(Usual apologies for cross-posting.)
I forward this (with permission).
Lew is particularly interested in authorial intervention in footnotes to
fictional prose texts.
Any comments?
Robin
*******************
I'm not really sure if I've given this post a proper subject, but here goes.
This week, one of my classes will be discussing Tim O'Brien's IN THE LAKE OF
THE WOODS. For those of you who do not know, TIME called this novel by the
Viet Nam vet the best work of fiction of 1994. It is the most powerful 20th
century novel I've ever read, if not the most powerful novel in my entire
reading experience.
One of the elements of the relentlessness of the work's truth is O'Brien's
periodic insertion of himself as author in the footnotes of the novel. Here
are two examples:
"Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald,
or the Little Big Horn? MYSTERY! Because of all that cannot be known. And
what if we did know? What if it were proved--absolutely and purely--that
Lizzie Borden took an ax? [...] The thing about Custer is this: no
survivors. Hence, eternal doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates.
It's a standoff. The human desire for certainty collides with our love of
enigma. [...] The truth is at once simple and baffling."
[.... and then later]
"My heart tells me to stop right here, to offer some quiet benediction and
call it the end. But truth won't allow it.... the inconclusiveness of
conclusion . . . ambiguity ... All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the
dark there is only the maybe."
Now I know that a lot of writers write about writing. But how often do they
insert themselves so often, so personally, so integrally into their own work
of fiction?. (Stendhal does so on a couple of occasions in Le Rouge et le
noir but certainly not to this extent.) (Wouldn't it have been fascinating
to read Shakespeare on Hamlet within the very context of the play?)
How often is this done? By whom? With what force?
Cheers!
Lew Kamm
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