Like wrestling with Herakles

That’s what reading Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red feels like–especially since I’ve been tasked with writing the fourth blog for our group’s the fourth book. It is impossible for me to focus exclusively on narrator and addressee; I can no longer keep the methods of How Writers Read discreet. I don’t know how to divide the credit for that between Carson and my own increasing familiarity with the methods (and I suspect I’ll give Carson too much credit in any split), but there it is anyway.

Hey you! (source)

No matter how much I want to be the narratee (the person to whom the narrator relates the story, according to James Phelan in his introduction to Living to Tell About It), the text keeps insisting that I be and interpellating me to be the authorial audience (the person who is conscious of the implied author, who can distinguish between the narrator and the implied author, and who discerns that the implied author is communicating much more than the narrator’s story–also Phelan). The frequent but unexpected references to red (“the intolerable red assault of grass,” “his small red shadow,” “red silk chalk,” pages 23, 24, 26 ) and the less frequent and even less expected references to Geryon’s wings (“she…neatened his little red wings,” “his wings were struggling,” “Geryon felt his wings turn in, and in, and in,” pages 36, 53) keep pulling me out of the mimetic into the thematic. I can’t stop wondering “Why did Carson choose this myth? Why did she choose to update it this way?” and trying to recall everything I know about the color red, Greek mythology, the psychology of molestation… In other words, Autobiography of Red demands that it be read intertextually. It won’t quite let its audience(s) forget that in the original myth, Geryon is a monster whose cattle Herakles has been charged to steal–and Geryon ends up dead by Herakles’ hand! Knowing this allows me to predict (take an inferential walk) that Carson’s Geryon and Herakles won’t live happily ever after together, despite Geryon’s infatuation with Herakles.

“But wait, Cate,” you say. “Intertextual codes go in blog 3. This is blog 4.”

Remember a couple paragraphs ago when I wrote “I can no longer keep the methods of the course discreet”? I submit to you, dear reader, that that is (one of) the point(s) of How Writers Read.

And I have James Phelan to back me up! On page 2, in a footnote to a piece of the evidence he uses to build toward his idea of “redundant telling,” (11), Phelan refers to “the impulse of readers to preserve the mimetic,” or the narratees’ desire to ignore surprising elements of a text so they aren’t jolted out of experiencing the story. Not ignoring these surprising elements is what allows readers to enter the thematic and synthetic registers, which in turn give the reader access not only to the narrator’s story, but the implied author’s less obvious message(s) as well (12-13). Or, whatever the implied author wishes to communicate emerges only in the thematic and synthetic registers. In the thematic register specifically, the authorial audience is likely to find one or more “cultural narratives,” which “fulfill the important function of identifying key issues and values within the culture or subculture that tells them, even as they provide grooves for our understanding of new experiences” (8-9). Does that remind you of networks of controlling values? And of Roland Barthes’ cultural code? And of Joseph Campbell’s assertion that “the individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula”? Good–me too! So, if we reverse engineer Phelan, we can say that when we’re aware of or reading for controlling values and cultural codes or narratives, we know we’re the authorial audience. The methods are inextricably tangled.

Me and the methods. (source)

And now for more intertextuality: An intertextual reading of Autobiography of Red along with the original Geryon myth leads me to look for an analog of Geryon’s life and livestock in Red–what Geryon loses to Herakles. In Red, the two young men have a semi-romantic relationship; there are no cattle in sight. Instead, Herakles takes advantage of Geryon’s infatuation with him to persuade Geryon to be physically intimate with him. Although this is reminiscent of earlier scenes in which Geryon’s older brother coerces a younger Geryon in a similar way, the big differences between the two events are a) how Geryon feels about his brother vs. Herakles during these events, and b) how Geryon feels about the relationships changing or ending. He hates his brother for what he does to him, but loves Herakles and, when they first graduate from talking about sex to having sex, Geryon feels “clear and powerful–not some wounded angel after all, but a magnetic person” (Carson 54). (Presumably, like a “wounded angel” is how he felt in the childhood bedroom he shared with his brother.) For the narratee, this is a heartbreaking story of sex, love, and loss. The authorial audience, however, seeks to unpack all of this and look for the implied author’s message–and for that, I have to flip through my mental rolodex of cultural narratives.

What kind of loss do we commonly associate with love and sex? (Hint: not loss of cattle). If you said “innocence,” come on down to claim your prize!

As much as Geryon resents his brother, if he had lost his innocence due to the molestation, he would never have been able to love and trust Herakles enough for Herakles to be able to hurt him. Sex alone is not the thief of innocence; love is.

“A big red butterfly went past riding on a little black one. / How nice, said Geryon, he’s helping him. Herakles opened one eye and looked. / He’s fucking him” (49-50).

Awww, how nice. (source)

This exchange occurs shortly before Herakles and Geryon consummate their various feelings for each other. Although Geryon has already had a sexual initiation thanks to his older brother, he doesn’t read the butterflies’ attachment to each other as sexual–his intact innocence doesn’t let him see it that way. But Herakles can see it, just like Herakles can dismiss Geryon after they’ve been intimate as though Geryon doesn’t matter to him, while Geryon is crushed by the dismissal; so Herakles must either have loved someone else and lost his innocence before ever he met Geryon, or has never loved yet.

“Love,” says this cultural narrative/controlling value, “is bound to hurt.” We (the implied author, the authorial audience, and all who subscribe to this narrative) know this to be true. We know this because it’s happened to us. However, it hasn’t happened yet to those who have yet to love or to have had their hearts broken for the first time. The shock and betrayal of our first heartbreak are the thieves of our innocence; sex has nothing anywhere near as powerful as love to steal it with.

Even so, Red is not a cautionary tale. It does not advise against loving or suggest that we isolate ourselves in fortresses of protective thorns, as the novel’s apparent controlling value advises and suggests. Instead it says: the universality of the truth that “love hurts” is what brings us together and allows us to love again some day after our hearts are first broken. If we all experience it, we all share it. If we all share it, we’re not alone. If we’re not alone, we’re together. Together we’re safe. “So take risks,” says the opposing controlling value, “mature, don’t be afraid of wisdom and growth. Innocence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

I bet you didn’t know there were plastic lawn flamingos in the Garden of Eden, did you? (source)

It seems a little odd to me, an idealist, that love rather than sex should be the agent of innocence’s theft–after all, one of our dominant cultural narratives about innocence lost (Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden) has a stronger association with sex than with love (although the last line of the previous paragraph is evocative of the serpent, amiright?). But “it seems a little odd to me” is another way of saying “it surprises me.” And if I don’t ignore the surprising, like an adult might do–if I attend to it like a child who frequently interrupts when being read a story (throwing it back to Jane Gallop)–I can transcend the mimetic, identify the text’s controlling values, access the cultural codes in which it participates, and be the authorial audience. Put another way: I can read like a writer.

Geryon’s Journey

The fourth book our reading group is reading is Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. This particular novel is in verse, which is a different structure from our other group readings. As Laura stated in her previous blog, this poetic

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novel stemmed from the Greek mythological story of Geryon. In the myth Geryon was a giant who lived on the island Erytheia. He was the son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe, and was often considered a monster with three heads and three bodies. (Some say one body instead of three) In Carson’s novel she describes Geryon as a red winged young boy who lives with his mom and older brother. He is described as having trouble socializing with other people and is sexually abused by his brother, who is not named.

 

It is not until page thirty-nine, that Geryon meets Herakles at a bus depot. Up until this moment of friendship, Geryon has been held captive in his home. Herakles represents a form of freedom as we read about their trip to Hades. The title of this section begins with “sometimes a journey makes itself necessary” (46). As the two are in Hades, the mention of the volcano makes it relevant when Herakles’ grandmother is sharing stories with the boys about a volcano that had erupt and wiped out the town. The word “red” is used when describing the lava, but also with the photographs that were taken during that time. Throughout the story the color red portrays itself in the verses of Carson’s writing. So that leaves me with the question as to why the color red? Is it because Geryon is a red winged monster?

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Another symbolic feature in this story is photography. Geryon enjoys taking pictures and carrying his camera with him. When they reached Hades, Herakles makes it clear that he does not have the same interest in photography, but Geryon persists on capturing pictures of his journey. This part of the text showed me that Geryon does not completely rely on Herakles for opinions and choices, but can stick up for himself if it is meaningful enough to him. Throughout the story and through Garson’s adolescents he uses the camera to capture images he wants to remember.

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As the story continues the audience almost forgets that he is a red winged “monster” who isn’t just like any other human we read about. This plays into the role of cultural code because we have to remember while reading this story that it is a fictional and mythological story line. Although Geryon experiences human like events such as sexual abuse, family problems, taking trips with friends, and having romantic relationships we have to remember what he looks like.

 

“Why is this fruit bowl always here?

It’s always here and it never

has any fruit in it. Been here all my life never had fruit in it yet.”

On page sixty-eight we learn that Geryon has returned home after his trip, to see his mother in the kitchen. After the two share some words Geryon sits at the table only to realize there is not any fruit in the fruit bowl they have kept on the table throughout his whole life. This part of the text provides us with an example of the semic code because the fruit bowl is signifying something more emotional than literal. Which then leaves us with that question what does the fruit bowl represent?

Geryon and Heracles of Today.

Much like Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I feel Autobiography of Red falls into the magical realism genre. I’ve read and seen several modern reinterpretations of classic stories (mostly Shakespeare), but most of these stories also update the names and the more literal elements of the original were rewritten as figurative or significantly downplayed.

Except for this one. They kept the original names here. (Source)

For example, a few years ago, I watched a modern-day adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland” on the Sci-fi channel and the characters of the white rabbit and the caterpillar were humans and their original names were only nicknames.

“Autobiography” updates some elements, like the setting, but other than that, the original myth is mostly kept in tact. Greek mythology has many lessons which are still very relevant today. This is perhaps, because Carson wanted her readers to understand this by placing the characters in a modern setting without much updating aside from that.

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As Laura pointed out in her blog, Geryon is a classic mythological monster who’s main contribution to the plot is for the hero to slay him victoriously. But Carson takes this dynamic and turns it on it’s head in a way that’s very unusual. I have not read the original myth, but I have read several others from the era and and all have a similar structure: Perseus slays the Gorgon and fulfills the prophesy his grandfather feared and Hades’ kidnapping of Persephone ultimately results in the seasons of the earth changing. All are stories which have a hidden meaning that is explored through the central conflict and climax. By placing Heracles and Geryon in the position of two young men who meet at a bus stop, Carson maintains the integrity, style, and maybe the underlying message of the myth intact, while relating the story to it’s audience in a new way. Thus, the story is much more than just a modern reinterpretation of a classic.

 

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This brings me to the book’s writing structure. The entire novel is structured like a free-verse poem. When we first decided on this book earlier in the year, I figured that the novel would be similar to a long epic poem, but the prose is actually very traditional. If one were to rearrange and restructure the prose, I think it would probably still work. So, why would Carson choose this method?

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Autobiography of Red is many things. It is a coming-of-age story, a character study, a story of a sexual awakening, and one of abuse. But in my opinion, it is first and foremost a magical realism story. The book, much like Dept. of Speculation, blurs the line between a relatable/realistic story and a surreal fantasy, in this case, a Greek epic. Also like Dept., Autobiography of Red also has a plot that has been tackled by several other authors, but the format and structure remove any sense of realism from the story, while still delivering the themes that very much relate to the readers as they would in a story written using a structure that reflected hard-edged realism.

 

 

“Geryon Was A Monster And Everything About Him Was Red”

 

Our fourth book, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson poses for multiple challenges to the reader (myself included). Carson’s novel is a retelling of the myth of Herakles and Geryon, a red winged monster with multiple bodies Herakles slays as part his twelve labors.

Geryon’s chances don’t look good (source)

Overall, Geryon is a minor character in Greek mythology; he is the equivalent of weekly villains in monster hunting TV shows. Yet, this is not the first time someone thought to add a twist to Geryon’s brief story. Before the narrative, Carson discusses the poet Stesichoros, who retold the myth from Geryon’s perspective, humanizing the creature by giving him a family and a pet. The fragments of his surviving poetry on Geryon follows the introduction. Given that Autobiography of Red is a reinterpretation, I find myself asking “why retell this story?” I suppose that is what I’m “reading for.”  In Jonathan Culler’s “Story and Discourse” he contrasts story, the “sequence of actions or events” (169), and  discourse, “presentation or narration of events” (170). For this text, I am already looking at the discourse because in adaptations it is the changes to the presentation that make the retelling stand apart from the source material. The contrast and comparison of the adapted text’s presentation can also help me read in the thematic register.

Our hero, Geryon (source)

Now the mimetic register and understanding the story, or order of events, is also important. Without a basic understanding of plot, how am I supposed to dig deeper into the thematic register? But for this text it is not so simple because Autobiography of Red is a novel written in verse. This may be a projection from my past experience with narrative poetry, but poetry does not lend itself to being straightforward. From what I have read so far, in Carson’s telling Geryon is the protagonist, much like in Stesichoros interpretation, and an adolescent boy. The story begins with Geryon as a child, unable to find his kindergarten classroom without his older brother’s help and he has troubles learning to write, but starts an autobiography through artwork and sculptures. Geryon’s struggles continue at home, as his older brother begins to sexual abuse Geryon when they share a bedroom. His only reprieve is his time spent with his mother, who encourages his gentle nature and interest in art. While the narration is fairly linear, there are times when the story and discourse blend together.  For example, it is unclear how much of a monster Geryon is. Most of the time, Geryon does normal things kids do like going to school, but then the narrators says his mother “neatened his little red wings and pushed him out the door” (36) when she sends him to school. The events of the story until then made no mention of Geryon being a literal monster, so I thought maybe that trait would work itself into the discourse in a more figurative way. These casual and rare mentions of Geryon’s supernatural traits interrupts my mimetic reading of the text and reminds me that this is indeed an adaption of a myth.

When he becomes a teenager, Geryon finds another sanctuary with Herakles, a boy he met at the bus depot. Even though their romance is just beginning to bud, their relationship is already demonstrating some controlling values. Previously, the contrast between emotional love and the physical act of “love” is clear between Geryon’s relationships with his mother and his brother. His mother is gentle and loving, while his brother is abusive and manipulative. Geryon’s relationship with Herakles furthers the notion that emotional love helps nurture an individual, while the physical act corrupts and stunts an individual’s growth. After they meet Geryon transforms:

“Geryon was amazed at himself. He saw Herakles just about everyday now.

The instant of nature

forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life leaving behind just ghosts rustling like an old map” (42).

How that car ride probably went (source)

Herakles is drawing Geryon out of his shell. The metaphor of water droplets in this passage could represent the lessening control Geryon’s past trauma has over him. But later, while sitting in Herakles’ car, Geryon’s curiosity about sex gets the best of him, “Hot unsorted parts of the question were licking up from every crack in Geryon” (44), and he asks “Is it true you think about sex everyday?” (45). In response, “Herakles’ body stiffened. That isn’t a question it’s an accusation. Something black and heavy dropped between them like a smell of velvet” (45). The mere mention of sex severs that emotional connection Herakles and Geryon were developing, at least momentarily. There’s a shame to the word that implies sex is something one accuses of others, like a crime. There is definitely tension between physical and emotional love, but it is hard to tell what relationship is between these values. It is also unclear whether the original version of Herakles, as slayer of Geryon, will have implications for these controlling values later. There is so much packed between the lines of Carson’s poetry, and I am excited to see how the discourse of her adaption will develop the opposing values in this text.

 

Santiago Nasar vs. The Twins

After reading our group’s third book, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I found the relationship between the narrator and the addressee to be a difficult one. Because this is a story being told twenty-seven years later, we found the narrator to be unreliable. During the course of reading certain characters from the story who give us bits and pieces of the events leading up to Santiago Nasar’s death become cloudy because of how much time has passed. Our narrator, who does not have a name in this story, turns out to be Santiago’s cousin. We learn as time passes that he is trying to piece the night of Santiago’s death together. The addressee and narrator are both trying to piece the events of that particular night. As the addressee we want to trust that our narrator is being honest with us, and that the people who speak with him are all telling the truth. It is our duty to be skeptical but trusting.

 

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As the story continues we learn that certain characters such as Angela play a major role in this tragedy. The reason why Nasar was killed was because of Angela telling her new husband that Santiago Nasar had taken her virginity. When her two twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo, heard the news they hunted Nasar down to kill him, in order to keep their family’s honor.

 

With that, we learn that Father Carmen had seen the twins with knives and had taken them after the twins bragged about the murder they were going to commit. The twins then spread the word around town, which you would think have an effect on at least one person! In this case, everyone thought they were either drunk or just being impractical. As I read about how many times the twins told someone they were going to kill Santiago, I began to think they wanted to be stopped but wanted the town to know that they were willing to keep their family’s honor. The addressee in this case, is put into the position of trying to believe the narrator even if his sources are unaccountable.

Just when you think Nasar is doomed, Cristo Bedoya steps into the frantic scene of trying to find Nasar to warn him about the twins plot to kill him. Cristo runs around town, even to Nasar’s house in the early hours of the morning to find him but does not have any luck. “The investigating magistrate looked for a single person who had seen him, and he did so with as much persistence as I, but it was impossible to find one. In folio 382 of the brief, he wrote another marginal pronouncement in red ink: Fatality makes us invisible” (113). In this part of the text we discover that there were crowds of people in the streets still celebrating from the night before. Cristo was the only person to take the warning seriously and look for Santiago. Everyone else thought it was nonsense or that someone else would warn him in time.

Throughout this read we learn that not only is the narrator unreliable but that the character’s memory is also unreliable. So where does that leave the addressee? The addressee has to either believe what they want about the story or think is Angela lying about Santiago taking her virginity? Or are we supposed to believe all that is given to us from the narrator who doesn’t even make himself known throughout this time? As much as we want to stay unbiased we have no choice but to question every piece of the puzzle as it is given to us. I think the addressee becomes their own narrator of a mystery like this because they want to piece the story together themselves.

The Unexpected Conflict of Santiago Nasar’s Death

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez has only five chapters, the shortest book we’ve read so far. And yet, I found the book to be very similar to Dept. of Speculation. The previous book had no murder in its plot, but both stories use similar methods of incorporating intertextual codes.

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Like the previous book, Chronicle uses non-traditional storytelling techniques. It is told mostly through flashbacks and first-hand accounts by the townspeople who were there at the time of Santiago Nasar’s murder. From the beginning, it’s clear that the code which appears to fit into the story best is the symbolic code as the characters in the book have conflicting opinions on the murder to such an extent that one has to think of this story as taking place in another universe. It is for this reason that I found Chronicle difficult and frustrating to read at certain points. However, this is also the reason this novel intrigued me in the way that it did.

From the moment the driving force of the story is established, the readers are pitted against the book’s characters. The concepts of morality and especially honor play prominent roles and it becomes very clear that the definition of honor is in the eye of the beholder. However, readers who likely disagree with the book’s view of honor will still find it difficult to connect with the story and its characters, though Santiago Nasar’s death (as it’s referred to instead of a murder) nevertheless forces the characters to reflect on how far they are willing to go to preserve that honor. I’m not sure if this was Marquez’s intention, but this is certainly what I experienced when reading his book.

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In Kaja Silverman’s piece, The Subject of Semiotics, she describes how the symbolic code enables seemingly unresolvable conflicts to represent certain aspects of society. In Chronicle’s case, the almost unfathomable events leading up to and following Santiago Nasar’s death seem to represent the culture depicted in the book’s struggle to reckon with the human cost of what they see as honor. It’s apparent that the characters of the book don’t necessarily think everyone who commits a dishonorable act should be put to death, but preserving honor is a huge part of their culture and they treat it with the utmost importance. The people didn’t think that the Vicario brothers would actually follow through with their plans, but once they finally did, the reactions amongst the people was more accepting than it would have been, had their sister been a virgin or if Santiago had nothing to do with any of the conflict. The death is not only accepted, it is viewed as somewhat necessary.

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As mentioned, the story is told using a non-linear narrative, so the readers do not witness the events of Santiago Nasar’s “death” until the very last chapter and this is part of what makes Chronicle of a Death Foretold so brilliant. The depiction of the murder is graphic and the readers feel Santiago Nasar’s fear and pain in his final moments. After reading an entire novella filled with characters expressing values and ideas of honor and morality very different from oneself, the readers are forced to view the book as unbiased as possible, understanding the cultural background of the setting in order to make sense of the events in the story. Culture should of course, never be an excuse for committing horrific acts, but to understand the novel and the characters’ motivations, the readers must understand the culture. However, the readers are thrown what I feel is a huge curveball when Pablo and Pedro are finally shown killing the man who “dishonored” their sister. The descriptions of Pedro Vicario pulling out his “knife with his slaughterer’s iron wrist and [dealing] him a second thrust” and the haunting image of Nasar gasping on the floor soaked in his own blood elicit strong reactions of horror and sadness from the readers. After being forced to see the events as a “death” instead of a “murder,” the readers are once again, forced into the conflict.

PSA: Santiago Nasar is going to die

A murder most fowl…(source)

When pondering on the form and genre of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, my mind instantly fell to a genre like crime or  murder mystery. The back cover sets you up for a murder mystery: “A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story.” Santiago Nasar was murdered by a pair of brothers after discovering Nasar take taken their sister’s virginity, causing her new husband to reject her. Yup, that sounds like a murder mystery to me. Before I opened the page, a conventional form was evident. There are substantive features like an investigator as a narrator, the unraveling mystery, a victim, murderers, secrets, and motives like revenge. The basic elements are there.

Though as I read through the first few chapters, Marquez’s story begins to break from the conventional form of the genre. By the end of the second chapter, the readers know know who was killed and why. In fact, everyone in the town knew the brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, were going to kill him that morning. The murderers themselves announced it to many people. While sharpening their knives–the murder weapons–Pablo told the local butcher “We’re going to kill Santiago Nasar” (52). They tell the woman who sells milk, they told a police officer, and they even told the mayor. Yet, they still were able to murder him. Typically, murderers do not announce their plans to the whole town in a mystery story. There is no murder to solve because it is already solved and that makes for one boring crime novel.

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But this break in the convention of one genre may point to the influence of a second genre in this text. As the narrator says “There has never been a death more foretold” (50). Such a phrase fits more in the genre of magical realism as Cate mentioned in the first blog for Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It seems an impossibility for a murder to occur when everyone knows it is going to occur, but that is exactly what happened: “Many of those on the dock knew that they were going to kill Santiago Nasar…  No one even wondered whether Santiago Nasar had been warned, because it seemed impossible to all that he hadn’t” (20). This stylistic feature made me start looking for other marker of magical realism. I found the narrator’s mother, who never leaves the house, but knows all that goes on as if she has the gift of divination. Ironically, she did not foresee Nasar’s murder. This repetitive form of foretelling, knowing, and not knowing demonstrates that the mystery is not who and why, but how did a whole town let this murder happen.

 

Even the combination of the mystery and magic realism genres does not adequately explain the stylistic features in this novel. Another convention of mystery novels that the text breaks is the style of narration. I’m used first person narration following the actions of the narrator, but he presents the events through the words of others, as part of his investigation twenty-seven years later. Very rarely does he place himself in the narrative,

the narrator about now (source)

as if he is trying to keep the narrative as objective as possible. It reminds me of a lecture on creative nonfiction from my creative writing professor. She said you can only write about an event after it’s been long enough for you to have objectivity and to see your own role in the story. To the narrator, these events are real and this is a true story. Reading the journalistic style of narration could make me believe for a moment that this is a piece of creative nonfiction, and not the fiction it is. It is only moments like when the narrator admits “I had a very confused memory of the festival before I decided to rescue it piece by piece from the memory of others” (43) that remind me our narrator is an unreliable one. Has twenty-seven years been long enough for him to approach these events objectively? Does he have unrevealed involvement or connections to the other characters?

Despite making these revelations about Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I am still torn as to which lens to view this story with. What genre I perceive this novel affects how I interact with the text. When I read it as mystery I am looking for the unfolding of events and clues to the truth. As magic realism, I delve into questions about the morals of this community. Then sometimes I even let myself forget that the person narrating is involved in the events as I get caught up in the journalistic style. As conventions and limitations of each genre are broken and overlap each other, I occasionally  glimpse the fleeting truth underneath. Finding a balance of what I expect from this text might allow me to understand the story the narrator is telling me.

Murder, He Wrote

Our reading group’s third book is Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez. This 1981 novel employs a style called magical realism (a blending of realistic and magical elements that treats the magical elements as real) to tell the story of a murder that took place 27 years in the narrator’s past. Before I began to read this book, all I knew about it (apart from what the synopsis tells us) was that Márquez is known for his use of magical realism. Thus, one of the things I was reading for was examples of magical realism. But here’s the thing about magical realism: since it treats magic as possible and part of everyday life (rather than as belonging to fantasy), a reader caught up in the text’s mimetic register may not at first be able to distinguish the magical from the real. Put another way, I bought it all. It wasn’t until I started to think about writing this blog and my disappointment at the lack of magical realism so far in the text that I realized I had overlooked it. In my defense though, that’s why it’s called magical realism. It’s presented as real. The audience is supposed to believe it.

Magical realism is like a literary optical illusion. (Source)

Even so, distinguishing it is critical if we are to get the text. And I mean, it’s right there in the title: Chronicle of a Death Foretold. To foretell is to predict or prophesize, to describe the future. But how can the future be described without the use of magic? Sure, we can make guesses about things that will happen or even promise to do things ourselves; yet, guessing is inexact, and sometimes our promises are overcome by events. To foretell the future, it’s necessary to know the future, to have foreknowledge of it–and foreknowledge is only available by magic.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold as described by the Rider Waite tarot. (Source, source, source, source, and source)

However, also present in the title–in fact, preceding and maybe even camouflaging the magical part–is a strong dose of realism: Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The Oxford English Dictionary‘s first definition for “chronicle” is “A detailed and continuous register of events

Just the fax, ma’am. (Source)

in order of time; a historical record, esp. one in which the facts are narrated without philosophic treatment, or any attempt at literary style” (1.a). In other words, a chronicle is an unembellished, neutral historical document. Just the facts, ma’am. By titling his novel so, Márquez tricks his audience into reading the book less critically, because of the expectations the word “chronicle” sets up.

Now, in my second pass at reading the first roughly half of the book, I’m reading for (and noticing) not only instances of magical realism, but also networks of controlling values, form (conventional, repetitive, syllogistic progressive, oh my!) and genre (it’s a mystery, but rather than a traditional “whodunit,” it’s a “whydidn’tanyonestopthemfromdoingit”), intertextual codes (heavy on the proiaretic, this book is), and the relationships between narrator and addressees (another mystery in the text is “who is the narrator talking to, why, and why now?”).

The Venerable Bede. This guy knew how to write a chronicle. (Source)

Very much like a murderer stalking his victim and not very much like a neutral chronicler of historical events, the narrator circles the focal point of his story–the murder of Santiago Nasar–without describing it, examining it from a variety of angles, as if perhaps to decide from which direction to attack. He begins by describing Santiago Nasar’s own movements on the morning of the murder before backing up and going over the same portions of time from the perspectives of other residents of the town. He seems to close in on his object again when he reveals the murderers’ motive–except that, in order to do so, he has to back away from it again, this time temporally, to explain the origin of the situation that “calls for” Santiago Nasar’s murder.

And indeed, according to part of the novel’s network of controlling values, his murder is called for–it is made inevitable, and his murderers then are merely innocent messengers of justice. The inevitability of it is what makes it Foretold, while the innocence of the actors is what makes it a Death rather than a murder. The novel’s central tension revolves around honor: Angela Vicario had already dishonored herself and her family by losing her virginity before she was married, and rather than reveal her shame, she further dishonored herself, her family, and her new husband by attempting to keep her lost virginity a secret; Bayardo San Roman, upon discovering that his new wife was not a virgin, protected his own honor by returning her in shame to her family; Pablo and Pedro Vicario, Angela’s brothers, had no choice but to avenge their family’s lost honor by executing Santiago Nasar, the thief of their honor; and yet, the narrator seems to be asking “Where was the honor in allowing the Vicario twins to execute their plans? Would the twins’ intent to kill Santiago Nasar have been enough to restore their family’s honor?And if so, would not it have been more honorable to stop them from killing Santiago Nasar than to stand by and let them go through with it?”

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Who’s The Real Addressee?

Jenny Offill’s novel, Dept. of Speculation is definitely one of the strangest books I’ve ever read, but it’s also one of the most memorable. I always admire writers who experiment with unusual writing styles to tell an otherwise traditional story. Rather than describing plot details explicitly, Offill includes only vague visual imagery, instead including random samples of documents and statistics to contribute to the story and give the reader idea of the book’s setting and add some supporting details.

However, Offill throws her unsuspecting readers a huge curveball on page 95 when the narration abruptly switches from first-person to third-person. The only transition the readers are given is a long paragraph which starts out with, in big bold letters, “How Are You?” followed by a long string of the words, “So scared,” which fills up the entire page:

 

soscaredsoscaredsoscaredsoscared

soscaredsoscaredsoscaredsoscared

soscaredsoscaredsoscaredsoscared

soscaredsoscaredsoscaredsoscared

 

From that point on, the story is written in the third person, but still maintains the narrative’s non-traditional structure, referring to characters as “the wife, the husband, and the daughter.”

 

Just as I was starting to get used to the book’s style, I was suddenly hit with undoubtedly one of the strangest plot twists ever. The book now reads somewhat like a synopsys or a movie treatment. The readers no longer read a first hand account and now experience the events in real time. The established narrator has left the role of her own story, thus leaving the readers to assume the role of the narrator.

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Offill introduces a somewhat traditional story of an unhappy marriage from the wife’s perspective, but she then forces the reader to in a sense, create their own experience. For the first 94 pages, the wife serves the role as the narrator, while the reader is the  addressee, but after we become the narrator, is there still an addressee? If so, who is it?

It could be argued that the wife is now the addressee as we are now experiencing the events for ourselves without hearing her inner monologue and opinions on the matter, but I think it might be more complex than that. Although she is no longer the narrator, the wife continues on as she had earlier in the story and aside from the narration change, the text largely remains the same. This is why I think that from page 96 onward, the readers serve the role of both the narrator and addressee simultaneously.

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We are now reading the story in our own voice, not the wife’s and we experience her growth as a character as if it’s happening right before our very eyes. We learn with her, which creates not only a powerful connection between the readers and the protagonist, but also with the text as a whole.

However, on page 177 (the final page of the novel), the narration switches back to the first-person. After placing the reader into the wife’s shoes, Offill gives the wife her voice back, to explain the resolution. Likewise, the readers find themselves once again placed in the role of the addressee. It’s difficult to say what Offill is trying to say with this final twist, but perhaps the readers’ preconceived notions and opinions are supposed to be challenged. The wife and her dissatisfaction with her marriage and family life could be viewed in many different ways. By stepping into the wife’s shoes, the readers are able to get a sense of what she is going through and decide for themselves what they would do, were they in her position. This is what I felt as I read the final page and I enjoyed briefly living as this protagonist. The ending is somewhat ambiguous, but mostly ends on a positive note. I guess in sense, the protagonist has regained the role of the narrator, symbolically regaining her voice and her confidence, which leads her to make some compromises with her life. Looking back, in reading a book of this structure we readers have all become “Art monsters.”       

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Two Paths, One Life

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As we’ve made our through Jenny Offil’s novel, Dept. of Speculation, we’ve also had to weave our way through the scattered, anecdotal style of this story. The narrator tells her life story in the form of short, often single paragraph, bursts. The snippets are often memories, self reflections, seemingly random factoids, and even dreams. Once all of these separate moments are connected, they sew together a story of a woman torn between her aspirations and her family as she struggled to keep her marriage together and raise her daughter. For a more indepth summary, read our first post here.

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The conflict is centuries old and points to a common cultural dichotomy; fulfillment of societal expectations, such as a family’s expectations, is to sacrifice one’s own personal fulfillment. Author’s like Kate Chopin in her 1988 novel The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” feature women whose attempts to create an identity outside of the home are ruined. Edna of The Awakening searches for sexual freedom and the narrator of the “Yellow Wallpaper” is oppressed creatively. Both end in tragedy. If these works are any indication, it seems the two values can never be reconciled.

Dept. of Speculation seemingly sets up the same conflict through the unfolding plot. At the beginning of the text, the narrator’s desire is to become an “art monster” and explains “my plan was to never get married…Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things” (8). Right away, this sets a divide between personal fulfillment, in this case being art, and societal norms, like family. It’s clear which side the narrator prefers, but her plan soon changes, as she does get married and have a daughter. Her life is filled with “mundane things” like taking her child to school, taking a good paying job that comes with a horrible boss, and hanging out with moms that do yoga. The contrast is clear in this passage when she runs into an old friend from her writing days:

“‘I think I must have missed your second book,’ he says

‘No,’ I say. ‘There isn’t one.’

He looks uncomfortable; both of us are calculating the years or maybe only I am.

‘Did something happen?’ he asked kindly after a moment.

‘Yes,’ I explain.

That night, I bring up my old art monster plan. ‘Road not taken,’ my husband

says” (51).

Upon closer a closer look, this one moment captures a proairetic code. While on the mimetic register, the proairetic code allows the reader to make connections between events and predict where the story will go next by analyzing the cause and effect nature of the unfolding story. In this passage, the reader can assume the “something” that happened was indeed her husband, since he appears immediately afterwards to provide an answer. The narrator chose the “Road” with him and family; abandoning her dreams was the result.

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The answer her husband gives, “The Road not taken”, is an allusion to Robert Frost’s famous poem, but also evokes the hero’s journey from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell proposes that all heroes have “a call to adventure” that starts the hero’s journey into the mysterious unknown, but the hero can refuse the call. Our narrator felt as though she was called to be a writer and to follow wherever the wind took her. That was the road she started on while traveling alone in the beginning. But she jumped from the path, refusing the opportunity to become an “art monster”, when she married her husband. Campbell says that “Refusal of summons converts the adventure to its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject loses the power to of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved” (59). Our narrator suffered the same. Besides from preventing her from fulfilling her dreams, the refusal of the call brought boredom, tedious work, and even disaster. Her husband has an affair that nearly destroys their marriage, which only worsens the narrator’s depression. It seems the narrator, just like the other literary women from works like The Awakening, must choose between herself and family.

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But don’t worry too much for our narrator, for Campbell says, “not all who hesitate are lost” (62). Sometimes, the refusal to answer the call and its consequences exaggerates the negative effects to such an extent that it pushes the hero to a resolution. For the narrator, the crumbling of her marriage leads her to the decision to move to the country with her family and take up writing again: “The wife has been planning a secret life. In it, she is an art monster. She puts on yoga pants and says she is going to yoga, then pulls off onto a country lane and writes in tiny cramped handwriting  a grocery list” (161). She constructs a life as an art monster separate from her family as she starts to answer that call from her youth. And it works. Her husband and her reconnect and her daughter adjusts to their new home. She eventually even moves her art monster space into a little room of her own. It is still a major compromise to her original dream, or maybe it isn’t. Near the end of the book, the narrator quotes her favorite writer:

“What Rilke said: Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to end, to where no one can go any further (171).

In a way, having a family, loving those close to her, and dealing with betrayal was creating art. This book, a collection of the narrator’s memories, is art, as Cate also discussed in our previous blog. She was an art monster through it all. Maybe her story is pointing to a different cultural code, in which a woman can grow her own identity and still be there for her family. All of us struggle with the balance of fulfilling expectations society has and fulfilling our own dreams. Maybe the challenge is to not assume these a mutually exclusive. And once we do that, we can grow into our own art monsters.