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Talking about music is like dancing about
architecture.
- Laurie Anderson
The map is not the place. But you need the map
to get there.
- Richard Powers
Intertextuality
Postmodern ideas of intertextuality situate all texts within
a network of references to, quotations from, and plagiarisms of each other.
Every text is an intersection of others. It cannot escape. Language can
never
refer to anything outside itself. It is not possible for an author to write
something new. It is all written. Every word is a reference. Every style
is
an appropriation. John Barth calls this the "Literature of Exhaustion," which
David Cowart describes as "the dread that the precursors have told all the
stories, exhausted the genres, `used up' the very language available for
artistic creation."
In Cowart's description, when writers, to put it politely, "are influenced,"
or, in the words of Zora Neale Hurston, "borrow," or, in the words of Oscar
Wilde, "annex," or, in the words of T.S. Eliot, "steal," or, in the words
of Kathy Acker, "plagiarize," or use, as John Gardener puts it, "the Echoic
method"
(what Joyce calls "stolentelling"), it is a vital and customary aspect of literature.
If it is indeed possible to create something new, that is not what great writers
do.
(1-2)
Types of Intertextuality
There is evidence to support the inevitability
of intertextuality: texts refer to other texts in many different ways for many
different reasons. Conversely, there is no way to identify something new.
It
is convenient to assume the death of the author and avoid the
possibility of something new or reasons for intertextuality, inevitable or
not.
But if we keep the author around for awhile, we can ask her if she was attempting
to create something identifiably new through intertextuality. Is there old
intertextuality
and new intertextuality? Can we deconstruct intertextuality that way? How does
one distinguish between an author who plagiarizes, an author who quotes, an
author who unwittingly quips Ben Franklin or Shakespeare or the Bible,
or an author who deliberately mixes sources that would otherwise remain distinct?
How does one distinguish between a novel in which the characters listen to
a particular piece of music and a novel which is structured according to a
piece
of music? These are all incidents of intertextuality. We need a taxonomy of
intertextuality. Our classification system should be relevant to the author's
intentions, as long as she's here. We need to reduce a complexity of
intertextual links to something conceptually neat.
The Symbiotic Spectrum
One such lucid taxonomy is David Cowart's
Symbiotic Spectrum. It is more a means to classify an entire book than an individual
reference. The Symbiotic Spectrum can be read as a scale of precision of representation
from nothing represented (right) to representation as close to exact (one-to-one
correspondence) as possible (left). Off the right edge of the spectrum is
the
original or self-begotten text, which, for Cowart, is a dubious notion. Therefore
the right end of the symbiotic spectrum is not a point but an ellipsis trailing
off into the limit as text approaches originality. Here are the other points
on the spectrum advancing from the right to the left:
Ordinary intertextuality
Allusive texts
Texts incorporating extensive parts of other texts
Symbiotic texts
Translations from one genre or medium to another
Translations from one language to another (6)
Because "translation, like signification itself, is never
wholly transparent" (meaning that it does not map perfectly -- it is not a perfect
one-to-one correspondence), the left end of the spectrum is "a category almost
as mythical as the self-begotten text: the `simple' linguistic translation from
one language to another." (7) Is this also an ellipsis trailing off into the
limit as text approaches an exact replica of itself, or is there an endpoint
there? Perhaps that endpoint is cryptography, an exact (one-to-one) translation
into code. Does the endpoint have to be a translation between two languages?
Otherwise, perhaps the endpoint is plagiarism, an exact translation into itself.
Perhaps that endpoint can be found in Jorge Luis Borges' story "Pierre Menard,
Author of Don Quixote" where the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of
Part One, and a fragment of the twenty-second chapter of Cervantes' Don Quixote
are written again word for word. The intent of the noble Pierre Menard, who
does not consult the original, is not to steal or borrow, not to write a contemporary
version of Don Quixote, and not to place the character of Don Quixote
in a twentieth-century setting:
Like any man of good taste, Menard detested these
useless carnivals, only suitable--he used to say--for evoking plebeian
delight in
anachronism, or (what is worse) charming us with the primary idea that
all epochs are the same, or that they are different. (48)
The story is written in the style of a critical essay, and
the narrator compares passages of Cervantes' writing with identical passages
by Menard, and concludes that "the second is almost infinitely richer." (53)
Powers' Gold Bug Variations and Bach's Goldberg
Variations
Intertextual references are dense in even the title of
Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations. Powers' novel is an intertext:
a well-researched and informative book, a novel in need of an index. Of the
artists
and scientists
referred to, Poe and Bach are merely two that are easy to identify. Of the
texts referred to, Bach's Goldberg Variations and the painting Landscape
with Fire by Flemish painter Herri met de Bles are two that are not texts.
The references are various, and three types emerge: story, metaphorical, and
structural.
The
story references happen as events in the plot: the characters of the novel
read, listen to, and discuss Poe and Bach. They study biology. The metaphorical
references
occur when aspects of Poe, Bach, Shakespeare, biology, cryptography, computer
programming, information theory, and history, are used as metaphors for each
other or for events in the story. The third type of reference is structural.
Unlike the first two types, it is not exactly semantic. What makes the intertextual
connections to Bach interesting is that the Goldberg Variations are
not text. Without musical notation (which the novel does indeed use), the variations
cannot
be quoted -- only referred to, or translated. This means that if there is a
left endpoint to the Symbiotic Spectrum, The Gold Bug Variations' relationship
to the Goldberg Variations can never get there. It falls in the (vast) realm
of translation between media.
Translating Music into Prose is Complex
To translate music into prose is not simply to echo the
music. It is a problem. It can be solved many ways. A one-to-one mapping is
almost out of the question. It is theoretically possible to describe every
marking
on the score such that the score can be reconstructed perfectly (either in
longhand English or code that would read as nonsense in English), but
aside from such
an attempt, the organization of staff paper cannot be preserved in the nebulous,
subjective, disorganized infinity of semantics and all possible ways a
sentence
can mean. The writer can report her impressions upon a single listening of
a piece of music -- many do -- but this is not a translation of, and often
barely even
a description of, the music. The translator must decide which parameters of
music are relevant, which parameters of the text are relevant, and map
the two.
Parameters of the music can include aspects as diverse as the rhythms, the
pitches, and all their smaller and larger-scale structures. Parameters
of the text can
be acoustic, typographical, or semantic. It is this process, and not the possibility
of a one-to-one correspondence, that would make such an attempt worthwhile.
To
translate music into writing is not to recycle, copy, or mimic the original
music. It is to compose something new, in which the original structure
is transformed
into something identifiable but no longer recognizable. As Cowart puts it: "Translation
involves considerable creativity, and the work of the translator is often
copyrightable."
(7) The structures Bach arrived at through his contortions are not possible,
much less plausible, in English. To write them is to construct
them. The reference is neither theft nor ingenuity-saving device. Translation
across media is one way intertextuality might result in text which is identifiably new.
Structural Reference in The Gold Bug Variations
Powers translates certain aspects of the structure of the
Goldberg Variations into certain aspects of the structure of The
Gold Bug Variations. There are 30 numbered chapters for the thirty variations,
and chapters entitled Aria at the beginning and end of the novel. As the
first 29
Goldberg Variations cycle through three types of variation (Dance,
Arabesque, and Canon) almost ten times, there are three narrative voices the
novel switches
between. Powers attempts to translate diminution and augmentation -- formal
devices in music in which a voice in a canon harmonizes with a sped-up or
slowed-down
version of itself. While most chapters contain a section for each of the three
narrative voices, four chapters near the center of the book, XIII, XIV, XV,
XVI, are each devoted to one of the three, demonstrating a deceleration in
tempo. There is a chapter (XXII) which switches narrative voice midsection
demonstrating
an acceleration in tempo. Jay Labinger describes this part of the book as a
"stretto, a fugal device where the musical voices follow one another at shorter
temporal intervals than the previously established pattern." (87-88) The structure
of the simultaneous narratives refers to formal aspects of the canon. In
the
Goldberg canons, a melody is harmonized with an exact replica of itself which
enters a measure later, usually transposed up or down the scale, and (twice)
in inversion. Two of the three narrative threads have a similar shape, or sequence
of events. As the novel switches between them (as a novel usually does not
present two
simultaneous texts) the events in one of the stories closely follow the events
in the other. The recognizable dramaturgy of the love story make this counterpoint
easy to follow. Labinger, in suggesting a means for mapping a canon into fiction,
proposes a solution for overcoming the problem of how to have simultaneous
voices
in text -- a medium restricted to a single voice at a time: "one could imagine
a quite literal canonic form with the three lines printed one underneath another
as in a musical score; but that would merely be annoying: readers are not equipped
to take in several lines of text simultaneously, as musical listeners can."
Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch has a chapter which demonstrates almost exactly
this, and it is not annoying (191). Other stories by Samuel Delany, Chriz
Mazza, and others find a means to present simultaneous texts. To solve a difficult
problem, however, Labinger is casually suggesting an innovative form of writing
in order
to represent
a traditional (centuries old) form of music. Labinger does not address what
seems
to be the next question. Both musical notation and text advance through time
from the left of the line to the right. However, in musical writing, the vertical
axis is pitch, and both the shape and positioning of the individual voices
reflect this. In fiction, the only vertical axis that is conventionally understood
is
in Freitag's plot triangle, and even then the conventional understanding is
not nearly as precise as in music. The dramatic tension in a story cannot
be
measured or perfectly understood whereas the frequency of a note can be measured
and explained by a musician or physicist. If we take up Labinger's suggestion
(and I intend to someday), do we assume that the voice lower on the page is
a bass clef: subdued dramatic intensity in counterpoint to the more shrill
and
urgent text running parallel above it? To describe what Powers does here as
"augmentation," "diminution," or "stretto," reveals some aspects of these chapters,
is misleading about others, and conceals virtually everything about them.
The
Goldberg Variations' structures are not recognizable in the novel -- if one
were to compose a piece of music for solo keyboard based on the novel one
would
probably not write the Goldberg Variations. The odds of it are as small as
the odds of Powers arriving at this structure any other way. The structure
of the
novel is not the same as the structure it is a map of -- it is new.
Metaphor
In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff
and Mark Johnson argue that a metaphor is not a literary device, it is a fundamental
mechanism of human cognition (3). The metaphors in everyday speech reveal
the
way we think. There are metaphors in virtually every utterance. Many metaphors
are invoked through a single word (invoked: metaphor as evil spirit).
In the
book More Than Cool Reason, George Lakoff and Mark Turner introduce
the terms "source domain," "target domain," and "mapping" to describe the
process of metaphor (63). In a metaphor, the "target domain" is structured
by the "source
domain." This structuring is called "mapping." The source domain is typically
something more clearly understood, often through physical experience. The
target
domain is typically more abstract, thus the necessity to structure it in terms
of something more clearly understood. The mapping is a correspondence between
features of the source and target domain which can never be perfect. Each attempt
to structure a metaphor will reveal aspects of the target domain while concealing
others. A metaphor is a translation, a correspondence which is not one-to-one.
An awareness of metaphor, and the ability to choose new ones, can allow us
to
construct, reveal, amplify, prod, taste, and get a whiff of different aspects
of a target domain.
Mapping
This, the partial nature of metaphoric structuring, is
similar to the partial nature of translating music into text. Similarly, the
failure of different languages to map perfectly prevents Cowart's "transparent"
translation. Similar imperfections may be found in the mapping of language onto
reality. Whether or not language can even refer outside itself, it does not
have a one-to-one correspondence with reality. There is not a different word
for every pebble, a different species for every sparrow, or a different Latin
name for every dandelion. Language is reductive. Even science may be only a
translucent translation of the phenomena it describes. A map cannot show every
aspect of a place:
The whole hierarchical range up and down the slide rule
of science shares one aim: to write the universe's User's Manual, to bring
moonlight into a chamber. But what scale to choose? I'm thrown back on Lewis
Carroll's information theory fable, the map paradox. A kingdom undertakes
a marvelous cartographic project. They know that an inch to a thousand miles
is too gross, giving only rough orientation of the largest places. The royal
cartographers improve steadily over the years: at a hundred miles to the
inch, true roads take shape. At ten per, the map navigates from village
to village. At a mile to a map inch, individual structures become visible.
The more exact the scale, the more useful the map. The kingdom's surveyors
launch the supremely ambitious project of mapping the region at an inch
to an inch--a map every bit as detailed as the represented terrain. The
apotheosis of encapsulation, the supermap has only one drawback: the user
can't unroll it without covering the landscape in question. (Powers, 88)
Metaphors for Text
What is text, anyway, and how does one discuss it? Lakoff
and Johnson explore two common metaphors: ideas as food (108), and arguments
as buildings (98). O'Donnell and Davis describe the text as a woven fabric (x).
Ideas as food is a metaphor used more often to describe the consumption than
the production of ideas. For example, I often have trouble digesting postmodernism.
To stretch the metaphor to include idea production (author as cook), is intertextuality
cooking a meal entirely from leftovers, or are all texts evidence of a random
play of ingredients? Ideas as buildings is a metaphor used to describe how structurally
sound an idea is: whether it can stand on its foundation without buttressing
or support. Text as woven fabric is a metaphor constructed specifically to reveal
the intertextual nature of text. In this metaphor, however, every weaving is
a weaving of other weavings: there is no cloth or yarn, no text that is original,
no ingredients.
Metaphors for Intertextuality
What does one call a single intertextual connection? How
does one refer to a reference? Metaphors used to describe intertextuality include:
the reference as intertextual echo and the author as locus of intertextuality.
Is the music of Bach "echoed" in the Gold Bug Variations? Given the
impossibility of reproducing music within text, the metaphor of the echo has
a misleading
literal interpretation. Music is a sound, and can actually echo. Is echo the
best metaphor? In the Third College Edition of Webster's New World Dictionary,
the first two definitions of the word "locus" are
1 a place
2 Genetics the position on a chromosome occupied
by a particular gene (794)
While the metaphor is constructed with the first of these
definitions -- an author is not a person but a place where texts intersect --
the metaphor implied by the second definition is useful. We will map it momentarily.
Where Lakoff ends and Powers Begins
The book Metaphors we Live By is a convincing argument
that everyday metaphors are coherent, culturally bound cognitive structures
that shape our thought and speech. While encouraging an awareness of how our
thought and language are structured by metaphor, the book only hints at the
possibility of consciously creating our own metaphors to live by. It is no wonder
the book stops there. The implied next step is a leap off the edge of understanding.
Everyday metaphors systematically order and clarify our world. We are so familiar
with their mapping we seldom notice what has been omitted. New metaphors challenge
our basic understanding of things. They confuse before they clarify. Their failure
to map perfectly is noticeable and disorienting. They are not the maps we are
used to using. As Lakoff and Johnson illustrate, a common metaphor for time
(in our culture) is time is money (7). The phrase "time is money" is familiar
to us and we live by it, whether in earnest or in irony. A vague understanding
of time is clarified by a more immediate understanding of money. Time can be
saved, invested, bought, spent, or wasted. This is a way to structure an understanding
of time that reveals some aspects of time, is misleading about others, and conceals
the rest. The metaphor reveals that an individual can run out of time. It structures
a false understanding of time as personal property. Finally, it conceals aspects
of time: you can't save up time. The metaphor conceals aspects of its source
domain as well. It doesn't acknowledge that one can run out of money and continue
living, or die rich. Here is an example of a new metaphor for time: time is
a dog. This metaphor seems odd, given the dynamic (river) and mathematical (money)
models we normally use to describe time. Time is not a furry quadruped with
sharp teeth. We can, however, easily imagine taking the time for a walk. Time
will eventually destroy your shoes. We can feed our time, and take care of it,
so that we may grow old together. Time is a dog is an example of a new metaphor
which is largely unmapped. We don't know what we can say about time with it.
An effort to find out, though, may allow us to talk and think about time in
a way were previously unable to. Where Lakoff ends and Powers begins are the
new metaphors mapped in the Gold Bug Variations.
Metaphor Reference and the Goldbug Variations
In the Gold Bug Variations, descriptions of the
DNA molecule are intertwined with descriptions of the Goldberg Variations.
The language of genetics and the language of music mix like ammonia and methane
in the lightning of Powers' metaphorical acumen. The use of new metaphors to
better understand different aspects of things is critical in the story. Stuart
Ressler is initially out to crack the genetic code. With story references to
Poe's "The Gold Bug," cryptography is established as a metaphor for the genetic
code. This metaphor is misleading: it implies that a simple key will reveal
a perfect meaning to the four-molecule sequence and all the complexities of
life will be spelled out, letter for letter. Ressler is transfixed when he
first
hears the Goldberg Variations, which cannot be translated into English through
any key, but can be inspected successfully for patterns on larger and smaller
scales. He begins to structure his understanding of the DNA molecule by his
understanding of the Goldberg Variations. The new map is
a good one. The Goldberg Variations share many numerical parameters with the
DNA molecule: "Bach had a habit of imbedding mystic numbers in his compositions;
these ones happen to correspond to the ones nature imbeds in its own. But
this
coincidence was the least of the qualities that made this music Ressler's best
metaphor for the living gene." (579) It takes three nucleotide Bases to code
for one of twenty amino acids, and the variations occur in groups of three.
Furthermore, "Superimposed over those first four triplet rungs, a diversionary
tune that, with grace notes, contains twenty tones. Two halves of the aria,
each sixteen, bars, both scored to repeat, totalling sixty-four measures." (192)
There are sixty-four possible combinations of the three nucleotide bases.
Lastly,
and most importantly, both the Variations and the DNA molecule can be reduced
to four elements -- four scale steps descending from Do, or four nucleotides
-- from which all their complexities come. The DNA molecule is used as a source
domain for the Variations as well. A Canon is described as if "two copies
twist around one another with helical precision." (580) A drawing of a double-helix
looks like a drawing of two identical curves slightly out of sync, as if
a melody
following itself a measure later. There are more than enough superficial similarities
to justify the mapping. But what does the new map reveal that the old one
does
not? For one thing, while the DNA molecule and the variations can both be reduced
to their simplest terms -- four bases, four notes -- in both cases the simplicity
of the code is only interesting because of the complexity and variety of the
possible messages. "I listened to these miniatures for a year, pulled out
of them the most marvelous genetic analogies. But at the end, the music
refused
to reduce, and it hurt worse than before." (193)
Intertextual Variations
The Gold Bug Variations is based on, and structured
by, Bach's Goldberg Variations. Another connection is drawn between DNA and
the Goldberg Variations through a pun on the word "Base." (191) Based on,
according to the novel, is another way of saying structured by. Can this
be a new metaphor
for intertextuality? Cervantes' Don Quixote is the subject and object
of writing by Borges, Barthes, Foucault, Shklovsky, Auster, Acker, Cliff's
notes, and
music by Strauss. I have even discovered that Don Quixote is frequently
referred to in 20 consonant poetry (an attempt to map 12-tone musical structure
onto the alphabet) because words with both Q and X are rare and force the probability
of the English alphabet. Don Quixote is a high-scoring reference in
Scrabble. To say that these secondary texts are based on Don Quixote,
to use the metaphor from The Gold Bug Variations, firstly implies
that they are variations on the theme of Don Quixote. The purpose
of a theme and variation structure in music is less to repeat the theme than
to explore its
possible permutations. It is the differences that can be wrung from a mostly
identical melody that are ultimately the subject, not the melody itself.
Julia
Kristeva ('s translator), citing Bakhtin, uses the term "voices" to refer to
the texts which intersect in a literary work. In music, "voice" refers to
a melody when it is heard simultaneously with other voices in counterpoint.
(O'Donnell,
281) Bach takes a simple melody and, by repeating it in simultaneity with other
melodies, changes the way the original melody is heard. This is a fine metaphor
for intertextuality: a harmony of different voices. The literal definition
of
"voice," when we speak of texts as voices, implies a speaker, or author. Bach's
Goldberg Variations are merely one of many voices in counterpoint in The
Gold Bug Variations.
Intertextual Offspring
The metaphor of the Base secondly implies that The Gold
Bug Variations is a genetic copy of the Goldberg Variations. Earlier we
examined the metaphor of the locus of intertextuality. There is an immediate
danger in using genetics as a metaphor for intertextuality in an intertextual
realm dominated by men. Unless we are to risk discussing Powers as someone
who
was ultimately sired by Bach -- or one of Bach's sons -- with the implied assistance
of females whose genotypes and phenotypes are irrelevant to history, we need
to remove human beings from our source domain altogether. Are the Goldberg
Variations a locus -- a trait which The Gold Bug Variations has, like
blue eyes, claws, fur, a beak, or fins? Are music and fiction different species?
Do we
preserve the historical sequence of Bach, then Powers, or assume that they
coexist on the same or on different continents? Is the 32-variation structure
a gene
they both inherited from an ahistorical intertextual gene pool? The metaphor
can be constructed to answer some of these questions. The metaphor reveals
that
intertextuality is an attempt to encircle an infinity of variations. As every
dandelion is unique, so is Pierre Menard's Don Quixote different from
Cervantes'. The metaphor can also be constructed to reveal the inevitability
of intertextuality. Text can be thought of as a biosphere, which encirles a
potentially infinite play of amino acids. While there is room for infinite
diversity,
no form of life can exist outside of earth. Text is continually evolving and
recombining its elements. Every book is unique, even a transparent translation
between languages, or Pierre Menard's Don Quixote (an invisible translation
between cultures). A rattlesnake will function differently in the desert than
it will in the bayou. Intertextuality as an ecosystem conceals any possibility
of an autonomous text while it conceals the significance of an intertext.
Within
this metaphor, the autonomous text is impossible, and the intertext mundane.
A text cannot exist without its influences, but neither can its influences
be
perfectly mapped onto it. The text's mutations, the surfacing of its recessive
traits, and its adaptation to new circumstances, are more important than its
persistence. It is the interdependence between wildly varying texts, rather
than the genealogy of any one of them, that is significant.
Reductionism/Holism
The Goldberg Variations are described as variations on
a simple four-note theme. All of life on earth is described as variations on
a four-Base theme. The two are described in terms of one another. Due to the
partial nature of metaphorical structuring, every map is an oversimplification.
Oversimplifications are necessary to understand complicated things, but there
is always the risk that the map will become a substitute for the landscape it
represents. There are detectable patterns in the Goldberg Variations, and it
can be oversimplified surprisingly effectively. Yet, "To try to locate, in that
thematic germ, what Ressler spent a life listening to would be to search in
those schematics -- line drawings showing every subassembly of every carburetor
part -- for a semblance of the functioning car." (585) The later Stuart Ressler
looks back on his reductionist mindframe as insanity: "As you can imagine, I
fast approached the conviction that either everything in the universe fit into
a regular pattern or I was, at my tender age, perilously close to a weekend
at what people in the late fifties were fond of calling the Funny Farm." (192)
The novel is not about the failure of the map's oversimplification nor the victory
of the landscape's complexity. It is about the relationship between the two.
It is about the necessity of metaphor.
Richard Powers
I visited Richard Powers the first time hoping for the
key. I wanted him to roll out a genetic blueprint of the novel. I had tried
to read Bach's scores in hope of finding the Base for the novel. This line of
inquiry faltered, and momentarily I felt as if the younger Ressler had visited
the older Ressler to find the code, and received instead a frown and a sad shake
of the head. At first I was afraid that the structural reference I was after
was not there. It is there, though. Strangely, the novel can be reduced in that
fashion. Aspects of it can be found in Bach's score. As Labinger has demonstrated,
the plot can be drawn as a simple graph. (88) It is not every novel that possesses
such structural beauty that it can be analyzed reductively. Furthermore, the
techniques Powers used are not easy to do. Ultimately, however, the novel is
about the futility of such logic. Ressler is distracted from his quest to find
the correct key by the beauty and complexity of the door. There is nothing in
the simplicity of the canon, the number four, or the four scale steps descending
from do to describe measure 20 of the canon at the fourth and why it makes me
laugh.
Intertextuality and Amateur Theory
In writing, ones words, if not carefully regulated, quickly
fall into familiar clusters and orders. In writing an academic paper for example,
the recognizable formal aspects of theory exert a powerful gravity. The limits
of intertextuality imprison one. My sentences quickly slip into the passive
voice as I neutralize the subject "I" to simulate the objective voice of a disembodied
omniscience. I use the verb "to be" frequently, and always in the present tense
so there will be no doubt I am telling it like it is, always has been, and always
will be. I am full of doubt, uncertainty, drastic last minute revisions, but
the reader must not realize this.
Epiphany
I am afraid I am writing something that will never do any
good to a reader. In constructing the paper to gain acceptance in a graduate
writing program I am relying heavily on intertextuality to obscure my personal
variations from the phenotypical college student. I inch along intertextuality's
scaffolding. I serve leftovers with fresh garnish. I advance arguments by citing
examples from fantastical Borges stories and never with my experience. I mummify
myself in intertextuality's fabric. In a novel that celebrates technical aspects
of love, loss, life, and complexity, it is convenient to order it along a single
aspect. I can do that with this book. But the nagging gloom is that the book
is still unread for me. Like a scientist or composer I constantly reduce as
I investigate. I do not surrender to beauty or mystery. I refuse to be awestruck
or foolish. With the Bach however, my eyes can no longer follow the rapid unfolding
of score. I close them and listen and in my confusion am taken to tears and
led back, shaken, soothed, and am left incoherent with no convenient description
or memory. Novels and music are difficult for most of us to listen to. After
two readings, multiple scannings, two interviews with the author, extensive
perusal of primary and secondary sources, I am ready to forget everything I
know and hear this novel for the first time.
Is it Postmodern or After?
Is The Gold Bug Variations postmodern? Despite its references, it
seems to want to tell a story rather than draw attention to its own textual
artifice. Is it intertextual? Yes. It is a novel packed
with
frequent
and technical
references,
all deliberate,
most academic. The novel manages to ignore or sidestep references to 50s or
80s commercial culture (with the exception of 50s rock). There is little trace
of parody, but ample evidence of a sense of humor. The project explores the
contradictions
between
art and
science as well as the similarities. In short, the multiplicity of interpretations
incorporated into the text are not contradictory or pastiche. None dominate,
but they add up to something. Does it draw attention to its own construction?
Yes. However, the novel neither flaunts its construction, nor appears to have
grown organically. The characters are not flat, but a number of coincidences
suggest they are not real (Stuart Ressler's birthdate corresponding to Glenn
Gould's, as a tiny example). Is it about the failure of language? Yes. But
the novel is also about language's necessity. The novel celebrates diversity
and
is an affectionate rebuttal to a more modernist desire to collapse the world
into a tangible order. Richard Powers told me the novel is not there to resolve
ancient dualities, like holism/reductionism (or post/modernism -- a recent
ancient duality). He said "a map is not the place, but you need the map to
get there."
This is an admission that the map is necessary in all its insufficiency. The
novel is balanced in this duality. It celebrates the system of map and place,
source and target, language and reality. Postmodernism invites a multiplicity
of interpretations with none dominant. Does postmodernism situate its own
interpretation
within this network? Does postmodernism come after modernism to supplant it,
or to balance it? Is it coda or counterpoint? The Gold Bug Variations
is not postmodern. It is after. We understand the limitations of understanding.
Now what?
Conclusion?
While the existence of The Gold Bug Variations is
hardly an argument against the inevitability of intertextuality, it demonstrates
text's endless adaptability and ability to create new from the old. Through
references to Bach in the story, metaphor, and structure, the novel becomes
a mutation of a novel, and a counterpoint to the music of Bach.
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