This novel is weird, very weird. There are autobiographical elements, it references its own creation often, there is a novel within the novel (that involves Orthodox Jewish charity and a futuristic luck-lottery machine), a large cache of “real” email correspondence, a primer on how to learn Arabic, and DeWitt is both a character in her own right and thinly disguised as the pseudonym, Rachel Zozanian. There are also many narrative voices that alternate between the chapters, including sections narrated by “you” the reader. It is all very odd. And brilliant. “It’s not that I think children should be seen and not heard. Why stop at children? How many adults generate utterances equivalent to the paragraph of Spinoza one could have read in the time taken up by the utterance? Chances are the utterances of Spinoza himself would not have achieved equivalence, because I can read 900 words a minute and it is unlikely Spinoza could speak at that speed, let alone speak at that speed while maintaining the level of excellence of his writing.”
Suicide is a reoccurring theme. “I have a large handsome apartment in Berlin, 450 euros a month. I came to Berlin partly because someone once recommended KaDeWe as a suicide spot and partly because I thought I should not be at large with a gun. There are 38 states where one can buy a gun without a license and where the police are not allowed to keep records of sales. A voice in the head had said Let’s buy a gun for purposes of research…. The body wandered the streets of New York. No one died. It got on a train and got off a train. No one died. It got on a train and got off a train. No one died. The gun and its bullets were buried behind the tennis court of a thirty-room Victorian frolic in Newport, Rhode Island. The body got on a plane and got off a plane.”
The stresses throughout the process of creating a novel is also a recurrent theme. “Stare at the screen. Tough it out. Don’t drink. Philip Pullman writes Three pages a day. Philip Pullman doesn’t drink. There’s a lesson to be learnt. It’s arsenic hour. I have a Bushmill’s on the rocks. I then have a brilliant idea. What if the book becomes Kaufmanesque in its self-absorption (and so destined to be a cult classic), what if it’s a book about a character who, unable to endure the influx of sounds, negotiates a contract permitting him to avoid speech by typesetting his book in TeX? Foiled by the sort of contractual minutiae seldom seen in fiction, he finds himself writing a book about a character who is unable to endure the influx of sounds, who in turn finds himself writing a book about a character who is unable to endure the influx of sounds, who in turn finds himself writing a book about a character…. A brilliant idea that will decrease the likelihood that the betazoid is my agent to, at an educated guess, 3.17 percent…. Philip Pullman doesn’t write this kind of agent-divesting drivel. Philip Pullman doesn’t drink. There’s a lesson to be learnt…. Will there be Munchkins? Will there be Flying Monkeys? What if. What if. What if. Forget the readers, forget the betazoid. What if I have no idea what happens next?”
DeWitt literally gets into the reader’s head. “You’re on page 475 and you still have no idea what’s going on. Zozanian has embarked on a book with your character, so now we have a book-within-a-book-within-a-book-within-a and you seem to be the minimost perestroikist in a nest of Gorbidolls. A cast of extraneous characters seems to be multiplying like rabbits. Rabbits in a Viagra trial. Rabbits in a Viagra trial designed to tackle the freak four-hour erection problem. Who are these people? What are they doing here? It’s like the finale of Blazing fucking Saddles…. Exakt. DeWitt has lost the plot.”
The novel is hilarious, even more so if you are familiar with DeWitt’s unique style of humor. “You’re reading Your Name Here, the new novel by Helen DeWitt. You’re not a typical reader. Sometimes you wonder if you’re a robot. Not only do you wonder if you’re a robot, you hope you’re a robot (and what force do “wonder” and “hope” have if you are?) because if you’re the kind of robot that’s capable of wondering whether it’s a robot and hoping that it is a robot you’re an exceptionally sophisticated robot, the triumph of an unknown Frankenstein, a creation that raises profound philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness, the self, persons, rights, language, if you watch pornography, play with kittens, explore philosophical questions this shows that you are a miracle of cybernetic art. If you’re not a robot, wondering if you’re a robot shows you’re the kind of person who sits around wondering if he’s a robot. If you’re a robot, it’s even more impressive that someone came up with a robot that could worry about whether it was the kind of self-obsessed geek who sits around wondering whether he’s a robot, your creator is a genius, you’d like to meet him, even though he’s probably the kind of person who sits around wondering if he’s a robot…. Maybe this is not the best book to be reading. A self-referential book that raises metaphysical questions as a pretext for talking about itself, doesn’t the book simply replicate the very neurosis that makes it so hard for you to be spontaneous except in the calculating, premeditated way that made you wonder whether you were a robot in the first place?”
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