sleialgnion
Thursday, December 06, 2007
sleialgnion
it has now begun
What would happen if a novel was typed into a blog utility, but, instead of adding daily posts, the originating post was updated, added to,
resulting in a correct progression of chapters (chronological, forward narrational order) -- with the first entry always appearing first, as it should be, way at the top, and subsequent entries taking their place in order, underneath, ending, as is proper and just, with the final installment to the "novel"?
Would this question itself be part of the novel, or an editorial aside that was supplemental? Where would be the best location for this intro remark that exists as a question?
In a preface? But if the novel never turns to stare at the reader, if it just sits there, questioning its own reality, if it refuses to face the reader, how can an absence of face have a pre-face?
In an afterward? An appendix? A post-logue?
In a post card insert? that can be mailed by the reader to the author directly, via a post office box, letting me know if it stinks, or not, and how bad?
What if the novel were nothing but questions, with few statements, and consisted of one long chapter, a chapter one, with no following chapters, but content added frequently, with no scenary, no plot, no characters, no action, no dialogue, and no foreseeable conclusion?
Or with all those adornments, all those fictive devices, those narrative gestures...but only in a massively limited, bare bones, phantasmic sense?
Could a "novel", that which is "new", there can be no "old novels", no "not new newness", ever not be, just because of what it refrained from doing, or doing in the old fashioned manner?
"If novel derives from novellus, novus, nouveau, novelty, and now," you may ask, "then why are some considered not new?"
? "novel" ? = ? "long fictional prose narrative with plot" ?
Notice how "characters", "scenary", "dialogue", "suspense", "character development", "foreshadowing", "irony", "allegory", and other terms are left out of the fundamental definition of "novel", according to Webster's New World Dictionary, 1968 edition?
So if action is demanded, how about the following?
Did you see him rake the leaves in her yard?
He was curiously attracted to a rather substantial lumpy pile of leaves in the middle of her back yard, and wondered, "Is something wrong here?"
As he raked, he kept glancing over at the lump pile, did he not? And didn't he seem more extraordinarily nervous as he moved toward it in his mind, preparing himself for the actual journey, all the way across the yawning expanse of front and half way across the back yard?
When the lump began to be closer to him, what made him wade right into the middle of it, like it were a pool of orange water? As he started to sink into the huge mound of leaves, as he began to drown in it, what could he possibly have been thinking?
Did he ever dream in his wildest imaginations that the leaves would one day rake him, pull him down under their hideous patch-work blanket, drag him to his inevitable doom? where he would join a tribe of leaf-smothered companions, now stiff as the twigs that sealed their cell?
An alien monster, cleverly disguised as a nice happy hill of autumnal leaves, but with a rotten agenda lying within its core, would this make the reader smile a smirk of satisfaction, to be presented with a tidy and not unimaginable spectacle of unseen, solid, simpering recognition?
Of course, you've seen it move, too, have you not?
Perhaps it happened late last night, or three nights ago, it's been unseasonably active as of late, with the moon's rays lightly glancing across the shimmering shell?
Did it seem like little eyes were peering out at you as you hurriedly disappeared back into the house through the side kitchen entrance, rather than the front door, which is never used and is just for "show"?
The face of the house is turned off, and, being sub-normal, many will wonder, "Why?"
You always, and I say this, but not without any cautious lack of hesitation, always, and I mean without fail, you always make the front entrance not even an exit, but a non-portal, a solid wall for all intents and purposes, the door and knob being supplemental, not necessary to its dysfunction...or what say you?
I mean, well, you are thinking that you're "reading" "a new novel" by someone, it hardly matters who, yet what if this what you call "reading" is another form of writing?
We imprint, temporarily memorize, while gazing at them, the sentences we speak silently in our minds as we read them.
Read = transform silent text into sounds, colors, shapes, feelings, within our imaginations, not just slavishly mentally repeat the sounds of the words alone.
Reading is a specialized auto-echo of inscriptions, words, language.
Reading is not similar to looking at a painting, photo, or event. In these cases, one must supply one's own thoughts, cloaked in words, to the process, to enlist it with meaning.
Within reading, however, the sentences are pre-supplied. When you look at words, you not only see them, you also hear them mentally. There is no easy way to look at one word, but hear quite another, an entirely different, word.
Try it.
Look at this word: "book".
Now keep looking at it, but hear the word "robot" instead. Not easy, nor is it fun.
If the novel loses its faith in itself, as it's being composed by the author's conditioning, what would indicate such an event to the reader? How many novels in existence lost the interest of the author part-way through, and were rushed off to a predictably unexpected but rational or symbolic conclusion?
What's the difference between a theory of the novel and the novel itself, for example, a, any novel? When does the idea, the formula for the novel begin to change into a separate, new thing, an invasion of the unknown into the being read?
He was worrying about these things, and didn't notice how something seemed to be grasping his ankles and hauling him bodily down into the depths of the leafy hell.
As piles of leaves, coffee shops, malls, mailboxes, and other ordinary things were taken over, imitated, or used as camouflage, the aliens caused us to flee to the bizarre, the extraordinary, the exceptional.
Plain vanilla mediocre generic conventionality, in every realm of life, including music, diet, and clothing styles, was viewed with increasing suspicion, if not outright animosity.
It was quite amusing, but tragic, too. It took an alien invasion, extraterrestials posing as common objects, to force people to seek and appreciate the unconventional, experimental, idiosyncratic.
I watched in detached boredom how the tide had turned against the conformists, traditionalists, and conservatives. Now the cry was for the radical, the extreme, the wild. From colors to fragrances and everything in between.
It was at this time that I decided to write the novel from a hovel, entitled "qwigilasg".
This astounding literary achievement was unheard of at the time, and made me an overnight success, with instant cash-stuffed suitcases going in fifteen different directions, like mind-mummies chasing chocolate gauze.
Of course, we all got a little nervous when we saw a pile of leaves in the back of the couch house, near the wrought iron lamp of Abraham Lincoln. It made the dogs uncomfortable, as they were noticed growling and whimpering in obvious, hopeless dread.
It wouldn't have been so evidently alien, had it just remained in one spot. Everyone would assume that someone must have thought well of getting some fresh air and exercise, by raking some leaves. But what were we to think when we all were fortunate enough to see it slowly inch its way closer to the kennel. It was hungry, we all knew it and we agreed that by eating the dogs, we'd gain a little time to come up with a plan.
The plan never materialized.
Every dog was gone the next morning, the morning after the night we first noticed the pile was able to move and not just wait for a victim to wander into it.
Hank said he thought there were more leaves in the basement than normal. I mean normally, there are no leaves in the basement, everyone leaves their shoes or boots with the doorman. No dirt or debris gets tracked in, and certainly nothing could possibly get all the way down to the basement.
But there, in the northwest corner, sure enough, was a huge pile of leaves. I found a few little holes through which the alien could have slowly accumulated in this spot, but this was not a slow operation, it happened within about 5 minutes, when I was last down there.
it has now begun
What would happen if a novel was typed into a blog utility, but, instead of adding daily posts, the originating post was updated, added to,
resulting in a correct progression of chapters (chronological, forward narrational order) -- with the first entry always appearing first, as it should be, way at the top, and subsequent entries taking their place in order, underneath, ending, as is proper and just, with the final installment to the "novel"?
Would this question itself be part of the novel, or an editorial aside that was supplemental? Where would be the best location for this intro remark that exists as a question?
In a preface? But if the novel never turns to stare at the reader, if it just sits there, questioning its own reality, if it refuses to face the reader, how can an absence of face have a pre-face?
In an afterward? An appendix? A post-logue?
In a post card insert? that can be mailed by the reader to the author directly, via a post office box, letting me know if it stinks, or not, and how bad?
What if the novel were nothing but questions, with few statements, and consisted of one long chapter, a chapter one, with no following chapters, but content added frequently, with no scenary, no plot, no characters, no action, no dialogue, and no foreseeable conclusion?
Or with all those adornments, all those fictive devices, those narrative gestures...but only in a massively limited, bare bones, phantasmic sense?
Could a "novel", that which is "new", there can be no "old novels", no "not new newness", ever not be, just because of what it refrained from doing, or doing in the old fashioned manner?
"If novel derives from novellus, novus, nouveau, novelty, and now," you may ask, "then why are some considered not new?"
? "novel" ? = ? "long fictional prose narrative with plot" ?
Notice how "characters", "scenary", "dialogue", "suspense", "character development", "foreshadowing", "irony", "allegory", and other terms are left out of the fundamental definition of "novel", according to Webster's New World Dictionary, 1968 edition?
So if action is demanded, how about the following?
Did you see him rake the leaves in her yard?
He was curiously attracted to a rather substantial lumpy pile of leaves in the middle of her back yard, and wondered, "Is something wrong here?"
As he raked, he kept glancing over at the lump pile, did he not? And didn't he seem more extraordinarily nervous as he moved toward it in his mind, preparing himself for the actual journey, all the way across the yawning expanse of front and half way across the back yard?
When the lump began to be closer to him, what made him wade right into the middle of it, like it were a pool of orange water? As he started to sink into the huge mound of leaves, as he began to drown in it, what could he possibly have been thinking?
Did he ever dream in his wildest imaginations that the leaves would one day rake him, pull him down under their hideous patch-work blanket, drag him to his inevitable doom? where he would join a tribe of leaf-smothered companions, now stiff as the twigs that sealed their cell?
An alien monster, cleverly disguised as a nice happy hill of autumnal leaves, but with a rotten agenda lying within its core, would this make the reader smile a smirk of satisfaction, to be presented with a tidy and not unimaginable spectacle of unseen, solid, simpering recognition?
Of course, you've seen it move, too, have you not?
Perhaps it happened late last night, or three nights ago, it's been unseasonably active as of late, with the moon's rays lightly glancing across the shimmering shell?
Did it seem like little eyes were peering out at you as you hurriedly disappeared back into the house through the side kitchen entrance, rather than the front door, which is never used and is just for "show"?
The face of the house is turned off, and, being sub-normal, many will wonder, "Why?"
You always, and I say this, but not without any cautious lack of hesitation, always, and I mean without fail, you always make the front entrance not even an exit, but a non-portal, a solid wall for all intents and purposes, the door and knob being supplemental, not necessary to its dysfunction...or what say you?
I mean, well, you are thinking that you're "reading" "a new novel" by someone, it hardly matters who, yet what if this what you call "reading" is another form of writing?
We imprint, temporarily memorize, while gazing at them, the sentences we speak silently in our minds as we read them.
Read = transform silent text into sounds, colors, shapes, feelings, within our imaginations, not just slavishly mentally repeat the sounds of the words alone.
Reading is a specialized auto-echo of inscriptions, words, language.
Reading is not similar to looking at a painting, photo, or event. In these cases, one must supply one's own thoughts, cloaked in words, to the process, to enlist it with meaning.
Within reading, however, the sentences are pre-supplied. When you look at words, you not only see them, you also hear them mentally. There is no easy way to look at one word, but hear quite another, an entirely different, word.
Try it.
Look at this word: "book".
Now keep looking at it, but hear the word "robot" instead. Not easy, nor is it fun.
If the novel loses its faith in itself, as it's being composed by the author's conditioning, what would indicate such an event to the reader? How many novels in existence lost the interest of the author part-way through, and were rushed off to a predictably unexpected but rational or symbolic conclusion?
What's the difference between a theory of the novel and the novel itself, for example, a, any novel? When does the idea, the formula for the novel begin to change into a separate, new thing, an invasion of the unknown into the being read?
He was worrying about these things, and didn't notice how something seemed to be grasping his ankles and hauling him bodily down into the depths of the leafy hell.
As piles of leaves, coffee shops, malls, mailboxes, and other ordinary things were taken over, imitated, or used as camouflage, the aliens caused us to flee to the bizarre, the extraordinary, the exceptional.
Plain vanilla mediocre generic conventionality, in every realm of life, including music, diet, and clothing styles, was viewed with increasing suspicion, if not outright animosity.
It was quite amusing, but tragic, too. It took an alien invasion, extraterrestials posing as common objects, to force people to seek and appreciate the unconventional, experimental, idiosyncratic.
I watched in detached boredom how the tide had turned against the conformists, traditionalists, and conservatives. Now the cry was for the radical, the extreme, the wild. From colors to fragrances and everything in between.
It was at this time that I decided to write the novel from a hovel, entitled "qwigilasg".
This astounding literary achievement was unheard of at the time, and made me an overnight success, with instant cash-stuffed suitcases going in fifteen different directions, like mind-mummies chasing chocolate gauze.
Of course, we all got a little nervous when we saw a pile of leaves in the back of the couch house, near the wrought iron lamp of Abraham Lincoln. It made the dogs uncomfortable, as they were noticed growling and whimpering in obvious, hopeless dread.
It wouldn't have been so evidently alien, had it just remained in one spot. Everyone would assume that someone must have thought well of getting some fresh air and exercise, by raking some leaves. But what were we to think when we all were fortunate enough to see it slowly inch its way closer to the kennel. It was hungry, we all knew it and we agreed that by eating the dogs, we'd gain a little time to come up with a plan.
The plan never materialized.
Every dog was gone the next morning, the morning after the night we first noticed the pile was able to move and not just wait for a victim to wander into it.
Hank said he thought there were more leaves in the basement than normal. I mean normally, there are no leaves in the basement, everyone leaves their shoes or boots with the doorman. No dirt or debris gets tracked in, and certainly nothing could possibly get all the way down to the basement.
But there, in the northwest corner, sure enough, was a huge pile of leaves. I found a few little holes through which the alien could have slowly accumulated in this spot, but this was not a slow operation, it happened within about 5 minutes, when I was last down there.