Der Fest-Text Jest

Author's Note:     For this wonderful occasion, I wanted to write something that reflected my intellectual interests over the years but that also celebrated the spirit of SubStance — a space where theory and practice, critical and creative impulses coexist, and a playful ethos finds room to roam. It also obviously embodies one of my longtime passions: constraintbased writing as inspired by the Oulipo. (A preemptive footnote —a few words here about Perec are lifted from Ian Monk's The Exeter Text.) — Paul Harris

Editors' Note:     How quickly can you detect the constraint underlying the following text?

Three Cheers!

Well, we're set—
Let's fête the French jet-setters,
Sydney Lévy et Me-shell Peer-sens,
The svelte, well-heeled rebels,
Les Pères de French Lettres—

Hey, they've netted cent texts!

Let the revelers enter:
Let the jesters heckle these gents, these legends.
Red-cheeked, we'll screech "100 Beers"—
Hence the lengthy bender, the brewery stench.
We'll yell "three cheers"!

Yes, let's cheer the select French-letters-scene ledger,
the peerless decentered texts press.
Yet hey, we see there're new "ed.s"—
where're these elder begetters presently?
They felt feeble, they needed rest.

["Hell!," the elders wheeze,
"The nerve! The cheek! The heresy!"]

When they (les Pères) defected,
when they reneged,
we felt neglected.
We were deserted, bereft;
We were jerky-nerved, tense.
Yet we were serene;
we knew, ends'll meet.

The New Scene

We're the three new ed.s—
Bell, E-Mech, me.
Why were we tendered the berth?
Yes, whence've we emerged here?

Well, we were elders-blessed;
we were decreed free entry.
We knew the entente's there;
Heck, here we've seen Serres's Hermes, Stengers's Entre le temps et l'eternel.
We felt, "hey, these're my peeps! Let's represent! Keep them reel!"
Then, there, we entered the French letters temple.

Where're we presently?
Well, they've set the precedent.
Here, we seek sheer excellence;
We need the essence;
We revere the text rendered flesh,
the re-selected redeemer,
the perfect texts—
whether they be Hegel's erste Rede,
Tweedledee's speech, Beckett's restless, empty lessness.

Here ends the lessen.

Yet we see these letters flee;
There's never presence here,
they melt, they're mere ether,
these never dense spheres.
Hence, we breed perfect text referencers;
we eschew severe, well set symmetry.
We never render texts level;
we reverse terms, skew sense,
shed the shell, peel the veneer,
bend the text's edges, then extend them.
We wrest the embedded theses, bleed them dry,
then delete mere hype.
Lend heed, we'll shred every schemer.
Test the rest; we're the best!
Yes, we've effected French pretence—
Heck, we've even been fervent pretence's pretext.
Yet we ferment restless effervescence—
We're vexed re:
recent Le Pen events—
Where's the new Left?

Entry #100

We beseeched esteemed exegetes' reply—
Re: the preferred new scheme.
My reply, me-même?
My creed, my preference?

Let's see, let me regress,
delve deeply the psyche's weedy recesses,
where the demented specters're cemented,
where we see Lecter, he prefers men's flesh.
The egress's there, free these specters, let them emerge—
      merely pre-selected letters, per se.

Let me get berserk,
spew perverse verse,
where we sense
the lyre's Greek entelechy renewed—

the letter-centered text effect perfected!

Letter Texts Expert

Next, let me present myself:
the respected, well-versed geek.
Here, we esteem "Letter-Texts,"
the genre where letters themselves
get stressed—they're the key event
when these texts get represented:

e.g., there's Hester Prynne's excellently sewn letter—
her vessel, neglected by the elder m.d., felt the reverend's fever;
she knew (the creed sense) the reverend; the erect member entered her.
The elder m...