Post-communard Variations

Page 25 January–February 2008 Saterstrom continued from previous page which perform as biography (such as the stories “Jane Eyre,” “Alice James,” and “Hester Prynne”) and also resonate through numerous moments in the text which appropriate elements of various genres (the gothic, the romance, the Bildungsroman, and so on). Looking at one of these threads—the gothic—I am reminded that the gothic novel has also been metaphorically viewed as a portrait of the fallen world, thus the genre’s emphasis on ruined scenery. At one time, the estate was grand and abundant. Now it is marked by silence and decay. The perfect setting for dreaming, as all heroines of gothic literature know. In Dutton’s appropriation of the genre’s hallmarks of tone and syntax, she recontextualizes the gothic setting. The ruined estate becomes language itself. Language is the setting which allows us to dream.And as the surrealist uses of Gothic elements remind us, if we can dream in this way, we might trespass into the unfamiliar, and in so doing uncover more poignant ways to attempt life. As the drama inherent within the book’s title suggests, there is a way that Dutton’s appropriations project the human drama onto the stage of the book. It’s serious, but as many dramatists celebrate, comedy orbits a dark sun. Which is to say, this is also a very funny book. The mythological adventure of the identity still, at the end of the day, must be encapsulated in a language addressable to a reader. For example in the story “Jane Eyre,” we read on page five: Yet, reader, I soon permitted myself to suspect he preferred my company to all others, even though I was small and poor. For I was considered by some to be almost a dwarf…. I thought: he wants to call me baby, but he is rich, melancholic, and much older than I… Two pages later, the adventure continues: You see, after I recovered from an illness to do with wandering the countryside as diminutive beggarperson…I also opened a school, found long-lost family members, inherited a bundle of money, redecorated a country house, and learned two foreign languages. So you see…there is nothing like the English countryside as regards the edification of a dissipated soul. Then one of my newfound cousins asked me to entrust my life to his. Thankfully I had a mystical hallucinatory episode, and so fled again… There is also humor in moments in which the narrative voice comments on the narrative’s construction as it is happening. It gives a sensation somewhere between being the recipient of a wink and being flashed. “It’s just as well…I died in Germany in 1937. Just kidding, I’m from California.”And it is in these same moments when the voice pierces through the artifice of the narrative that I am reminded of the seriousness of the project. The intensity concerning our attempts is down there…always circulating beneath the surface play of the language. Attempts at a Life begins with a Gertrude Stein quote, “And it is necessary if you are to be really and truly alive to be at once talking and listening, doing both things….” It makes me think about the nature of reciprocity within exchange—the kind required to be really and truly alive. The narrator of “Two Strange Stories” says, “They attempt to (almost) simultaneously . This adventure leads her to believe that knowing very many things does not automatically yield an explanation.” I’d add in conclusion: a reciprocity that does not exclude mystery, but in fact celebrates it through our attempts to engage with it. Selah Saterstrom is the author of The Pink Institution (Coffee House Press, 2004) and The Meat & Spirit Plan (Coffee House Press, 2007). posT-commUnArD vAriATions Jim Feast tHe nigHt i drOPPed sHakesPeare On tHe Cat John Olson Calamari Press http://www.calamaripress.com 160 pages; paper, $13.00 It seems fairly clear by now that Language poetry (and prose) has divided into two, very distinct (though not warring) camps: modernist and anti-modernist or better, since it indicates the French lineage of the overall school, Communard and postCommunard . Communard...