Remarks, Notes, Introduction and Other Guest-Editorial Texts Prefacing Postmodern Culture’s Special Fiction Issue Devoted to Postmodern Fiction
| September 25, 2013 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 03, Number 1, September 1992 |
|
Larry McCaffery
Department of English
San Diego State University
Dedication: For Ronald Sukenick and William T. Vollmann
The Final Measurement: Guest-Editor’s Remarks Prefacing Postmodern Culture‘s Special Fiction Issue Devoted to Postmodern Fiction
I. *Epigraphs*
I. 1
Was there no end to anything? When would he reach the final
measurement?
William T. Vollmann, Fathers and Crows
I. 2
As writers--&
everyone inscribes
in the sense
I mean here--
we can
try to intensify
our relationships by considering
how they work; are we putting
each other to sleep
or waking each other up;
and what do we awake to? Does our writing stun
or sting? We can try to
bring our relationship with readers to
fruition
that the site of reading becomes a fact of value
--Charles Bernstein, Artifice of Absorption
I. 3
"You see what's happening here you take a few things that
interest you and you begin to make connections. The connections
are the important thing they don't exist before you make this.
This is THE ENDLESS SHORT STORY."
--Ronald Sukenick, The Endless Short Story
II. *Editor's Preview of Contents for the Issue:*
I. Epigraphs:
I. 1. From William T. Vollmann
I. 2. From Charles Bernstein
I. 3. From Ronald Sukenick
II. Editor's Preview
III. Editor's Prefatory Note
IV. This Is Not the Introduction: Games that Fiction Anthology
Editors Play--Towards a Consideration of the Aesthetic
Conventions of the Fiction Anthology as a Literary
Genre.
IV. 1 ". . . Unusual formal principles and aesthetic
features . . ."? ". . . despite the inherent
fascination involved . . ."?
IV. 2 List of Fiction Anthology Categories and Potentially
Useful Postmodern Applications
IV. 3 Additional Bonus For Critics Developing a Postmodern
Aesthetics of the Fiction Anthology Who Are Also
Interested in Postmodern Music.
IV. 4 Establishing the process of collaborative
interactions between anthology's editorial introduction
and fiction selections (a process which joins these two
seemingly different forms of discourse into an
aesthetic unity; summary of the absurdities,
limitations, and inherent deceitfulness that arise from
following out-dated approaches to such introductions;
sequential listing of the topics resulting from
adhering to these conventions.
IV. 5 Postmodern Textual Practices and the Editorial
Introduction
V. Introduction: Cancelled (See Editor's Apology)
V. 1 Fiction Selections Coded for Postmodernist Features
Appendix A: Kathy Acker introductory comments
V. 2 Contributors' Notes
VI. Appendices B, C, D, E, F.
Fiction Selections in the Issue:
Kathy Acker, "Obsession"
Robert Coover, "Title Sequence for The Adventures of Lucky
Pierre"
Ricardo Cruz, "Five Days of Bleeding"
Rikki Ducornet, "From Birdland"
Rob Hardin, "Dressed to Kill Yourself"
Annemarie Kemeny, "Attempts on Life"
Marc Laidlaw, "Great Breakthroughs in Darkness (Being, Early
Entries From The Secret Encyclopedia of Photography")
William T. Vollmann, "Incarnations of the Murderer"
*III. EDITOR'S PREFATORY NOTE:* Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
I began writing some of the following material
in late May and early June 1992, just before I departed
San Diego for a nine-week stay in Tokyo to begin work on
a project ("Postmodernism in Japan") funded by an N.E.H. summer
research fellowship. Although traces of that initial draft
remain embedded in the current version (mostly in Part V), what
readers now have before them differs so significantly in content
and approach from my earlier drafts that for all practical
purposes the two are completely different texts. During that
May-June period when I began to develop my editorial
introduction, I had already accepted five pieces of fiction for
the issue--this out of the total number of six or seven
selections, agreed upon by myself and Eyal Amiran, Postmodern
Culture's co-editor, when I accepted his offer to guest-edit a
focus of his and John Unsworth's journal devoted to Postmodern
Fiction. Thus I began my editorial introduction assuming that I
had only to make an additional one or two selections for the
issue, insert a few extra remarks into the draft of my
introduction regarding the relevance of the new material to the
issue as a whole, contact the authors when I returned from Tokyo
on 8-31 to make certain they had sent Eyal their selections on
computer discs, and then my duties as guest editor would have
been completed.
When I departed for Tokyo on 6-27 I recall feeling quite
confident and optimistic that these duties would be discharged
successfully, and the template I had developed for my
introduction reflected these feelings. There were good reasons
for this optimism. The material I already had in hand for the
issue was strong, both individually and in the ways the works'
stylistic and thematic concerns represented various key features
associated with postmodernism (see V. 1 coded listing of
selections). Moreover there was also an interesting mixture of
authors and works: a selection from one of the already-canonized
authors from the 60s "boom period" of postmodernism (Coover);
work from two authors who had begun work in the 70s--Kathy Acker
(now widely recognized as a central and controversial arrival on
the postmodernist scene, and Rikki Ducornet, a writer whose works
were now beginning to be recognized and praised); a piece by Marc
Laidlaw, whose mid-80s novel, Dad's Nuke, was recognized within
the genre of science fiction as a major cyberpunk novel, but
whose overall literary accomplishments had been obscured or
distorted by his association with genre writing; and one
relatively anonymous young author (Ricardo Cruz) whose garish,
surrealist depictions of urban ghetto life seemed to me to be the
most original fiction about black life I'd seen since the early
Ishmael Reed. The selections also included several different
types of postmodernist innovations, ranging from Coover's
typically outrageous forays into myth, media, sex and death, to
Ducornet's delicately rendered, magical realist fables, whose
lyricism often serves to highlight the "diabolism" of her
"macabre fantasies," Cruz's "rap fiction," and so on. I was also
taking with me to Tokyo several other promising works by authors
I respected, as well as expecting to receive submission from
several authors who hadn't yet replied to my original letters of
inquiry or to Postmodern Culture's call for fiction.
During my stay in Tokyo I periodically re-read the materials
I had brought with me, as well as a few intriguing possibilities
that were sent to me by Eyal (incidentally, I had considerable
editorial input from Eyal at each step of this project's
evolution); by the time of my return to San Diego on 8-31, we had
narrowed down our options to a few selections. Eyal and I set a
tentative date of September 12 by which to have made the final
selections for the issue; this would give me the week of
September 12-19 to complete my introduction, arrange for the
discs to be sent to Eyal, and generally handle the final details
for the issue (the September 19 date was my own personal deadline
for completing all the work on the issue, since I would be
leaving then for Boulder, Colorado to take part in the Novel of
the Americas Conference being held during the week of 9-19 to
9-26). However, upon arriving back in San Diego, ripples began
to appear on editorial waters that had been up to now
extraordinarily smooth. Within a week, a real storm was brewing.
The forces responsible for this were various, some relatively
minor (there were problems getting discs from the authors) and
some involving financial issues, miscommunications, dozens of
phone calls that crossed back and forth across the U.S. like ping
pong balls or Pynchon yo-yos, and even the confusion of agents
and publishers about how the new literary "space" of electronic,
computer driven data should be defined or categorized....
[EDITOR'S NOTE: I find it too painful from a personal standpoint
to continue with this summary except to say to my readers that
the labyrinthine series of darkly humorous events that unfolded
from 9-5 until 9-19 were...beyond the pale.]
*IV. This Is Not the Introduction: Games that Fiction Anthology
Editors Play By--Towards an Aesthetics of the Fiction Anthology*
Like all other literary forms, anthologies are language
games--structures of words with distinctive generic properties
which arise due to a system of conventions and semiotic rules
that govern its operations. As with the rules and systems of
transformation in all games, those at work in anthologies not
only set limits on what can (and cannot) occur, but also channel
operations into certain pattern of recurrence. The principles
underlying the anthology game are, of course, only vaguely sensed
by readers (if at all) and even most anthology editors are
themselves aware of them only intuitively. Given the primacy
afforded artistic "originality" in Western aesthetics, it's not
surprising that (to my knowledge) no one has ever given serious
attention to studying the anthology as a literary form. Not only
is the "final product" of an anthology, as well as the editorial
process involved in its creation, essentially collaborative in
nature, but the different functions played by editor and
contributor have encouraged people to see the roles as being
essentially separate. The result is that most readers and
critics have regarded anthologies less as literary forms in their
own right and more as simply arbitrary structures that
"contain" literary objects.
Without belaboring the point, and admitting the fact that
having spent a lot of time and energy over the past several years
putting together fiction anthologies devoted to various topics
(see the Contributors' Notes), let me just suggest that now is
the appropriate time for someone (thought the time is definitely
not appropriate for me) to develop a serious discussion
exploring the aesthetic of anthologies generally--and of the
fiction anthology as a literary genre in particular. The
timeliness of such an exposition results from the unusual formal
and aesthetic features of fiction anthologies, the rich series of
topics such an analysis would need to delve into, the ways that
such a discussion can be linked to concepts operating in
postmodern fiction and in poststructuralist and deconstructive
critical theory--not to mention the fact that it hasn't occurred
to anyone to develop such an essay, this despite the inherent
fascination involved in developing such an essay.
*IV. 1 " . . . unusual formal principles and aesthetic features
. . . "? " . . . despite the inherent fascination involved
. . ."?*
Indeed, consider the enjoyment and intellectual stimulation
involved in working out a definition of the fiction anthology as
a genre, working up a typology that best describes the different
sub-categories and permutations that comprise the genre, the
satisfaction of gradually beginning to recognize how much FUN it
will be for you to take this hitherto despised form--a form that
in fact will not even be recognized as a distinctive literary
genre until your essay bursts onto the academic scene--and then
being able to show off your critical skills by applying a barrage
of complex-and-trendy terms and implications drawn from recent
critical theory, the secret satisfaction you'll derive throughout
the process of developing your essay by anticipating the ways
your peers' initial derision and bewilderment at your choice of
topics will gradually be transformed, first to a begrudging
respect, then to astonishment, and eventually to shame and
embarrassment at having ever doubted you. Consider the following
(the categories that apply to this current anthology are
indicated in *bold*):
*IV. 2 Listing of categories, *Aspects of PO M
subcategories, other variables that aesthetic practices
determine specific aspects of the and critical theory
form and content found in any that can be used in
individual anthology (incomplete)* developing a theory
of the formal
Anthology's scope and eventual properties of
length is left open to editor fiction anthologies
or restricted to a maximum of (incomplete)*
(100, 200, 300, 400 or more)
pages, or limited to (3-5, *6- Citation of the relevancy
8*, 8-10, 10-15, 20 or more) of such works as
contributors Pale Fire
Selections to include previously (Nabokov),
published fiction or Ficciones
*restricted to unpublished* (Borges), If on a To
include works by women or
men or Winter's Night a
*both* Traveler (Calvino)
Selections restricted to those Death of the author
written by authors of a Imagination as plagiarism
specific racial, sexual, or Strategies of
ethnic orientation *or not* appropriation,
Anthology to include *any* form of collaborations and
fiction that fits the focus or intertextuality
to include only specified
genre fiction (SF, Regency Familiar categorical
Romance, Detective, etc.) or oppositions between
only work non-generic works or subjective/objective
a mixture? "creative"/non-
Anthology's focus is based on creative denied.
commonalities theme or Valorization of
aesthetic tendencies or on "creative" over non-
links with specific periods or creative writing
*literary movements* questioned
Anthology to appear as a book or as Endless play of
a *special issue of a lit signifiers
journal* which you are *guest- Bakhtin's heteroglossia
editing* or regular editor of The changes in meaning
To be published by a commercial that result from
house or small press or moving a text from
*university press* one context to
Audience whose reading tastes and another
interests the anthology is Denial of author as
aimed for is mass market (male originator of
or female or both), academic, discrete meaning
*"serious" readers*, cult Sampling as central po mo
audience (many options) aesthetic
Editor is professional (with no, Strategies of misreading
some, a lot of) experience or and re-reading used
*doing this on the side* to create
Contributors to be paid (no money,
some money, major bucks) for Foregrounding of the
contribution process of creation,
Editor to be not paid or paid emphasis on the
(small or *middling* or large contingencies and
flat fee) *in* (royalties or personal choices
in royalties plus an advance involved in
which is small, medium large). aesthetic creations,
The deadline for the editor to have the willingness to
completed all aspects of his reveal that seeming
role is (less than 6 months, "natural" or
*6-12* months, 1 year or 2 "objective" patterns
years, more than two years), and conclusions
or no fixed deadline. result not from
their relationship
to any exterior
state of truth or
actual conditions
but from aesthetic
choices
*IV. 3 Additional Bonus Provided to Critics Interested in the
Postmodernization of Contemporary Music:*
Consider developing an extended discussion that suggests how the
aesthetic issues you're describing for fiction anthologies are
analogous to those found in the recent appearance of so many
"cover" albums (and there are many categories of such
"anthologies" of musical materials)--e.g., The Coolies' Dig,
Pussy Galore's Exile on Main Street, Cicone Youth's The White
Album, and the series of "cover" albums produced by Hal Wilner.
Since processes and products related to sampling are so central
to rap and postmodern music generally, feel free to explore the
implications of their use in terms of such concepts as
intertextuality, originality, the effect of cut-and-paste methods
on meaning, etc.. Develop the analogy of anthology editors to
rap master DJs behind the board, mixing and cutting, using their
intuition and audio memories to mix and match sounds, riffs and
phrases in ways that open up new aesthetic and thematic aspects
of prior materials, that communicate to knowledgeable audiences
via reference and intertextuality. Perhaps point out the more
subtle point that the role of anthology editor would really be
analogous to a DJ only if the anthology being assembled contained
only previously published fiction. If it included only new
fiction, you'd need a slightly different analogy. Be sure to
note the sorts of interesting issues raised by the aesthetics
underlying rap and fiction anthologies. For example, is
"borrowing" unfamiliar materials "more creative" than sampling
materials people should know? Is it possible for a musician to
not borrow materials? In what sense? Should strategies that
fundamentally rely on appropriation, sampling, or collaboration
be considered "creative" at all? In what ways does the recent
tendency to problematize authorial originality and the
distinction between "literary" and "critical" writing provide
ways of thinking about fiction anthologies as literary forms?
*IV. 5 Establishing the process of collaborative interactions
between the anthology's editorial introduction and fiction
selections (a process which joins these two seemingly different
forms of discourse into an aesthetic unity); summary of the
absurdities, limitations, and inherent deceitfulness that arise
from following out-dated approaches to such introductions;
sequential listing of the topics that result from adhering to
these conventions.*
The options available to anyone hoping to assemble an
interesting fiction anthology are virtually unlimited.
Unfortunately, there are considerably fewer options available to
editors once it comes time to write the editorial introductions
that accompany such anthologies. As with book reviewing,
editorial introductions are essentially written according to a
formula that controls the overall structure, tone and content of
the discourse--a formula whose main features have evolved
primarily to serve the private interests of the editors and their
publisher rather than to serve any necessary generic function.
No matter how complex or unique the anthology's focus, how
creatively and flexibly the editor has used this focus in the
selection process, no matter how original the fiction selections
are in terms of formal innovation or thematic complexity--in the
end, nearly all editorial introductions follow a sequence of
presentations that can be listed as follows:
1. Attention-grabbing opening paragraph that establishes why the
anthology's theme or focus is particularly important now,
usually accompanied by references to the inadequacies of other
anthologies with a similar focus.
2. Details introduced regarding the background of the anthology,
how this editor became involved in the project (here modest
indications of how the editor's professional background and other
credentials make him or her particularly suited to put together
such an anthology), what the anthology's original aims were (and
hence what sorts of considerations were involved in the selection
process), and a summary of how these aims changed or remained
consistent as the volume took shape. [See Appendix C.]
3. Brief, "punchy" overview of the anthology's contents.
4. Presentation of information regarding the authors' lives,
citation of previous most significant publications, literary
movements associated with the authors, etc..
5. (Optional.) Roll call of other authors considered for the
anthology (if applicable) with reasons why any expected figures
aren't represented. If necessary, comments designed to blunt
charges of the anthology's imbalances (gender, race, etc.),
justifications for any political incorrectness that might be
perceived in selections, followed by suggestions of what
misreadings on part of the reader created such perceptions.
6. Citations regarding the appropriateness of the selections in
terms of the anthology's focus; justification for any pieces that
at first glance seem very much out of focus.
7. Overview of notable themes and stylistic features (examples
and quotations to support this list), followed by favorable
comparisons of this anthology with rival anthologies that may
have preceded it.
8. Claims made for the overall significance of the anthology
material, pronouncements about how the individual aesthetic and
thematic features found in the anthology's fiction relate to
broader trends within and outside of literature.
9. Concluding paragraph which reveals ways this anthology's
selections indicate rich possibilities, new directions, etc..
10. Final sentence designed to get the reader to turn the page as
quickly as possible.
The problem here isn't that these formulaic elements are all
trivial or inappropriate. The problem is the formulaic nature
of the formula, the tendency of editors to pass off hasty and
usually self-serving conclusions based on inadequate sampling of
their subject. Rather than follow many postmodern authors who
try to develop methods that permit them to find systems and
significance but who do so honestly by acknowledging their own
subjectivity and actual, less-than-systematic experiences, many
editors feel it necessary to adhere blindly to a formula whose
elements encourage dishonesty, misrepresentation, superficiality,
and manipulation. At least in anthologies that introduce new
work by serious fiction writers, such introductions are nearly
always the product of bad faith--the bad faith of editors who
know better but deliberately attempt to reduce ultimately
uncategorizable works to "trends," "patterns," or labels, the bad
faith of literary guides who've been living inside this rich
literary terrain for weeks and months, and who've been damn
excited about how untranslatable the stuff is, and how resistant
it is to the kinds of paraphrases and overstatements the editor
is expected to make in the introduction. This isn't to say that
editors shouldn't present their views and point out trends or
patterns--after all, though finding a pattern in the stars may be
primarily an act of the creative imagination, such patterns help
people locate themselves and find out where they're going.
Editors should express their opinions in a performative act that
strives to break through the discursive screens of traditional
editorial representation to the repressed, authentic data of the
material at hand.
[Editorial Note, Los Angeles, 9-25. As explained in
Editor's Note for V. Intro (Cancelled), circumstances made it
impossible for me to complete some sections of this Editorial
Introduction (such as the actual Editorial Introduction itself).
I am, however, able to provide readers with some discarded
fragments of the concluding paragraph that I worked on some time
ago (see Appendix F) which should clarify what I would have said
if circumstances had been different.
*V. Introduction (Now Cancelled)*
[EDITOR'S APOLOGY:] Due in part to the time and energy required
to develop the earlier sections of his remarks concerning the
need for an aesthetics of fiction anthologies, partly because of
circumstances beyond his control, and partly because he doesn't
wish to risk the bad faith referred to earlier, the editor
regretfully acknowledges that he will be unable to supply the
editorial introduction. To compensate for this, and to provide
readers with easy access to the relations between these works,
the editor is providing in lieu of an introduction a listing of
the anthology selections marked with a handy series of symbols
whose meanings are explained below. He is also supplying
contributors' notes for each author (because these are usually
supplied at the end of an anthology they are often overlooked by
readers); for readers interested in what the editor might have
said in the (Now Cancelled) "Introduction," he is also including
an appendix containing a fragment of material originally intended
for the "Introduction" (See Appendices C-F).
*V. 1. Listing of Anthology Selections with Easy-to-Use Coded
References for Easy Reader Access to their Postmodern Features*
Kathy Acker, "Obsession": A(1,3),B,C,E,F,G,H,J,K,L,M,N,O(2),
P,Q,S,T,U,W,X,Y.
Robert Coover, "The Titles Sequence for The Adventures of Lucky
Pierre": A(1,2), C,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,O(1,2),P,R,S,T,U,V.
Ricardo Cruz, "Five Days of Bleeding": A(1,2,3),E,F,G,H,I,K,L,M,
O(1),P,Q,R,S,T,U,W,X.
Rikki Ducornet, "From Birdland": C,F,H,I,K,N,T.
Rob Hardin, "Dressed to Kill Yourself": C,D,E,F,H,J,K,O(2),P,Q,R,
S,T,U,W,X.
Annemarie Kemeny, "Attempts on Life": A(2),B,C,E,F,P,R,S,T,V.
Marc Laidlaw, "Great Breakthroughs in Darkness (Being, Early
Entries From The Secret Encyclopedia of Photography"):
C,D,E,F,G,K,N,O,Q,R,S,T,U,V.
William T. Vollmann, "Incarnations of the Murderer": B,C,E,F,G,
K,N,O,P,Q,S,T,U,W,Y.
Explanation of Symbols:
A(1): Avant-Pop--appropriation of style and content of pop
culture.
A(2): Avant-Pop--appropriation of style and content of pop
culture to subvert pop culture.
B: Strategies of confounding the usual distinctions between
author/character, fiction/autobiography, "real" history and
invented versions.
C: Meta-features.
D: Cyberpunk features.
E: Non-linear methods of presentation.
F: Process over product.
G: Collision of different world or planes of reality motif.
H: Radically idiosyncratic voices and idioms employed.
[Note: continue through Z.]
=================================
*Appendix A: Commentary About Kathy Acker and "Obsession,"
Written by Editor for a Different Project--for Possible Sampling
Purposes in the (Now Cancelled) Introduction*
[Note: Once Larry realized that he did not have much time before
the deadline to write a completely new version of this
commentary, he planned to paraphrase it, or "sample" it (self-
plagiarism). --Eyal.]
Like her fiction, Kathy Acker is a bundle of
contradictory parts that combine to create the jagged unity
of a Raushcenberg collage. Street-wise gutter snipe and
radical feminist critic, motorcycle-outlaw and vulnerable
woman, cynic and visionary idealist, Acker writes a series
of experimental, shocking, and highly disturbing novels that
present perhaps the most devastating (and wickedly funny)
critique of life under late capitalism since William
Burroughs' mid-60s works.
These works include her 1970s small press publications
(The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula, by the Black
Tarantula; I Dreamt I Became a Nymphomaniac!; Imagining;
The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec, by Henri Toulouse
Lautrec; and Kathy Acker Goes to Haiti); her "re-writes"
of classical Western novels Great Expectations and Don
Quixote, as well as works that pastiche a broader variety
of prior literary works: Blood and Guts in High School,
Empire of the Senseless, and In Memoriam to Identity.
"Obsession" offers an illustration of the ways Avant-
Pop authors appropriate, sample, and otherwise collaborate
with prior texts drawn from the realms of both "high" and
"pop" culture; it also showcases Avant-Pop's tendency to
blur the distinction between author and character--a device
which emphasizes the individual's imaginative role in
constructing any version of "reality" and the interaction of
"fiction" and "fact" in our media-soaked environment. In
"Obsession," Acker--in one of her typically bold narrative
manoeuvers--adopts the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff, the
passionate and ultimately doomed lovers from Emily Bronte's
19th century masterpiece, Wuthering Heights. But as
Avant-Pop authors often remind us, "re-telling" a familiar
story within a contemporary context permits readers to re-
think the assumptions and "meanings" they bring to such
materials. "Reanimated" by Acker's surrealist imagination
and fiercely political vision, the elements of Bronte's
novel are transformed into a nightmarish vision of the
sexual longings, gender confusions and injustices to be
found in contemporary society.
Also typical of Acker's work is her focus in
"Obsession" on the body as a literal and symbolic site/cite
of struggle between individuals seeking self-empowerment and
the forces of patriarchal control that seek to regulate
people's lives. This emphasis is grounded in more than
abstract political concerns. As a real woman and not just a
narrative person, Acker is her own text, her own gallery.
Embedded i*n one of her front teeth is a jagged chunk of
bronze. She's a body-builder in more than the usual way:
her muscles animate spectacular tattoos, a combination that
she feels allows her to seize control over the sign-systems
through which people "read" her. Past mistress of the
cunning juxtaposition and the Fine Art of Appropriation,
Acker writes fiction that betrays a multitrack outlaw
intellect. And she doesn't shrink from mining outlaw "low
culture" genres like SF, pornography, and detective fiction.
The net effect of her work is not merely to deconstruct, but
to decondition.
*V. 2 Contributors' Notes*
Kathy Acker's most recent publications include: Portrait of the
Eye (a collection of three early novels) and In Memoriam
to Identity. The selection included in this issue is from
a forthcoming novel to be published by Random House in the
Spring of 1993. She is also recording an album featuring
her work set to music that Hal Wilner is producing, and
rides a 750 Honda.
Robert Coover recently spent two years developing teaching
applications using hypertext in creative writing courses
(this pilot program was sponsored by Apple). Professor of
English at Brown University, he is the author of numerous
novels and stories, including most recently Pinocchio in
Venice. The fiction selection included here is part
of a long experimental novel, The Adventures of Lucky
Pierre, which Coover has been writing now for over twenty
years.
Ricardo Cruz's fiction has appeared in various literary journals,
including Fiction International and Black Ice Magazine.
His first novel, Straight Outta Compton (Fall 1992,
Fiction Collective Two), was recently named winner of the
Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction. Currently
"out and about" in Bloomington, Illinois, he is completing
work on his Ph.D. in English at Illinois State-Normal.
Rikki Ducornet is the author of six volumes of poetry and a
tetralogy of novels--The Stain, Entering Fire, The Fountains
of Neptune, and The Jade Cabinet--that will be
published by Dalkey Archive Press. Also known for her work
as an illustrator of such works as the limited edition of
Robert Coover's Spanking the Maid and Borges's "Tlon Uqbar
and Orbis Tertius," Ducornet is Professor of Creative
Writing and Literature at the University of Denver. A
forthcoming issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction
will be devoted to her work (The Guest-Editor of this issue
wishes it to be known that he is currently seeking materials
for this issue).
Rob Hardin is a writer and musician living in NYC who reports
that writing is the way of "getting linear dissonant
counterpoint--the chamber music nightmare and empty attics--
out of my system." His poetry has appeared in numerous
magazines, including Mississippi Review, Atomic Avenue,
and Flagellation. His recent album credits include The
Lost Boys and Billy Squire's Here and Now.
Annemarie Kemeny teaches and is completing work on her Ph.D.
at the Department of English, SUNY Stony Brook. She
has published criticism and poetry.
Marc Laidlaw has spent most of his adult life in office
buildings, writing on company word processors. His works
include an early cyberpunk novel, Dad's Nuke (1985), a SF
novel abut Tibet, Neon Lotus. The selection published in
this issue has appeared in print in Great Britain in New
Worlds 2, ed. David Garnett (Victor Gollancz, Ltd.).
Larry McCaffery is co-editor of Fiction International,
American Book Review, Critique: Studies in Contemporary
Fiction, and editor of Storming the Reality Studio: A
Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction(Duke
UP). Two new books will appear in 1993: Interviews with
Radically Innovative American Authors (Pennsylvania UP)
and Avant Pop: Postmodern Fiction for the 90s, which will
appear in the new Black Ice Books Series (Normal, IL:
Fiction Collective Two).
William T. Vollmann's recent publications include Whores for
Gloria, An Afghanistan Picture Show, Thirteen Stories &
Thirteen Epitaphs, and Fathers and Crows (the third of
Vollmann's projected septology of "Dream Novels"). Research
for his books has taken him recently to Cambodia, Mexico
City, Sarajevo, and the Magnetic North Pole.
=================================
VI. *Appendix B: Editor's Log: 1/92--In the Beginning...*
Before the word was the grant application for contributors'
and editor's honoraria for a special issue of Postmodern Culture
devoted to "Postmodern Fiction."
1-92. Postmodern Culture's co-editor Eyal Amiran contacted
me, Larry McCaffery (for his background as an editor and critic
associated with postmodernism, see contributor's notes), early in
1992 to discuss my willingness to guest edit this special issue.
I agreed and we set up a basic gameplan: I would arrange for the
appearance of approximately half dozen previously unpublished (in
the U.S.) pieces that, in my view, illustrated significant formal
and thematic tendencies within postmodernism; to this end, my
selection process would avoid narrow or prescriptive definitions
of what constituted "postmodernism," emphasizing the quality of
material over "name recognition," although I would attempt to
include at least some fiction by established figures (Pynchon,
Sontag, Gaddis, Coover, Barth, Rushdie, Abish, McElroy, Le Guin,
Barthelme, and Burroughs were all specifically mentioned in our
preliminary phone conversations, and, indeed, were subsequently
invited by me to submit fiction for the issue). I would also try
to include writings by some of the most interesting recent
authors, and selections from work that would come in response to
Postmodern Culture's calls for fiction; I would supply an
introduction which would place my selections in a general
framework of postmodern aesthetics generally, and which would
clarify whatever significant differences and similarities
characterize the older and younger generations of postmodern
authors. Deadline for my having all the materials in the
editors' hands would be mid-September, with the issue going out
on-line at the very end of the month.
=================================
*Appendix C: Unrevised Fragments of Editor's (Now Cancelled)
Introduction*
1. ...I agreed to accept his invitation to edit in part because
I felt the process of putting such an issue together would
contribute to the process of re-evaluating my own views about
postmodernism. This process started several years ago, when now,
and has grown out of a series of recognitions in the mid-80s
about the limitations and strengths of my earlier positions about
postmodernism, that I was already fullyI was alredayworking on
suchpretty certain that whatever in part on question that the
literary sensibilities on encounters in the best writing coming
out of the younger generation of vital, innovative American
authors has been shaped by a very different set of cultural
circumstances and aesthetic considerationsvery different indeed
from those that gave rise to the first wave of postmodern
experimentalism back in the mid 60s...one generation's daring
metafictional explorations about the relationship between author
and text becomes the most effective tool of the 90s realist
attempting to depict a world in which "signs," "texts," and
various other fictions have proliferated to such an extent that
they form the most substantial aspect of most people's existence.
2. ...no attempt was made to fill pre-designated slots or
categories...what was surprising was the sheer volume of quality
fiction written by the generation of innovative writers who have
grown to maturity in the 80s and 90s...halfway into my selection
process, Eyal Amiran had agreed with my suggestion that we aim
less for a balance of fiction by younger and more established and
concentrate instead on foregrounding work by emerging writers,
using selections from the canonical postmodernists by way of
showcasing aesthetic and thematic continuities or divergences
between the generations.
3. Ducornet's camera serves as it does for some many other
younger writers, as a magical mirror possessing the power to
petrify the past, illuminate and momentarily petrify human truths
that usually evaporate under life's process of perpetual change.
...a selection from perhaps the most versatile stylist,
ventriloquist of all...quirky American dialects, bad jokes,
willingness to push a trope until every aspect of it had been
squeezed dry..."Lucky Pierre" is an excerpt from a legendy blue
movie special, now over twenty years in the making. More than
most other 60s figures, Coover's best work from the 60s is linked
directly to writers like DeLillo, Leyner, the cyberpunks and the
later authors whose work is so often drenched in a kind of
constant breath surrealism and intertextual play, and whose prose
is so frequently drenched in a kind of techno-media poetics.
Cruz, appropriate that when his interrelated sequence of
stories about life in the ghetto finally came together into a
novel, Straight Outta Compton appropriate on several levels--
the sheer intensity and sensuousness of his voice, the sheer
vitality and anger and low-down ache of passion and the mixture
of surprise, delight and playfulness with which they respond to
the set of surprises that ghetto life has in store for them
moment-to-moment. Cruz is the first black writer I've
encountered who seems to have integrated rap's developed a prose
voice, narrative
[Editor's Note: Apologize in Ed. Note that I can't even
provide fragments of the Kemeny because I left my only copy of
her story behind in San Diego and did not receive the fax of her
story sent by Eyal.]
Laidlaw, Alphabetical structure, near science fictional tale
of, associated with c-p but possesses a lyricism, verbal control,
and intellectual delicacy that has more in common with Calvino or
Steve Erickson (whose non-appearance is regretted).
William Vollmann, "Incarnations of the Murderer." This is
although the 90s postmodernists have only just begun the process
of shifting gears into a decade that almost certainly is going to
pick up speed and recklessness as the millennium approaches, but
from this vantage point there's no question that William T.
Vollmann has got a headstart over every other member of his
generation in terms of opening up new narrative opportunities and
laying aside the temerity and failure, hesitation, and general
figure of will that seemed to lie heavy over the generation of
authors appearing in the late 70s and early 80s fiction.
Certainly no American author since the arrival of the canonized
behemoth Thomas Pynchon has appeared with the combination of
reckless ambition, verbal gifts, and an intuitive feel for
inventing narrative strategies capable of rendering this vision.
"Incarnations of the Murderer" displays many of the
tendencies that make Vollmann's work seem so original and fresh.
As is typical of most of his other work, "Incarnations" deals
with brutality and those troubling emotional regions where
extremes of passion and love are transformed into their equally
vivid opposites. Also typically, Vollmann never allows a scene
or a motif to remain static; instead, his imagination is
constantly at work transforming the scenes and characters into
variations designed to present new insights into materials that
more traditional story-telling methods would use to make us feel
comfortable, that we have understood their essence.
"Incarnations" also displays Vollmann's characteristically
prismatic handling of point of view--having matured in the
aftermath of the experiments of writers like Burroughs, Mailer,
Vonnegut, and Coover. Vollmann has taken ways of integrating
authorial experience, collaborating with prior texts, and
imagining inventive narrative to new levels. The risks he has
managed to take at this pint, both personal and narrative, are
astonishing. For all the attention paid to presenting even the
most ugly and poignant scenes and people even-handedly, there is
a deeply moving sense of Vollmann's personal engagement, his
sense of moral outrage while witnessing the cruelties and
stupidities human beings can inflict on each other. The risk of
insisting on personally witnessing such acts of human folly as he
documents in his fiction are burnout, having one's imagination or
aesthetic judgement overwhelmed by the emotionality of such
experiences. For now, though, at least for this reader, the
sense of personal risk and danger has served Vollmann admirably.
Surely if nothing else, Vollmann is helping to dispel the sense
that postmodern American fiction has floundered under the weight
of its own selfconsciousness.
=================================
*Appendix D: Fragment found at bottom of page while developing
conclusion to section IV. 5.*
As I hope this "traditional" portion of my Introduction
indicates, one can be fully informed about the ambiguities and
limitations of any speech act; the tendency of all authors is to
try to mask their confusion and personal insecurities behind a
barrage of phoney rhetoric. This does not, however, relieve the
author of the responsibility of attempting to draw conclusions
about issues that might be of some use. It also doesn't mean
that the process of engaging one's mind regularly with
challenging topics can't be fun, or that the only options with
topics one cares about deeply are to adopt the hypocritical or
smug stance of the know-it-all or to mutter embarrassed
apologies. Displays of either adopt either the hypocritical
stance of the or the hanghyupocritical finding a way to present
what your conclusions are and how you arrived at them has to be--
your conclusions and attitudesthat one can't expressand ones
words withothers migwith as much mean, however, metaphorss well
asaware of the limitations of an individual to draw
conclusionsones and the postmodern seems torisks
havepleasurethe risks have been worth itevident--pursuing this
itye"breakthrough" in terms of casting off the authorialtaking
off on the perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Vollmann's
writing in terms of postmodern aesthetics--namely, his treatment
of point of viewworkIn terms of
In order to give language the opportunities to stretch out
muscles it rarely uses, the narrative structures in these
selections tend to be flexible, open-ended, the "plot" capable of
veering off suddenly in several possible directions. Ironically,
such structures can be seen as presenting a palpable and
"realistic" sense of our world, with its constantly shifting
series of signs systems and cultural codes producing surreal
juxtapositions, a sense of media overload...exhilaration and
confusion.
to commentaryverbalash of expectations, the strangesurreal
fusings of wherenothern equally familiar butnother context that
is equally familiar butthe familiar elements drawn from
differentcontexts into strange anddifferent sorts
ofAestheticsQuestiolns of "realism" aside, however, using the
free flowing narrative structures ofbarrthe sorts ofemiotic
excess andthe constantly shiftingexploring its itself shared
conviction that language's ability to transform our
consciousness, a certain confidence that fiction's potential to
create illusions that can shock and awaken, that language can
enlight and...put in the service of confront banality
counterability building language's power to that fiction in the
powerabsorbed lessons of 60s literary radicalyounger the strength
ofanew critical categories and terms arise with accelerating
frequency in an attempt to keep pace with the appearance of the
"new," the "exotic," and the "now"...fueled by a hysterical
denial of the inevitability of bodily decay, old age and death,
full of self-loathing for physical imperfection, obsessed with
preserving one's experiences into images and sounds that provide
the closest approximation of immortality allowed postmoderns,
deeply suspicious of anything that cannot be soothingly
controlled, "captured," replayed, most Americans have almost
gladly accepted a life of banality in exchange for the creature
comforts provided by its Daydream Nation; as reading becomes less
central to the process whereby people are educated and understand
each other, its significance retreats generally...on any given
evening in America, the number of people sitting transfixed by
game shows, their vestigial instinct toward self-improvement
satisfied by the random bits of data occasionally tossed their
way, outnumbers all the Americans who will read a book this year
by a factor of 10 to 1. comforting reassurance that the American
Dream of instant transcendence is real...you gotta believe your
own eyes, right? the postmodern spectacle of the Rodney King
trial, in which our citizens deeply felt intuition that they
can't really trust the images comprising their postmodern
world...
are insubstantila, trickssuspicions about the illusory, awaht
you see iwhich people comfort themselves and writing becomes
increasinglytheandretreated into a dangerously somnolent or
anything else that cannot be controlled or rationally the
powerful difference--a relentless and ferocious pursuitanything
that postindustrial capitalism, with its relentless difference
engine, continues toproduced by thesodemanded by the logic of
jaded consumers awahsare relentlesslyas the logic of
postindustrial capitalism's difference engine, help distributors
and bookstore ownerfocus the consumption of fiction and other art
"products"direct the somnolent readers waiting patiently for the
latest poll to let them know what they think or feel about
something,epheality ofdifficulty
=================================
*Appendix E: Early Draft of Comments Editor Planned to Use in His
(Now Cancelled) "Introduction," Regarding Robert Coover's "Lucky
Pierre" Selection (Remarks Which Would Also Have Helped Establish
the Recurrent Pattern of Media-Induced Confusions, Reality Decay
and Loss of Individual Identity Evident in Several of the
Anthology's Selections).*
One of the features that distinguished work by the 60s generation
of postmodernists was their willingness to confort ashad to do
with their of the brash band of
Back in the early to mid-1960s, as Thomas Pynchon, John
Barth, Susan Sontag, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald
Barthelme and others were making it clear that a new generation
of American writers were in their ascendancy, one
particularly fresh angle of their work had to do with their
presentation of technological change generally and "pop culture"
in particular. And the writer no otherrelationir take on
are direction their work area of shard interest that made their
work seem so fresh and genuinely "new" had to do with their
exploration of how technological change and pop culture was
transforming American life--and the new art forms arising to meet
this transformation. Most of these writers had experienced the
thrill of Saturday afternoon serials and cartoons (followed
perhaps by a Gene Autry Western or Hardy Boys movie), had
collected bubblegum cards emblazoned with British and American
fighter planes; they could recall Truman's announcement that a
new weapon had been used against the Japanese in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and they recognized the significance once their family
radios were replaced by a television set. There was something
profound about such changes, of course, because in addition to
transforming the physical space they were inhabiting, these
developments were having deep and largely untheorized effects on
their imaginations, what they dreamed of and were frightened by.
Just as importantly, these things were affecting perception
itself--movies taught writers how narrative materials could be
cut-up, juxtaposed, what could be eliminated, tv ads provided
insights about how to present information-dense materials
economically, how to be didactic without tipping your hand too
obviously, how principlesIn short, the 60s generation of
postmodernist authors was the first to begin to explore the Media
Scape that gradually began to occupy more and more of America's
attention, its dreamslifeaffectingThese developments wereAll this
was f having first time they saw television.memories of the vast
transformations that accompanied the war, were old enough to
remember a time when the family gathering around the radio each
evening was still a novelty,evening radioThis was the first
generation of authors who had grown up immersed in Media Culture
, who were the firsthow popular new terrain they began to stake
out was the effect that the mediamutual concern of the key areas
ofthe first brash band of postmodern fiction writers were just
bursting upon the relatively staid American literary scene,
Robert Coover quickly established himself as one of the brashest
=================================
*Appendix F: Fragment of Discussion to be Used in the (Now
Cancelled) "Introduction" regarding Recurrent Motifs in
Postmodernism and the Current Issue (with Supporting Quotes)*
Recurrent references to the proliferation of images created by
cameras (including video and movie cameras), the sense that
photography is akin to magic in its ability to allow humans
visual access to that which is normally invisible (the past, the
dead, inner psychic states), the more ominous implications that
by giving such previously ineffable or abstract states of being a
tangible existence has created an entryway through which
illusion, the dead, and the past will soon overrun "real" and the
living and the present.
Inventor of the praxiscope technology (*which see*),
Professor Aanschultz believed that close observation of
physiology and similar superficial phenomena could lead to
direct revelation of the inner or secret processes of
nature. Apparent proof of this now discredited theory was
offered by his psychopraxiscope, which purported to offer
instantaneous viewing of any subject's thoughts.
--Marc Laidlaw, "Great Breakthroughs in Darkness"
Postmodern Authors living in a contemporary world dominated by
Media Scape, simulated experiences, Virtual-and-Hyper Realities,
often literalize the metaphorical components of previous eras'
attempts to poeticize the mysterious nature of truth and
falsehood, life and death, reality and illusion, originality and
duplication. Thus, Robert Coover places his hero Lucky Pierre
into a cinematic narrative realm in which "All the world's a
stage, and each must play his part, etc.."
As technologies of reproduction create counterfeit worlds
that become increasingly lifelike and offer an ever-expanding
array of simulated experiences, the fleeting "real time"
experiences of individuals begin to seem increasingly less
substantial precisely because they cannot be replayed.