Time for Love

Review Saterstrom continuedfrom previous page itself as a narrative model. The text moves through distinct phases, each phase transfiguring into a new beyond—a new understanding of possibility achieved when language is allowed to dream. In its final phase, Valerie explodes into a larger, wiser intelligence capable of speaking the language of the mind and the body simultaneously. Recognizing that the Gothic genre expressed itselfin the language ofdreams, Nezval appropriated some of the genre's hallmark words, such as "suddenly ," "unexpectedly," and "at once." This allows for time to be expressed without rationalizing it. In Valerie, time exists outside of the confines of our anxiety about it. The particular genius within his appropriation is that he moves plot forward by the implied action of these words, even though there is not any plot to advance, at least not plot according to privileged definitions that depend on a time line to organize the meanings of the text's action. Though the action is relentless in Valerie, it is not for the sake of leading us into the familiar. Rather, this use of narrative time leads us into the possibilities of the unfamiliar. Nezval suggests that it is in this realm where we might locate profound alternatives to the typical and unfortunate ways we try to control our fears concerning death, solitude, time, and accountability: we must be willing to sit in the hard places that scare us in order to understand the hard places. This is a radical departure from a paradigm that silences the inescapable ambiguity inherent within existence. Nezval brings the Gothic into union with the genre of the pulp serial novel, which existed as weekly installments intended for quick reading. The installments had to cultivate an anticipation for the next installment because the text had to exist in the memory of the reader in order to maintain its identity . The genre responds to this challenge of time (the space that punctuated its visibility) by invoking desire. Serial pulp is the high art of invoking consumption made dangerous by the possibility of addiction—notunlike the bodily condition ofhunger, of need. Using the sur-language of dreams, Nezval looks to the body's visceral wisdom for information about the nature of the human condition. Nezval appropriates the structure ofthe dream itself as a narrative model. Take for example the central character of the Constable, an ancient half-man, half-cat trickster/ sexual outlaw/authority figure who survives off the blood of chickens and who is at once a sentimental father figure to the character of Valerie and also the darkly erotic predator gleefully tracking her virginity like prey through an obstacle course of nightmares. Nezval's characterization techniques suggest Bataille's sentiment that all great philistines who live only for pleasure are great precisely because they have obliterated in themselves any capacity to experience pleasure. The Constable invites us to consider what it might mean that some authority figures are powerful , not through experience, but through phantom rehearsals of experience. This leads to questions such as: Why are such people in authority positions? How is it that the observation of power's expression can be a spectator sport of dangerous consequence? What does it mean that some people choose not to vote because they feel their vote is without a value that can effect change at the level of authority? Valerie and Her Week ofWonders reclaims the irrational from its exiled state through the use of hybrid form and surreal content. The text enables us to dream about what it might be like to be more than our fears, limitations, and distractions by calling into question our personal limits. David Short's beautiful translation reminds us that dealing with meaning in the contemporary world is a very funny and always disturbing adventure—one that may help us to live more bravely if we are willing to dance with the unfamiliar. Selah Saterstrom is the author of The Pink Institution (Coffee House Press). She lives in North Carolina where she is the artist-in-residence at Warren Wilson College and runs the Holden Gallery Text/Image Reading Series. Time for Love Sheila Heti Love and Other Stores Tibor Déry Translated...