Will's Students, Brennan & Borenstein -Reply

[Kevin Crosby]

>>> <WillL at fieldschool.com> 05/15/96 09:06pm >>>
K. Brennan said:
Authors have often  explored the difference between what's being
said and what's actually taking place, but recently authors are
taking this relationship between truth and fiction further.   Paul
Auster's "Leviathan" is a novel which attacks this relationship in
a series of ways from the traditional "unreliable narrator" to
actual discussions about the discrepancy between truth and
fiction. 
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I'd give a little different interpretation to the phenomenon of
authors playing with "fiction" & "reality."  For me, this issue is
basic to the form of the novel, and its prevalence in contemporary
fiction is a return to the origin of the novel rather than a new
development.

Two works often cited as the "first" novels, Don Quixote &
Tristram Shandy, feature, and play with, the idea of the
characters getting mixed up in real life.  Part 2 of Don Q (written
10 years after part 1) addresses the fact that since part 1 was
published, books by other authors appeared claiming to be the
"real" continuing story of DonQ.  Don Q, the character, also
meets people who have read the spurious books, and when he
says who he is, they say no way, I've read the book and you're not
him.  He protests, tries to prove he's the real (that is, fictional)
knight, and hilarity ensues.

Robert Coover, for one, in "Pricksongs & Descants," (can you
read that in high school?) explicity refers back to Cervantes,
saying that he is using his work as an example for his own, and
suggests that other authors should also.  Borges does too, but
for completely different reasons.

And finally getting around to Lot49 (& Borenstein's post):  I think
the situation there, of not knowing what is real, addresses the
epistemological realities of a spiritually-aware life rather than the
relationship between literature & life.

And for me, the key behind Oedipa's paranoia is that she is open
to higher meaning, revelation, ready to see hieroglyphics 
(god-signs) in the highways of LA and the post-horns.  The
religious/revelatory language is present throughout (my favorite
is the 5th cent. Pope Hilarious, who becomes Dr. Hilarious). 
Check out Mendelson's essay on the religious aspects of Lot49
for more--I forget the title.

By making the source of Oedipa's paranoia "spiritual," the book
is much richer that it would have been if the paranoia was simply
 the modern military/industrial Them (but it's Them, too).

KevinC.