial, though stern, taskmaster.

(P) And what did you get out of the experience, other than the discipline of sitting down to write?

(N) To be quite honest, I got a lot of kicks out of the process. I had an idea of where an episode was going, but often I was quite literally laughing at the way some scenes unfolded. Writing is not all drudgery. That comes with revision. On the negative side, I feel a bit of disappoint now having dreamed of a beautiful mansion to construct, only to see that my creation so far consists of a mere half dozen slabs of pavement leading to an empty lot.

(P) Did you encounter any difficulties or problems within the writing?

(N) Yes, the dread of contradiction was always looming. I wrote that Cata had such-and-such in an early post and then felt a bit constrained later when I wanted a character to say or do something, but alas it would go against what the narrator had stated earlier. I think in these early stages of the process, one just has to roll with it and iron out all the mess in a later revision. I just feared making too many mistakes that would require a massive rewrite. Part of me wants to get it as right as possible in the first go round, but I don’t think it’s feasible.

(P) Finally, what’s next? What do you plan to do with the fifteen or twenty thousand words you’ve accumulated so far on this project?

(N) I’m going to keep going with Cata and posting several more episodes on my Tumblr. It might ease the frustration of readers with unanswered questions, and good grief, there are unfinished jokes that need punctuation and punchlines! After that I’ll shut down the episodic posting in order to complete the entire project.

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Flabbergasted on multiple levels, I blubbered, “Her real name is Mindy? She recruited  you? (I don’t even know what word to italicize!) She gave you a password?”

“Mind you, it’s Mint, not Mindy. Sometimes I call her Mmmm for short,” he said and elbowed my ribs. “I spent the past two months pretending to teach in Guangzhou, corresponding with her, and using her password to glean any and all information that I could about the subterranean wonderworld that is Cata. Sorry to disappoint you about the extinction of the 10′s, if they ever even existed. I’ve looked and looked and looked. There is simply no mention of them anywhere in the system. Granted, Mint’s clearance is just a level Six. But if they were real, there should be at least a tidbit or two. Occam’s razor: there are no 10′s.”

Can I just point out a pet peeve of mine here? I’ve always felt that employing Occam’s razor represented a cop out for flabby, lazy-minded people in the middle of a thorny, intellectual problem. At the time, the only refutation I could give to Big John was a “Yeah, but…” because we were approaching Churn, our destination.

It looked like Big John wouldn’t be able to get in. Meaning, he literally wouldn’t be able to move through the slender frame of the door. Some brilliant architect, following the inner light of his genius, decided that an extremely narrow entry way would be “unique and fashionable” and entirely suitable for Cata’s biggest club. It clearly didn’t suit Big John.

The male bouncers, slender Catians with clean-cut hair all slicked back, took one look at the situation of senor Rotund meeting the entrance and then employed old-fashioned walkie-talkies to call in female assistance. I looked around a bit. A group of old geezers, each one holding fish paste on a stick, squatted in a semi-circle and eyed us with suspicion. And on the opposite side of the front door, a clever use of mirrors replicated the sign: CHURN. In the reflection, two Catian females in one-piece swimsuits sprung from the doorway and did a kind of hopping dance around Big John, their ponytails whipping and bobbing as they point to the bouncers and urge Big John to disrobe, “Give him your shirt, give him your Phi Phi jacket.” They took his headset and bag until he stood before them, a mountain of a man, with rolling hills of fat receding each into a deep crevasse.

“Pants keep on!” one of them giggled and then squirted a palm-full of lotion into her partner’s hands. Next, she gave herself a generous amount of the stuff and motioned to him, “Arms out!” Immediately they set about lathering his belly, back, and chest, not sparring his large sagging tits from a thorough rub down. To reach his shoulders, they had to stand on tiptoes. His upper half gleaming like a full moon, the expression on his face never altered from that of a patient pharaoh. For a finishing touch, one of the Catians smeared an extra bit of oil around his belly button, a sizable outtie, and spoke into it as if it were a microphone, “Hello Mr. Apple, so cute!”

Now it was time to see if their plan would work. Grease him up and send him through! They beckoned for me to go first. I noticed the entryway was so narrow that all clientele, even the slim-shouldered Catians, had to turn sideways and shuffle for a few paces in order to enter the place. Once facing the wall, one noticed immediately that both sides were transparent things, containing dim receding rooms full of Catian greeters, dancers, booty shakers, strippers, lickers, winkers, all welcoming new denizens into their domain.

I made it through and waited for Big John but couldn’t bear to watch him gliding his fat against the glass. Once he had squeezed through, he rubbed his own slick belly and said, “Hope they don’t run out of that lube! Otherwise I’ll be stuck inside the guts of this place!” There was some commotion in the rooms we had passed. Big John had been handed his clothes and was putting them on when suddenly a door opened and a bikini-clad lass in high heels tumbled out, regained composure, and then pointed at Big John, “Him, I want him, him!” As she approached to claim her prize, I saw that she wore long, sparkling earrings that dangled diamond-studded 5′s. One could just make out the number etched on her neck, like a shadow of the earring.

Swarmed by her entourage, which seemed to consist of everyone around the entrance and in the window-lined rooms, Big John was whisked away without complaint, disappearing around the curve of the hallway with his lady leading the parade. This hallway, I gathered, was a perfect circle, having four doors along the circumference, equidistant from each other, which led into the main room. The thumping of drums and an odd, high-pitched screeching came from there. Having walked counterclockwise in a loop back to the entrance, I opened the first door I came to and tried to take it all in.

Crimson-colored slides extended from each of the four doorways down to the dance floor. Four layers of seating areas, like an inverted pyramid, ringed the center and sloped down towards an octagon pedestal, white and intensely lit. On the pedestal, dressed in a pink evening gown, a Kabuchi witch held a palette having strings attached to eight dancers on the floor. She sung one-word evocations into a bullhorn in her other hand, and after each word, the dancers would twist their bodies into new forms. She sang a series of verbs and/or nouns and then repeated the cycle:

“Squeeze, Squat, Cream, Cry, Slip, Grip, Pinch, Clinch, Come.”

In a continuation upon the theme of lube, I decide to take the slide.

Writers Notes:  I think I need another 800 words or so to finish this episode.  It is supposed to end with Dick and Minty meeting, but that will have to be another post.

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My classes never had more than a couple dozen students, and often there were half that. I couldn’t contain my sarcasm. “Oh yes, you were probably sitting in the back and I overlooked you.”

“Online,” he said. “You simply must get a password. There is no substitute for the dark arts.” Then with his hands framing his face, he fluttered his fingertips and flashed me a Charlie Chaplin smile.  It was the first time I had heard about the city-wide recording system.  According to John, the Numbered have security clearances to access the information network. The higher the number, the higher the clearance. It explained a lot, yet created more questions than it answered. Why wasn’t I told my classes were being recorded and posted online? How did Big John get a password for the system so soon? And how did he know I didn’t have one?

We agreed to have a late lunch, or early dinner, and compare notes on Cata. It certainly irked me that he seemed to know much more than me despite my having been here for two months while he’d arrived only days ago. But regardless of the imbalance, I found myself taking a liking to the big fella.

We settled on a sidewalk cafe that corralled a herd of small tables with a short iron gate. A pair of awnings shaped like bat wings overhung the outside seating area. Big John put two seats together, “one for each cheek,” he said, and then with a wink, sat down. I glanced at the menu cover, Cafe Nos… something, and declared I was famished.

While Big John attempted to order from our server a series of alcoholic drinks, I hid my mirth behind the menu. “Two yeti sandwiches and your finest copper ale.” The waiter shook his head, “No beer.” Big John countered with “wine,” but the server said “Nein.” Vodka on the rocks? “Nyet.”

At this point, Big John put down his menu and looked around, as if trying to get his bearings. “What is this place, some kind of teetotaler?”

I said, admittedly with a bit of smugness, “It’s Cata, John. None of these places have alcohol.” Point Covey. Discarding his menu the way a gambler would toss rotten cards, he insisted that I order for him, anything but water, and then we exchanged small talk on a range of topics.

“Are you, my good Richard, a literary man?” I pinched myself in an exaggerated manner and said, “No, no, I think I’m pretty much real.” Big John slapped my shoulder and said, “Ah! yet he lacks not wit!” I asked him if it was really true, what he said about Shakespeare in his lecture.

“He left his wife his ‘second-best bed’ and mentioned not one word about the fate of his plays.” As he delivered this line, his eyes traced the parameters of a pedestrian clad in tight jeans.

He may have claimed a taste in high art, but as we sat awaiting the return of our server, Big John followed with restless eyes the rump of every woman passing by. “The classics, my good man, the classics. That’s where it’s at. Novels, poems, and plays.  I take it you are a reader?” I told him that my major had been in Cultural Studies with a concentration in 80′s rock music.

“Nobody’s perfect,” he smiled and clinked his iced tea with mine.

As an attempt to test him, figuring he would either evade my question or leave it unanswered, I asked him about his own motive, for reading or writing or being in Cata, and he responded with an honesty and crassness that was almost unprintable.

“I want an Eight to sit on my face.”

“Jesus, John,” I said, looking around to see if anyone had overheard. He launched into a song. I’m probably one of a handful of people who would recognize it nowadays. I cut him off after the second line. “Monty Python? I thought you liked literature.” He argued that Monty Python was Canon and signified dessert following the Main Course.

Just as the server was returning to our table, I asked Big John why his ambition had settled upon an Eight.  Why not shoot for the moon? Why not a Ten?” He delivered his response through frequent, interrupting bites and the fits of ingestion. “Well, in this case, there is no moon. There are no 10′s. The nines are monsters, and, what’s the plural for abyss?” We both were stumped. “Anyway, my head, heart, and guts tell me I am right to want what I want. Eights are penultimate.”

He sat back, undid the top of his jeans and said, “My buttons protest too much. Why don’t you accompany me to a club in the Zone? A Three positively guaranteed me other Numbered would be in attendance. It might be a cultural event worthy of study. That is, if you think the storms that shook duodenum and cecum have safely passed.”

I assured him I was fine. I told him that bout of diarrhea was a first for me in Cata, that I had no idea what caused it, and that maybe it had something to do with imbibing Milk at the Honeydew. He patted me on the back and promised to research the possible causes. As we were leaving the letters on his jacket caught my eye again and so I asked him if he’d purchased it in Thailand. He said, “Hong Kong, and the Phi is “fee.”

Writer’s Notes: I began this post intending to get to the club for Dick’s rendezvous with his supervisor, Ms. Neon, but when I started to write the second sentence, Big John butted in. My post last week ended abruptly as well, forfeiting my chance to introduce these characters to each other. That being said, I feel the 900-word chunk is about perfect for this project. I can’t resist the urge to edit when I reread the post on the following day.

                          

It was none other than Grey who nailed it when he pinpointed the exact time of the U.S.A.’s decline. Normally, formulating the initial period and causes of the fall of empires is sheer guesswork. Not so with Grey. His hypothesis, backed with a boatload of facts, was that people of countries which had previously admired and emulated America began to become disillusioned just after the turn of the century. It was due to the conjunction of two prominent cultural trends in the U.S.: the rise of reality TV and the onset of the obesity epidemic.

Given his popularity, I was shocked to find Big John was not just chubby or overweight but unapologetically large. I took a seat near the front and tried with difficulty to size him up. He certainly didn’t look like a lecturer: unbuttoned windbreaker with a “Phi” on each side of the divide, maybe from Thailand; Hi-Fi Marshall headset collaring his neck; faux purple turtleneck and an outrageous red toupee; shoes by Fum. Everything about his style suggested an older man, albeit a giant one, masquerading as rebellious youth! Then his words broke through so that I was hearing him for the first time.

The topic, I gathered, was the motive for writing. “No human activity lacks motive. We are wanting beings, so that when you are writing the desire does not stop. It is always already there when you begin to write, and when you are mid-sentence, and when you pause to reflect and weigh. The question is: what are you aiming at? There are only two targets. And if you are shooting at the wrong one, you will never hit the bullseye.” Here, Big John looked directly at me! If you don’t believe me, you can check the video file. As a public service, every single lecture is recorded and uploaded to the Cata University Network of Technology.

I sat transfixed. And I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped. Big John pivoted and continued, “The Here or the Hereafter. There are no other targets. Let us rehearse the arguments. A masterpiece might, while you live, get you fame, fortune, power, and prestige. Or if, like Kafka, none of those things, yet in the lifetimes thereafter his living hand haunts the days and chills the nights of every writer who follows. Let us suppose, then, that immortality in the literary or cultural sense is the goal. You mean that you want to be remembered when you’re dead? What good will it do you? You want to puff yourself up, sumo-style (He pauses to enact the role), so that future writers must grapple with you, loincloth to loincloth, before they get an ounce of satisfaction? Because you want to be in the Canon? Balls to that, I say! Or maybe you employ the pseudo-science notion and want to make a bunch of memes?

No, no, no, no, no. That way is a cul-de-sac. Memes will not do. The Canon will not do. Agon will not do.

To close the book on this false motive, I summon to this symposium the spectre of the greatest writer who ever lived. He wrote when he wrote. Considering his achievement, he must have written often. His contemporaries admired him and he gained wealth, security, renown and most tellingly of all, imitators and rivals. In a dozen or so years he had amassed more masterpieces than any other writer before or since. Upon retirement, he wrote his will. And all available evidence of it points to one inescapable conclusion: about his works and his reception hereafter, he didn’t give a SHIT!”

A stabbing pain seized my bowels. Big John had punctuated his last line with a karate-chop motion which ended with his finger tips pointing to my seat. It was as if he had afflicted my colon with some wizardry, for I knew for certain that great shame lay in wait if I did not head immediately to the toilet. I loped up the aisle and made it to the restroom. I plotted my revenge while seated on the pot. It was too early to consider him my enemy, but even if he became my best friend, I vowed to pay him some serious comeuppance.

Writer’s Notes:  Feeling a bit of remorse after I read the latest posts. I’m supposed to be writing about Cata and all things Catian, but my default mode is to satirize what I know rather than create what I don’t know. Very few descriptions of city streets (labyrinthian how?), Catian citizens, or anything outside the headspace of the narrator.