VLVL2 (1) Missed Communications: Beginnings

[Paul Nightingale]

Eliade on sacred time is certainly interesting and useful: the
distinction between true and false stories, the former explaining
beginnings. The importance of storytelling in oral cultures: those who
recount such myths (and repetition is key) aren't 'authors' who possess
copyright (and orality is pretty important in VL). Sacred time:
storytelling (which includes performance) can only take place at the
appropriate time/moment in the annual cycle (just as, in the novel, the
narrative order dictates what and when, stories don't just spill out at
random). Furthermore, storytelling returns the subject to its
beginnings: the myth in question always refers to a time elsewhere ...
corresponding, perhaps loosely, to the Lacanian Real?

One might say, then, that Zoyd's annual performance of 'insanity' has
two functions.

1. It confirms his eligibility for benefit, in the here-and-now of 1984.
Consequently, his performance confirms the authority of the bureaucratic
state, which has the resources/power to intervene in the lives of
individuals-as-citizens (throughout VL we shall see that 'dropping-out'
isn't really an option). Hence, his performance confirms also the gap
between normal and deviant behaviour (insofar as Zoyd functions as a
kind of scapegoat). All of which makes Zoyd a knowing subject. It also,
by the by, renders irrelevant any question of whether or not Zoyd is a
'deserving' recipient: benefit fraud can only justify the state's
surveillance of all citizens (along the lines of, if you've done nothing
wrong, you've nothing to hide, etc).

2. His performance also has the narrative function of returning him to
the beginnings of his 'insanity', ie the end of his marriage, which of
course the reader (as opposed to the repeat-reader who has returned to
the beginnings of the narrative) knows nothing about. Imagine that Zoyd
remains outside More Is Less, smoking one joint after another
indefinitely: the narrative would never move forward (one of the
frozen-frames he will speculate about in Ch2, perhaps). More is less:
the more time I remain sitting here, the less you, dear reader, will
know (story/histoire vs discourse, Genette's distinction between
story-time and reading-time).

After leaving More Is Less Zoyd goes to the men's room: "where he
shifted into the dress and with a small hairbrush tried to rat what was
on his head and face into a snarl he hoped would register as
insane-looking enough for the mental-health folks" (4).

Performance, the knowing subject's quotation of a suitable
look/appearance: he produces a text that must be read by its intended
audience. Note: "he tried" and "he hoped" - here, one might infer
repetition, revision, the use of a mirror to rehearse in order to
(endlessly?) delay the moment of rebirth-through-performance (or passage
from the Imaginary to the Symbolic).