max ranken burg

Upload: debora-ratonowitz

Post on 14-Apr-2018

228 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    1/142

    The Burden of Proof: Prophecy and Ontology in Paul Austers Oracle Night

    A thesis submitted to the faculty of

    San Francisco State UniversityIn partial fulfillment of

    The requirements for

    The degree

    Master of Arts

    inEnglish: Literature

    by

    Maximilian Rankenburg

    San Francisco, California

    May, 2005

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    2/142

    The Burden of Proof: Prophecy and Ontology in Paul Austers Oracle Night

    Maximilian Rankenburg

    San Francisco State University

    2005

    The Burden of Proof: Prophecy and Ontology in Paul Austers Oracle Night is a

    structuralist reading of Auster's text. By examining the relationship between the

    structures of the text, and of its protagonist-narrator, I reveal, primarily and

    specifically, the complex narrative surrounding the question of identity, and formally,

    the strange border between structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to literature.

    The essay is in three parts. I begin my investigation with analysis of the concept of an

    oracle. What does the idea ofprophecy do to a normal definition of narrative? I use

    throughout my essay, more as a heuristic and test-site for my investigation than

    analogy, the figure from Delphi in Oedipus the King. The second theme, rising from

    Oedipus's difference with Jocasta meaning is ab extra; meaning is ab intra

    concerns structuralism, or the reassemblage of narrative-parts in an effort at revealing

    the intelligible function of the whole. The third theme concerns the shortfall of a

    structuralist view. I do not go so far as to compare my approach to a post-structuralist

    one; but I make it clear that Sidney Orr's project at memoir, and Oracle Night, indict a

    form of structuralism.

    ii

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    3/142

    to

    Gneli Gn

    iii

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    4/142

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    List of Appendices. v

    Prologue 1-9

    Part One: Lexemes 1-12 10-51

    Part Two: Lexemes 13-24 . 52-93

    Part Three: Lexemes 25-30 ... 94-110

    Epilogue 111-114

    Appendices 115-120

    Notes .. 121-134

    Works Cited and Consulted 135-137

    iv

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    5/142

    LIST OF APPENDICES

    Appendix Page

    1.Dramatis Personae 115-117

    2.Lexemes and References ..... 118-119

    3. The Narrative Line . 120

    v

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    6/142

    Prologue

    vaticinor: tr. to foretell, prophesy; to keep harping on intrto prophesy; to rant and rave,

    talk wildly1

    This essay is about a conflicted character, and has a conflicted character. The

    bipartite foundation will first become apparent in descriptions of my intent, and my act.

    P.i The Intent

    To describe my intent, I quote the prospectus I wrote for this essay five months

    ago.

    In this essay I intend to examine the lies perpetrated by Sidney Orr,

    the protagonist of Paul Austers Oracle Night, to examine the illusion of

    reality these lies create, and, in revealing the emptiness at the core of his

    character, to examine the consequences of his condition.

    Why does Sidney Orr since Oracle Night is the story of his

    rehabilitation lie to, and delude, himself?

    To answer this question I will concentrate on narrative structures.

    The novel itself a description Orrs transition from a question, a

    perplexed, estranged point of view, to a state of unparalleled happiness

    exposes a large facet of the protagonists character. So, beginning with the

    1

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    7/142

    macrocosm, or (1) an overview of the structure of the novel, I will then

    sharpen my focus and consider particular elements of the narrative.

    I will examine (2) the narrative structure of an oracle. What form

    oforderdoes this character impose? In what ways does Oedipus the King

    illuminate Orrs problem?

    I will examine (3) the narrative structure of Hammetts Flitcraft

    episode, and examine how it is used by Orr. What form of orderdoes this

    character suggest? How is chance defined by, and woven into, the

    narrative? More specifically, how do intertextuality, and peripeteia,

    complicate Orrs narrative?

    Concluding that Orr is nota detective of the Dupin-order that is,

    not a semiotician I will argue for (4) the hermeneutics of Oracle Night.

    Are the illusions of Oracle Night only aspects of an interpreter-centered

    narrative? Is intertextuality a consequence of such a structure? And,

    returning to the initial problem, is there a place for ethics in this

    structure?2

    P.ii The Act

    I can assert with confidence that number one, above, I more than accomplish in

    this essay. Numbers two and three are also accomplished, but I anticipate not, for

    differences of perspective, to everyones satisfaction. I can safely say that number four,

    2

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    8/142

    above, is not a part of this essay. While the questions I raise therein remain pertinent, and

    are indirectly considered, I never focus my attention on hermeneuticsper se.The

    problem, intrigue, and allure of the oracles narrative, I contend, is essentially a problem

    of hermeneutics; but I do not examine this relationship to any depth in this essay.

    The act itself is a structural one. In Barthess terminology, I dissect and

    articulate.3

    I collate lexemes and analytically compare, in a restructuring (articulation) of

    the protagonist and of the novel, repeated signifiers of structure.4

    That is not to say that

    my paradigm is structuralist. I keep too respectful (i.e.fearful) an eye on the themes of

    chaos, cognitive dissonance, the indeterminacy of meaning, paradox, and the like, to fall

    into that category. More specifically, my paradigm is not structuralist for two reasons:

    first, I do not presume or suggest an historical context to the lexemes apart from the

    fictional history of their evolution;5

    and second, I am not de-coding the text into a

    general, poly-textual or cultural, form. My primary concern, as an unfortunate

    redundancy will soon make clear, is a question of character, of the protagonists hidden,

    and possibly criminal, characteristics. That said, I do build, or rebuild, a text. I do pay

    special attention to symmetry, and objectivity. But these apparentacts are done under a

    kind of duress, in a kind of dream whose end is imminent and in which I desire

    something that I know I will never find, that I know is just out of reach, around the next

    corner.

    A more precise description of the form of the essay is this: the three parts roughly

    reflect three distinct sections of Oracle Night.6

    I begin my investigation with analysis of

    the concept of an oracle. What kind of narrative does she inhabit? What does the idea of

    3

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    9/142

    prophecy do to a normal definition of narrative? I use throughout my essay, more as a

    heuristic and test-site for my investigation than analogy, the figure from Delphi in

    Oedipus the King. The second theme I consider, rising from Oedipus's difference with

    Jocasta meaning is ab extra; meaning is ab intra concerns structuralism, or the

    reassemblage of narrative-parts in an effort at revealing the intelligible function of the

    whole. The third theme concerns the shortfall of a structuralist view. I do not go so far as

    to identify my approach as a post-structuralist one, but I make it clear that Sidney Orr's

    project at memoir, and Oracle Night, indict a form of structuralism.

    The disparity, then, with which I conclude the antagonism between structure

    and de-structure, and the clear difference between my intent and my act I would now

    like to introduce.

    P.iii Spelling it Out: The Oracles Narrative

    I made the following analysis in October of 2003, for a presentation on the novel

    Cane by Jean Toomer. The phenomenon of reflexivity is dazzling: my words on

    prophecy, in 2003, return to me two years later, in a more revealing, powerful, and useful

    way. That is, I act, by necessity, as if today, and these words, were my last; but I know

    otherwise.

    Consider the Latin word oraculum, for the English oracle, or

    prophesy. And further: ora- for the English boundary, edge, coastline, or

    region. Andculum, denoting a place, or tool-instrument-device. Does

    4

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    10/142

    this dissection lend a clear definition oforaculum in English? I suppose

    the boundary place is close to my idea ofprophecy; it beats instrument of

    the coast. But it is obvious that the boundary place orthe edge is not

    exactly what we mean in English by oracle.

    Consider the wordprophesy. Its Latin cousin is vaticinor, to

    foretell, to play the harp, to rant and rave. Little did I know that the strange

    word oracle had a strange lineage. The strangeness lies beneath a veneer

    of contrasted ideas: the boundary place, the edge, and to rant and rave.

    Boundaries are clear; in fact, in order for the word to function, the

    boundary must be clear. You can walk toward the beach, for instance, and

    see from a long distance off where land ends and water begins. And in a

    facile sense of defining the word, an oracle, orprophecy, is the

    establishment of a boundary for some aspect of the future. Prophesy, that

    is, clarifies a distant point in time; it is a story that corrals understanding

    of the future, and in doing so determines the point beyond which

    knowledge is forbidden.

    Rant and rave is not as co-operative. One thinks of teenagers, or

    senile geriatrics; of anger and madness. Question: how does rant and rave

    fit with the boundary place to makeprophesy?

    The how is not important in this case. What is important to

    consider is the strident contrast of ideas inside of the word oracle. To rant

    5

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    11/142

    and rave and, simultaneously, to define a boundary, is part of the

    performance of an oracle.

    Because of this ungainly requirement, the oracle say the woman

    at Delphi, chosen and touched by the Gods requires a translator. Called a

    priest, this man carefully listens to the nonsense of his charge, and then

    interprets the sounds for the inquisitor, who often is a young prince caught

    in what has come to be known as the crisis of identity.

    Oracular cane. This benediction can not be ignored: when Cane

    speaks, it tells the truth, but in an incomprehensible tongue. One relies on

    the priest, an intermediary; but who is he?

    oracular, our primary experience with Cane, is an electrical

    shock, a ritual, the choreographic structure encompassing the narrative: a

    prince, with the leisure to be introspective, leaves home and pays a visit to

    the oracle. Who am I? What will I become? he asks. The oracle takes a

    deep breath, and begins; the prince, confused by her babble, turns to a

    priest, who stands at hand; the priest listens, and reflects, and then speaks

    in the princes tongue; and the prince returns home with this knowledge

    What is the nature of the oracle? What kind of power does she

    possess?7

    P.iv Spelling it Out

    6

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    12/142

    This essay has a conflicted character due in part to the character it investigates. I

    discuss the relationships between intention and action, the past and the present and the

    future, fiction and non-fiction, all under the rubric of narrative; I discuss these systems

    with the implicit aim of drawing lines, of distinguishing one element from another. That

    this abstract endeavor is probably impossible to accomplish like the dreamer who

    knows he dreams, but still desires is more than a little frustrating. Then why continue

    along this vein? As it will become clear, this vein is first, of the text, Oracle Night, and

    second, of my interpretative approach. That is to say, mine is not, for the sensation of

    experiment, a contrived position; it is, I think, a necessary one.

    Finally, I want to warn you about idiosyncrasies of the essay, and provide a word

    of explanation.

    Spelling it out: I do not always explain beforehand my direction, my course, myreason for selecting one lexeme over another. I have thought of two reasons to

    warm this reticence. First, I often do not know where the text is taking me; you

    are not alone in the disoriented experience. Second, I have made many

    assumptions, a few of which are these: a) You have read the text; b) You have

    read related, supplementary, etc., texts; c) You can foresee the end of a query

    before its arrival, fill in the gaps of my implications, and are basically astute

    enough a reader to converse with me about the problems I raise. Does not all of

    this go without saying?

    The First Person Singular: The generic plural, We, and the archaic One, inexpression of the authors position, are conventions, kinds of fiction, and in my

    7

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    13/142

    view, noisome. My I, which is no less fictional than We but closer to the

    truth, designates in this essay several things: a) myself, the author ofthis text; b)

    myself, the reader ofthe text, Oracle Night; c) my vicarious self, the double of the

    protagonist. Occasionally I forget myself, and a generic We comes through (I

    cant catch all of them), and occasionally a We is used, as anybody who takes

    reading seriously will understand, to express my alliance or complicity with a

    character in the text.

    I appreciate clarity. This essay is a concerted effort at reconstruction, anarchitectural act. To succeed it requires transparency. However, words are

    ambiguous things; and ambiguity has a rhetorical purpose. For these reasons I

    have not liquidated all of the related problems, i.e., unanswered questions,

    analytical dead-ends, innuendos, etc.: either I can not achieve this, for the nature

    of a word, or I do not, for the nature of my argument.

    Continuity: Related to ambiguity is the question of formal continuity. This essayis literally broken. Figuratively, there is unity, a continuous thread, a sound

    structure. But this structure is afigure of speech, or more specifically, a figure of

    my narrative. It demands your participation, your insight. If the structure were

    delineated and contained within safe limits, then its function, I think, would be

    compromised.

    P.vDramatis Personae

    8

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    14/142

    Oracle Night is a novel about identity, the identity of a convalescent, the identity

    of his work, I call it a memoir, but it is also a fiction; the identity of a moment in time,

    and even more abstract, the identity of the reader. There are countless pieces of this

    puzzle to sort through,8

    and often the investigation seems endless, and I feel like the

    wizened crackeddetective who will not let a certain unsolved case go, poring over the

    evidence for decades. But things happen, and a trace appears, heres a fissure we didnt

    notice before, and light, and clarity where the dust hasnt settled. With renewed vigor and

    determination (madness la Ahab, Sutpen, Orr) we press on.

    I act, by necessity, as if today, and these words, were my last. I know otherwise.

    In the pleasure of reading Oracle Night and of composing this essay, I glimpse myself,

    who I am, and what I will become. The phenomenon is dazzling. But not, I suspect, to my

    eyes alone. I would be nothing without the loyal friendship and assistance, intellectually

    and realistically, of my colleague, Matt Montgomery; or without the encouragement and

    guidance of you, my readers, Professor Geoffrey Green and Professor Beverly Voloshin.

    I hope your experience with this essay is as rewarding to you as the last two years of

    reading and writing in your acquaintanceship have been for me.

    9

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    15/142

    Part One

    The trope my structural activity is most concerned with is synecdoche. As I said

    above, an understanding of the structure of the text will contribute to an understanding of

    the structure of its protagonist; and vice versa. There are numerous kinds of synecdoche

    in Oracle Night, each of which I will describe in time, in turn.

    In this part of the essay, I analyze the first twelve sections of the text. Since the

    results of my labor appear unpolished and disparate, I make this note as a reminder: at the

    center of this part is a narrative structure built with the figures of a supplicant, an oracle,

    and a destiny. What I only suggest in this part, but what will become clear, is the

    coupling of Orrs memoir with Orrs fiction. In other words, here is the foundation of a

    larger structure; here is the description of a trajectory between a real present and an

    imaginary future.

    1. Sickness 9

    The admission of illness imposes certain conditions. I read, I was sick. For a

    time, I was not myself. Now Im better. Now Im healed, back to normal. And also,

    While I was sick, time almost stopped. Or how can one explain the unpredictable

    occasion of treachery in the body I have no recollection of the passing of time during

    thattime. In either case, the admission, the opening sentence, establishes a boundary, a

    limit to the story that is about to unfold; it creates an ambiguous moment in the past, and

    10

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    16/142

    the intention, now, to clarify this ambiguity. I had been sick for a long time (1). The

    statement connotes introspection, reconsideration, a search for differences and deviations

    in the self.

    I, the recipient of this claim, sympathize. I understand sickness. I understand a

    breach of trust. Which is to pose the question, should I now trust a convalescing man?

    What exactly is an unambiguous moment, an unambiguous state of health?

    The sickness, in this case, is also a kind of citation. The opening is not itself; the

    text, in its resemblance to the opening of Poes story The Man of the Crowd, is sick:

    For some months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and,

    with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which

    are so precisely the converse ofennui moods of the keenest appetency,

    whenthe film from the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its

    everyday condition Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived

    positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain.10

    Metaphysically, for my protagonist, the sickness persists: in the present, he is seen

    as a miracle, a freak, almost like the walking-dead, a man who breaks natural law and

    gets away (1). This strain, however, attacks the ally, Poe, whose protagonist rises and

    surpasses normality; our narrator descends. He is alienated from his own body; he

    recalls himself as a phantom, as half of who he thinks he was, as if to say, Was I that

    man?

    11

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    17/142

    Alienated from time, from his body, from his words, our narrator, it would seem,

    can shirk some responsibility for what follows. He speaks a kind of hearsay, from a

    contrived position of innocence.

    2. The Morning in Question

    Here is the beginning, a second beginning, a second, specific ambiguity. I reread

    what precedes this morning as a prologue, as a song encapsulating the essence of the

    narrative I presently enter. I am now, or will soon, drift along like a spectator in

    someone elses dream (2). And time will merely pass (3).

    The narrative, however, is not a dream-vision. The narrator does not describe or

    imply the illogical, magical, or absurd, any of the characteristics of a dream. Indeed, his

    tone resists ambiguity; he pays close attention to detail.

    I shall pay close attention to detail.

    The estrangementI described above is repeated, in variations, in what follows.

    The narrator stands apart from his experience, in reminiscence.11

    What does he see in his

    review? Ill gloss the obvious.

    Names. On the morning in question (3) our narrator is on, and in, Court Street

    (3). He enters a stationery shop, apalace (4), before which is a paper simulacrum of New

    York, the city he inhabits. Inside the shop he confuses the initials of the proprietors

    name, M.R. Chang, formister(8); in exchange, M.R. Chang confuses the narrators

    name, Orr Sidney Orr, for the conjunction or(10).

    12

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    18/142

    Number, measurement, space and time. Approximately three and a half months

    separate the morning in question from Orrs release from the hospital (4); twenty years

    separate the morning in question from Orrs present, the moment in which he writes

    (9). The model of the city consists ofstationary towers (3); Changs ledger is made up

    of columns (4); my narrator, who, this morning decided to go the other way, turning right

    instead of left, heading south (3), makes horizontal peregrinations in one plane, and

    vertical (descending) in another; the footnote (9), in its spatial position, is a diminished

    text, a subtext, and also, in its temporal position, a metatext, an afterthought, a review and

    overview of the text.

    Universals. Space and time compel me to skip over a few particulars the

    Hammett episode, modeled on Hawthornes story Wakefield; the allusion, in the word

    lidand its context, to Poes story The Premature Burial in order to color in one of the

    predominant themes of the narrative. The world is governed by chance. Randomness

    stalks us every day of our lives, and those lives can be taken from us at any moment for

    no reason at all (14).12 This thesis immediately pertains to the Hammett episode, the

    story of a man named Flitcraft (13); simultaneously, Orr is a man who was supposed to

    die, who surprised everyone, including himself, in living. The overlap, the semblance of

    characteristics the authors experience predicting the experience of his character; and to

    further complicate this relation, the character of Flitcraft, Hammetts invention, was

    handed-over to Orr by John Trause (12), another author suggests a complex relation

    between what is called the fiction and its environment of invention, ostensibly a non-

    fiction. But this inquiry is impatient, slightly beside the point. The problem of chance is

    13

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    19/142

    what I want illumined. The sentence, The world is governed by chance, in the context

    of a man with a questionable past, for whom unidentified trauma occurred, and whose

    name, Sidney, evokes without artifice the homophones cede and n, calls to Jocasta,

    wife of Oedipus:

    What should a man fear? Its all chance,

    chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth

    can see a day ahead, groping through the dark. (1069-1071)13

    Here, then, is the twilight of the day in question. Is the answer to the question

    randomness ororder? What are the consequences of choosing one over the other?

    The list of questions and narrative-points I here provide has a twofold purpose.

    First, I must reveal the tone of jurisprudence. Sidney Orr begins his narrative with an

    unstated question, a questionable question, and begins in the proximity of law, on Court

    Street, inside an edifice that shows to the world its universality and order, wherein the

    definition of commonplace words, names, is closely scrutinized. Second, I want revealed

    Orrs attention to structure, the microcosm and its constituency, and also the structure of

    the macrocosm, of which Orr is not entirely aware. While he amends his narrative,

    providing details in the form of footnotes, he alludes, primarily in the text,14

    to countless

    other narratives, one of which concerns Oedipus, who, on the approach to his destruction,

    blithely amends the story of his life.

    14

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    20/142

    3. Oracle Night I

    The first entry into Orrs notebook is a microcosm, a novel-within-a-novel. Nick

    Bowen is the protagonist of the embryonic novel. The mature novel is the one in Bowens

    possession: Oracle Night, by Sylvia Maxwell.

    I want to highlight the insignificant detail of the order of entries in Orrs

    notebook. I suspect that the inner-notebook synecdochically reflects the outer-notebook,

    Orrs primary text. Of course, this suspicion can only fully develop from the end of the

    narrative; by the same token, here is a case in point of the reader-as-detective.

    Details become significantin retrospect. Reading is actually rereading. An

    argument against a theory of present-tense reader-response might go as follows: the total

    significance, the full meaning of any aspect of a narrative is necessarily constructed from

    a point beyond the end of the narrative, when the fullness of the narrative has been

    experienced.15

    The reading-moment is incomplete in itself. The reading-moment is a

    prophetic moment, in how it draws pieces of meaning from the future, from what will

    happen. Until this future is realized, nothing can be said conclusively.

    the sentence does not consist solely of a statement which after all,

    would be absurd, as one can only make statements about things that exist

    but aims at something beyond what it actually says. This is true of all

    sentences in literary works, and it is through the interaction of these

    sentences that their common aim is fulfilled. This is what gives them their

    15

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    21/142

    own special quality in literary texts. In their capacity as statements they

    are always indications of something that is to come, the structure of which

    is foreshadowed by their specific content.16

    The meaning of any particular word or phrase involves the leap of information

    through time, over the textual terrain. Be patient.

    I will describe this phenomenon in more detail. Envision a map of the book, over

    which, like the descriptions of airplane routes from city to city, lines are drawn,

    originating and terminating in hubs, loci of meaning, or more precisely loci of authorship

    (origin) and readership (destination). What do these lines communicate?

    3.iA Novel

    Oracle Nightbegins with a war, in the theater of chance; it also begins with the

    imminent conclusion of this war.

    Oracle Nightis a memoir, a return, in the mind of the narrator, to a catastrophic

    moment.

    Oracle Nightbegins with a bifurcated question, a selfish question: it is both the

    question itself, and also the question of the questions existence.

    The juxtaposition of multiple narratives requires some explication. Bowen (Orrs

    fiction) is reading Maxwells fiction (Orrs sub-fiction, and metafiction) when Rosa

    Leightman (Orrs fiction) enters (16). Since Leightman is related to Maxwell, Bowen

    16

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    22/142

    senses the uncanny: the woman before him is a variation, by blood, of the woman above

    him, his employer, the author of the book on his desk, who is also a woman behind him,

    temporally, and beneath him, ontologically, in the sense that Maxwell creates fiction, is

    connected to fiction, and is herself a kind of fiction.

    But are these designations ofOracle Nights and narrators necessary? The

    conflation of novels and narrators could be a point of the narrative that denies natural

    categorization, i.e., denies my designations, the winnowing. In which case Oracle Night

    begins with something like a war, something like a question of knowledge, and also

    something like a sickness, and something like an investigation. A piece of the narrative

    reflects the complete narrative: my Oracle Nightdoes not begin with the imminent end of

    a war, but sinceOrrs Oracle Nightdoes begin in such a way, it is possible toreadthe

    second beginning, Orrs, in its precursor. And vice versa. A part of our beginning is in a

    part of his, thisbeginning.

    The beginning of the story, then, is unclear. Of this I am sure. Is it here, or there?

    Is there one beginning, two, three, more?

    However, this playful ambiguity comes as no surprise. The conflation of

    narratives is only a facet of the puzzle. The narrative is also indefinite, adrift, about

    levitation, and with levity. Eva Bowen can have any of three possible jobs (23); Nick is

    suspended in midair (26).

    The footnotes grow, invading the space of the text. Which is the text, now; which

    the story, which the commentary on the story?

    17

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    23/142

    The eerie indefiniteness manifests in de Koonings sketch, Self-portrait with

    Imaginary Brother(17). Here is a true self, a testament to the real life of the painter,

    beside a fictional figure, who is not, as in Drer, mythical. The other figure is not Venus,

    not Death. The figure is an abstraction of the painter as a younger boy; he is the image of

    de Koonings memory of himself as a child; or, stranger, he is the image he might have

    hadof himself as a child as a child.

    The question to which I will return many times is this:

    Where is the origin? (Who is the child?) What isoriginal in or

    about the text? Can everything in Oracle Nightfind its analogy

    in the de Kooning sketch?

    The question of the origin introduces the oracles

    theme: if nothing is original, then everything, to some degree,

    is predictable. If everything is a kind of copy (and the notion oforiginality only a result of

    scattered copies and forgetfulness), then there is a way by device, by algorithm, by

    inference of predicting, for a given scenario, what will occur next. In other words,

    unoriginality permits, in the destruction of a unique thing and of an atomistic view,

    meaningful resemblance, the relationship one thing (de Kooning) has to its predecessor

    (the child) without whichunderstanding of the thing would be impossible.

    HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?

    3.iiAn Ethics of Ambiguity

    18

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    24/142

    One problem unoriginality poses is an ethical one. I will restate the problem

    briefly.

    When Orr interrupts the Bowen narrative, and reveals himself as its author, as its

    sketcher(22), figuratively lifting the lid off his fiction to permit a view of the works, he

    undermines all ethical trajectories suggested by the narrative. If there is any moral weight

    to the story, then revealing how it is structured saps its strength. The moral of the story, I

    would like to show, necessitates a pure, untouchable form.A moral is singular and

    unequivocal; it is self-evident, as the form of such a story is self-evident. There is no

    inside to a such a form: the form is transparent. To see the works, all of this is to say,

    indicts morality: ifthe works differ in any way from the form of the moral, or the form of

    the story, then the story is amoral.17

    The relationship between the inside and the outside (form) of a narrative is a

    variation on a theme I have still to introduce.

    Young Oedipus, for the impugnment of his birthright, goes before the Oracle at

    Delphi.18 Two questions: first, does Delphis pronouncement reveal the works, the

    mechanism inside of Oedipus, of his narrative? Then, what is ethical about the princes

    problem, and how is the pronouncement related to this? I ask these questions to introduce

    a turn on the dichotomy I stated above. In a sense, Delphis pronouncement is the

    mechanism inside of the narrative, and it does differ from the eventual form of the

    narrative; in fact, young Oedipus conscientiously makes this difference, by running away

    from Corinth, and toward Thebes. But clearly Oedipus the Kingis not an amoral

    narrative. Any amorality, then, about Oedipus he is a murderer, he commits incest

    19

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    25/142

    must have its root elsewhere, in a sub- or metanarrative, in a narrative in any case

    different from the one read by Delphi.

    In this regard, the difference between the inner narrative and the superficial one,

    or the form that narrative presents, does not necessarily imply amorality. I will return to

    this problem.

    3.iii Order of the Night

    Bowens logic attributes intention and significance to phenomena of the cosmos.

    Furthermore, he is egocentric, believing that occurrences in the world happen for him,

    with him in mind.

    His evasion of the falling gargoyle is his escape from what is planned for him,

    against him. It is also an escape from himself, from his fate. For a moment he is not in the

    place where someone (himself included) expects him to be. He is, like Wakefield, out of

    step.19 Still, by a peripheral view, the gargoyle strikes: it kills Bowen, and the man who

    walks away from the accident is somebody else. On the other hand the gist of Bowens

    paradox it is Bowen saying to himself,Dont think about the past, its not your past

    (65). A vestige of the other man exists inside of Bowen; or Bowen himselfis the vestige

    inside of somebody else. The separation is not clean.

    It is not a clean universe. Accidents happen all the time. Bowen, for unclear

    reasons, sees the universe as an ordered, meaningful system. And his life is meaningful

    20

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    26/142

    because of this system; meaning is bequeathed to him. In himself, Bowen suspects, he is

    nothing more than a cog in a cosmic machine, an automaton.

    The implications of this view are numerous and somewhat banal. I will only cite a

    few. There are two types of meaning implied by the scheme: theocentric and

    anthrocentric. That is, meaning comes to Bowen from an omniscient being; or meaning is

    wrested and derived, by interpretation, from the workings of the universe. (The latter

    does not necessarily dismiss the omniscient being; it only makes him stingy.)

    it is by the regular return of the units and of the associations of units

    that the work appears constructed, i.e., endowed with meaning; linguistics

    calls these rules of combinationforms, and it would be advantageous to

    retain this rigorous sense of an overtaxed word: form, it has been said, is

    what keeps the contiguity of units from appearing as a pure effect of

    chance: the work of art is what man wrests from chance.20

    4.John Trause I

    Orrs walk follows a path between perspectives. He is positioned between one

    present [2002] and another [1982]; between a present and a past; between numerous

    selves the writer, the character of his memoir, the husband, the friend; between grades

    of objectivity, subjectivity, imagination, and fiction.

    21

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    27/142

    His entrance into imaginary space (29) has a vertiginous effect. In the way the

    mystery of a murder seeks resolution (in narrative-magnetism, the fulfillment of

    expectation and law), Orrs recollection wants to identify itself with fact.

    The detective, before a corpse and clue, in anticipating his adversarys next move,

    splits himself into two imaginary characters: the adversary (perpetrator of murder) and

    the detective. He walks backwards. Figuratively, he choreographs the murder;

    objectively, he correlates clues in time and space. He will recreate the moments prior to

    the murder, recreate the actions of the murderer and victim. He will play the role of the

    murderer, will persuade the chief investigator that his rendition of the crime, while only a

    rendition, is logical, consistent, plausible, and possible. To what end? The anticipation of

    the next crime; the detective wants to lead, to precede the murderer by a step. This is a

    dangerous game, for two reasons. The first is obvious. With his back turned, as the faux

    murderer, the detective is vulnerable to the real murderer. The second reason is more

    subtle. The detective stands, he believes, for the law; he may actlike a murderer, to the

    letter, but the consummating actis beyond his ability, against his character. He will

    reveal himself in his diffidence, in his eventual reluctance, to move forward.

    The moment of the detectives hesitation is an opening, a gamble, an opportunity,

    and paradox. In the crucial second, he must turn, jump out of character, and confront the

    narrative. For if the detective does not consummate his act with the act, namely murder,

    then he will fail in anticipating the next crime: a second murder is committed. And

    clearly, if the detective forgets himself and upstages his adversary by committing the next

    22

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    28/142

    murder, then a second murder objectively, to his protg, by the original murderer is

    committed.

    Sidney Orrs story, the approach to a solution, the answer to the question of a day,

    is a form of detective work, necessarily investigative, necessarily incomplete.

    The murder will occur.

    My structural activity, too, compelled by a desire to maintain law and order, to

    capture the adversary before he kills again, is the enactment, the articulation of the

    narrative, ofhis narrative.21

    I follow. I lead. I mimic my adversary (an author),

    anticipating his moves, words.

    On the one hand, I describe the quotidian. Imitation is a source of pleasure.

    Imitation offers a form of order and rhythm; I learn by it.22

    But consider the question

    such imitation poses for reality, my present, the moment I write these words. The real,

    and tactile, come into conflict with the imaginary.

    Orr projects himself in multiple, contrary directions. He moves through the rooms

    in Trauses apartment; he writes of this movement in 82, in 2002. The room he describes

    is simultaneously a real place, once visited by him; and also a literaryplace, a description

    on a page, in the ink of his recollection. The object of reminiscence is at once the afterlife

    of the object, and also the moment of remembering, or if it is our means, of writing.23

    4.iRichard Ostrow

    23

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    29/142

    In this microcosm, Richard Ostrow renders Sidney Orr, a man transfixed by a

    moment in the distant past. By means of a machine, Ostrow becomes oracular. He knows

    the future, in the perspective of the second, artificial present, of the projected company,

    his family. He looks upon himself rather,from the point of view of himself at fourteen,

    in the other present and upon his sister, mother, father: it is 1953.24

    And now,

    mechanically and magically, Ostrow knows the future, knows the fate of each person.

    Time is delible. Ostrow returns to the narrative to ponder an ambiguous moment;

    a moment prelude to disaster. He wants to revise. He wants, possibly, another machine, a

    device that, via image or sound, will undermine his present, fold the present in half and

    thrust it backward, into the past. The present, he imagines, like the oracle, is notsingular,

    not a monad, but a multifarious phenomenon. With it comes the vertiginous sense thatI

    have been here before, done this before, and for this reason I should know what will

    happen next; vertiginous because my orientation is such that I do not (think that I) know

    the future. The sudden gift of this knowledge is like a blow to the face.

    Communing with the dead exposes my subjectivity to its limit, its extinction. I

    will eventually learn, in this dialogue, of my end.

    Consider the paradigm of the oracle. Oedipus visits Delphi to learn of his future.

    The oracle is mortal. Still, knowing some of the future the death of the supplicant; her

    own death, too Delphi is not as mortal as Oedipus. Her unlimited vision makes her like

    a god, somewhat immortal. From her perspective the supplicant is a ghost; from her

    perspective his death has already occurred.

    24

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    30/142

    My point is this: communicating with the past is an oracular activity. The

    communicator knows the future; he will then establish a future perspective in the context

    ofa moment in the past. The present, it follows, becomes like something past;

    immediacy, the presence of the communicator, is now exchangeable for what is dead.

    5. Grace I

    The sound of Orrs voice retains his wife, anchors her to him. His words are

    sounds alone, mesmerizing.

    In the shadow of a lie Orr reacts by expressing his need to draw Grace close, to

    prevent her drifting away. He associates the presence of untruth with loneliness, the

    removal of his wife, the distance she creates between them.

    How close am I to Sidney Orr?

    When proximity and mesmerism are accomplices to a word, skepticism must

    inform my understanding of that word. The space between the word and its meaning is no

    longer a secret. What happens herein, between utterance and understanding, between use

    and the thing itself?

    Green, says Orr,is innocence.

    Envy, Grace replies (49).

    Here is a possible resolution to this odd chord. Orr says innocence when he thinks

    envy; he cannot bear to utter the word. Grace says envy because she reads Orr, she

    25

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    31/142

    deciphers him; Grace knows his word connotes an opposition. She also knows that Orr

    could justifiably envy John Trause.

    This coding troubles Orr. When the meaning ofgreen drifts, it vivifies Graces

    exteriority, her antagonism. It is a minute example of Orrs inability to control the

    meaning of his own story.

    Orr, author of this account (and example), cannot thereafter put the characteristic

    of Graces into words. Possibly because he is not fully aware of Graces character;

    possibly because this element is ineffable, closely resembling the quality of his (Orrs)

    language that lets Bowen insult Eva with words from across the boundary of their

    relationship: Shes the kind of woman who could turn a man inside out, he says, of

    Rosa, whos seated across the room (24).

    The uncharacteristic word, behavior, motif reveal a facet of verity. It is a grisly

    clue. Orrs remark might be, Ill recount everything exactly as it happened. Although I

    would like to change the words, I cant. It is against my constitution to meddle with the

    truth. And mine is a true account. This innuendo, of course, throws verity itself into

    question. It throws Grace, too, into the light.

    Bowen is Orrs invention, a real character. Any uncharacteristic behavior of his

    can be chalked up to Orrs artifice, his fiction.

    The same cannot be said of Grace. And while the question of her

    uncharacteristicness is interesting, I do not think it is as puzzling as the primary question

    of her character. When Grace is in character, whos character is she?

    26

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    32/142

    Grace is half a character. As previously, with the rooms of Trauses apartment,

    the woman is real, and literal; of history, but also of Orrs reminiscence, his imagination.

    The conflict Orr experiences is not so much dramatized, or of the narrative, than it is one

    of ontology. Who is Orr? Where are the boundaries between his states of authorness,

    memoirist, character, and husband? In other words, Orr may want to record the true

    account of a conversation he has with his wife; but the closer he moves to what he

    perceives as the truth, the closer he also moves to his status as the author, the interpreter

    of his memory of the experience.

    Truth is transparent. Its inside and outside are one and the same. It does not

    require interpretation.

    What results from Orrs problem is a form of silence, silence between Orr and

    Grace, and silence in Orr himself. He does not question Grace. He defers responsibility

    for the answer to Grace, naively assuming that the problem is not his; which defers his

    own character. From another tack, ask, how else could Orr respond to Grace? He could

    be passive and think nothing of her behavior; he could be assertive and address the

    strangeness, confront her with What is the cause of your silence, disquiet, anger? Or

    more specifically, What did I do to make you this way?

    Orr calls Graces act uncharacteristic (54). He recounts, actually, in good faith,

    her silence, he recreates the mystery in the heart of his wife. Simultaneously he turns his

    back on the chasm of his own character. By not taking, or at least assuming,

    responsibility for the unnamable between them, Orr becomes uncharacteristic of Orr. He

    is divided, like Bowen, like Ostrow, like Dupin.25

    The other man whom Orr assumes to

    27

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    33/142

    be the cause of Graces silence, and to whom Orr leaves responsibility is an imaginary

    projection of himself. He is the marble-player; he is the detective with questionable

    ethics.26

    By not confronting Grace, and asking her why she is upset, Orr perpetuates the

    presence of his imaginary other; moreover, he suggests an illicit intimacy with this figure.

    Now, does Orr want this criminal unity? Does he want to be a man with a fractured

    consciousness, who looks at his wife and sees an imaginary woman (Eva), who goes to

    his friends apartment and feels that hes inside one of his own stories?

    The delusion is unlawful. Orr will trap Grace inside of a fictional idealism: Grace

    is a superwoman and a sphinx, all that a man desires, but also inscrutable, unfathomable,

    even dangerous.27

    Grace, clearly, is not a sphinx, or superwoman. Grace is pleasing, eloquent, free;

    words illegible to Orr.

    6.Nick Bowen I

    The other man is allied with chance. It is chance, Orr wonders, that governs the

    universe, and attacks his will to live, attacks his intention to write a true account. His

    narrative gives order to the universe.

    The other man the inscrutable (criminal) man of the crowd will not turn and

    reveal his face, not speak for himself.28

    He requires Orrs presence, Orrs voice. Thus a

    confusion of pronouns, a ubiquity and obscurity of OrrsI. How far into his fiction

    (Bowen) will Orr trespass? The I in this case sounds like the I of a narrator; but Orr

    28

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    34/142

    is not the narrator of Bowens story. He is the author. In any case, Bowens narrative is

    barely a story, and more of a sketch (22). Do these qualities the storys unstoriness; the

    misplacement of its narrator necessitate Orrs presence, guidance, interference?

    The writer, I wonder, does not ask himself, in the moment of invention, whether a

    characters action is right or wrong; that is, right or wrong in itself, apart from the

    scheme of the narrative. The author is like the oracle, in that he has a view of the entire

    drama, he knows the end in the beginning and middle. Even when he denies this, as Orr

    suggests; Bowens end ultimately comes from (by indictment, prediction) the hand of his

    creator.

    Orr, again, would defer responsibility for his characters action, since the action

    merely mimes the action of a different authors (Hammetts) character. This begs the

    question: Is there a unique, original action in fiction? Is the author ever responsible for

    what his character does; for what his bookdoes?

    The question of responsibility has a far reach. In the arena of unoriginal literature,

    the author has little or no responsibility for his character, reader, or himself. This fiction

    however, which is also a memoir, is purposeful, it has transformative potential for its

    writer. In this case the narrative seeks, not exclusively, to answer a question, to locate a

    missing day. Orris responsible to himself, to the success or failure of his project.

    Precisely, either he recovers the day, and thatcrucial aspect of himself, or he lets it

    deteriorate.

    Oedipus:

    29

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    35/142

    This man you know him? ever see him there?

    Shepherd:

    Confused, glancing from the

    Messengerto the King.

    Doing what? what man do you mean?

    Oedipus:

    Pointing to the Messenger.

    This one here ever have dealing with him?

    Shepherd:

    Not so I could say, but give me a chance,

    my memorys bad (1237-41)

    Unoriginality has pernicious results. As above, with Orrs removal from Grace,

    the ontological mystery about his position in his narrative the embedding of multiple

    narratives, the stories-within-stories reveals a principle of construction. Orr is

    cataloguing, forming a pastiche. One may carp and say the stories of the catalogue are

    each original pieces; and this might be true. The problem is in the form, the implication,

    in the precedent of a pastiche: this story shows how stories depend on other stories. This

    is a story that cannot stand on its own. As a result, the origin of the story is lost. The story

    that depends on (and from) another story opens the possibility of dependence on further,

    more microscopic stories. Originality, a theoretical but malcontent ghost, is shoved off,

    back, deferring to another narrative, another author.

    30

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    36/142

    Orrs words are sounds alone, mesmerizing. The meaning of the story relies more

    on form than it does content. Scheherazade, for example, contrives open endings to her

    stories, in order to continue the story the following evening; in order, as the story goes, to

    keep her head. Death, unoriginality would imply, is the real end, the only end to the story.

    The pastiche sends a spotlight, a straight beam for the reader onto Thanatos, the

    undisputable conclusion.

    But my gentle interpretation of the pastiche is also a story, another story, a figure

    of speech. Hammetts Spades Flitcraft, Flaggs visions (which I approach), and

    Delphi: the story is an indicator, a test (like Hamlets play) of the future. Its purpose is

    metaphorical. The experience of the future occurrence expressed in narrative interludes

    is actually an interpretation of the occurrence, an interpretation that wants to effect the

    present, to adjust our awareness of what is happening. Of course if the future occurrence

    is real, i.e., will we believe in the oracle, then it necessarily takes into account its own

    interpretation.

    At this point, I only anticipate the complexity of this problem.

    7. Oracle Night II

    Oracle Nightbegins with a war, an explosion, blindness, like Hamlet, with a

    staggering figure, the enemy, the question of identity. What does the pronoun I, here,

    designate? Whos there?

    Who am I? It is the distillation of every question for the oracle.

    31

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    37/142

    Who is the author of the text? Is it Sidney Orr? Maxwell? Trause? Someone else?

    Our narrator, Orr, contains this slight ambiguity; he owns it. Any time the question of a

    name occurs, I turn to Sidney, returning to the moment in the Paper Palace when M.R.

    Chang confused Orrfor, first, or, and then, oar(10). Is the narrator part of a conjunction,

    a connector of alternatives; can he unify what is disjunctive; will he correct or rephrase

    what was stated previously?

    Orris reason to pause, to wait, expectantly, for the conclusion. In his company, I

    cannot repress a sense of imminence.

    Or is he more tangible than that; a suffix to abstract verbs, a transformer that

    makes them more like me, an agent, aprojector, a sensor, an inventor? Or is he even

    more tangible, like gold, like the change in my pocket, like the block of iron holding my

    papers down?

    Or may I introduce alien homophones the letters dont care about borders and

    suggest that our narrator describes the difference between hors, a French word for

    outside and exception, and or, a French word for now and therefore; a

    description of the rope in a game of tug-of-war, where one side stands for immediacy,

    presence, action, lucidity, and the other side for misfits, anomaly, deferment, or even as

    my Mexican aunt invariably says about, for example, the dishes in the sink, maana?

    And also I cannot neglect its (relevant) permutations, the ora in oracle, which, as

    a verb, speaks, supplicates, prays; and also, as a noun, defines a boundary.

    Thus oracy, the ability to express oneself in and understand spoken language.

    32

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    38/142

    And, genetically unrelated, but not irrelevant, orrery: a machine that represents

    the solar system, the position of the planets at any given time.

    Orris part of a machine that makes us privy to all states of the cosmos.

    And, no surprise, his given name, Sidney, contains, among many things, the stars.

    I would like to stop there. Clearly, more can be said; more must be said. I wonder

    if Ill return to this, concentrating an investigation to and on Orr. At the same time, the

    puzzle is omnipresent, owned by the narrator, referred to in every word of his account. In

    a sense, there is no return for there is no turn, no leaving this man. The question of the

    day is, what can we do with Sidney Orr? Who is he?

    Lungs gasping for air, my skin perpetually awash in sweat, I drifted along

    like a spectator in someone elses dream, watching the world as it chugged

    through its paces and marveling at how I had once been like the people

    around me: always rushing, always on the way from here to there, always

    late, always scrambling to pack in nine more things before the sun went

    down. (2-3)

    Exiled from the world, Orr and his narrative present forms of blindness, amnesia,

    the despair in knowing that the mind contains what is known andunapproachable,

    inaccessible.

    33

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    39/142

    Is or, here, one word or several words? The linguist and the philosopher

    will perhaps say that each time, since the meaning and function change,

    we should read a different word. And yet this diversity crosses itself and

    goes back to an appearance of identity which has to be taken into account.

    If what circulates in this way is not a family of synonyms, is it the simple

    mask of a homonymy? But there is no noun: the thing itself is (that which

    is) absent, nothing is simply named, the noun is also a conjunction or an

    adverb. No more word: the efficacy often comes from one syllable which

    scatters the word. There is, therefore, neither homonymy nor synonymy.

    29

    7.iIn the Dark of Night

    The exiles view of the world presents itself in other figures. Everyone gazes into

    murky time. Genevive looks back in the way Orr looks back, manifest in her memoir,

    Oracle Night(61). Richard Ostrow looks back; John Trause looks back. Nick Bowen and

    Lemuel Flagg look forward, abandoning their prior selves. I am reminded, again, of

    Benjamins angel of history, a synthesis of the two figures I am describing.30

    Walking

    backward into the future, the angel watches helplessly as the singular event, the

    catastrophe, history,piles upward at her feet.

    The observer of history the direction of the gaze, forward or backward, does not

    matter cannot choose what he sees. The observation itself, it would seem, excludes will

    and judgment: the painful as well as the pleasurable will appear. That is, to gaze is to

    34

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    40/142

    expose myself, my vulnerabilities. The alternative is to close the eyes, to choose not to

    look. But is this plausible? Can Flagg, for example, make this choice? (He does: he kills

    himself.) Does Ostrow make this choice? (He does: he decides to not look anymore. He

    buries the dead for a second time.) Does Orr make this choice? It is unclear. In his

    resistance to chance lies an attenuation of his will, the air of determinism. Orr is not

    inquisitive; he is disengaged with the world, ambivalent to, specifically, Grace. He

    presumes that the direction of his course, and the compelling force behind him, is out of

    his control.

    Are these valid points? Or do I address one of the infinite tacit fictions rooted in

    Oracle Night?

    Flagg, who prevails over his destiny, could answer Yes, and No. His suicide

    demonstrates that the pull of fate (at least, at most, in his case) is escapable; or that there

    exist for one trajectory (of Being) two destinies. Fates, or Flaggs, his Will, a destiny

    that may only be suicide, the destruction of will; as ifWill were a slave to Fate, the

    intermediary between Fates Regime of the Future, and the present ego.

    However, Flaggs suicide is his fate. Flaggs interpretation of his vision, of

    Knotts infidelity as the doom of his marriage andas his end, may only be the

    penultimate act disguisedas the ultimate. Fate plays with us, with our notion of, and

    fixation with, uniqueness. Fate plays with Flaggs assumption that infidelity can mean

    one and only one thing, namely, his end.

    You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring

    35

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    41/142

    a breed of children into the light no man can bear to see

    you will kill your father, the one who gave you life! (Oedipus873-875)

    The end is a concept on the margin of our language. It sits on the fence, useful,

    but not fully trusted, incorporated, or understood. Flagg, Orr, Oedipus, myself, we cannot

    define this term. With our attention, it moves out of reach.

    8.Nick Bowen II

    Technically, Bowen is not struck by anything more than an impulse. His story to

    Ed Victory Ive already been struck by lightning once today (63) is idiomatic,

    banter, and also unique, with a kernel of truth.

    Lightning is a gargoyle and Rosa Leightman.Lightning encodes Flitcraft, the idea

    of levitation, the man who flies, changing places and identities in an instant. The

    gargoyle/Leightman/lightning is Bowens transformer and fable, like Hammetts Spades

    OShaughnessy, here is the potential of weightlessness, lawlessness, an opportunity to

    escape.

    In the fable, Bowen imagines that the gargoyle connects with him, imagines,

    moreover, that the gargoyle is intendedfor him. He goes so far as to imagine, by the

    phrase (63), that the gargoyle is meant to destroy him. But he escapes, he survives.

    One aspect of the aura of this tale suggests that Bowen disappears in order to find

    the cause behind the gargoyle, his assassin. He disappears in order to exact revenge.

    36

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    42/142

    Thats another story, only the beginning of which is suggested here. Bowen will write his

    own story; he will fictionalize, abstract a drama from an accidental event. This does not

    simplify the drama; I am not saying that Bowen was lucky in avoiding the accident. The

    accident itself is less meaningful than Bowens response to it. Bowen might have left his

    wife, and gone to Kansas City, regardless of a falling gargoyle.

    On the other hand, Bowen simply fictionalizes. Bowen knows that what he says is

    not true. But hes a man on the run. Hes covering himself with stock lies. There is an

    aura to the performance. It is the American Dream gone sour; the American Dream that

    lets anybody become anybody. Here is the place where everythings for sale, in a land of

    limitless opportunity.

    The lie, or is it merelyfiction, is thrown into the light by its contrast to an overt

    semblance of truth. The verity of Orrs addendum (63) can be tested; I can check Kansas

    City archives, for July of 1981. But to what end? Is it unheard of for an author to

    historicize fiction? No. Should I make a catalogue, parallel lists, of true events and false

    events in Oracle Night? The assay would do nothing for the novel; the truth and untruth

    of material is not important. No, not exactly that: the truth/untruth of material in relation

    to my world, the environment of this interpretation, in the context of this reader, is not

    important. The relation of truth/untruth is only important in the contextof the novel. In

    this regard, it would be informative to find out when Orr lies.

    8.iHis Parole

    37

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    43/142

    Bowen, in a place strange and flat (68), is in a revealing position. If my

    structuralist activity ofOracle Nightbegins with the four hundred and ninety five pieces,

    exhibits, evidence of Orrs acts, then it should end with a description of rules, some rules,

    a langue not of Orr but in which Orr lives.

    Another way of describing my scheme is this: the langue, a language system, is a

    murderer. I, a linguist, am a detective. The parole I define as a series of corpses. It is my

    job to study the corpses and infer the murderers M.O.31

    One corpse is Nick Bowen. He speaks in terms ofheight. To understand his life

    up to this point requires an understanding of verticality, of diminished horizons; an

    understanding of New York, of the relation between an absent horizon and contingency.

    Another corpse is the book in his possession, Oracle Night, which he reads four

    times in a row (65). I conjecture that Bowen transforms himself into Lemuel Flagg, the

    man who turns his gaze forward, blindly. Or, by further inference, conclude that a look

    backward, in reminiscence, is a look upon oneself; and since Bowen disowns himself,

    when he looks back, he looks onto nothing.

    It is the book. This is our talisman, our safe passage to the murderer. (Revisit

    Oracle Night.)

    Does Bowen see his future therein? Will he be betrayed, as Flagg is betrayed?

    Will he commit suicide, as Flagg commits suicide? It may be the case that the text of

    Oracle Nightis never the same text twice, for different readers. Each reader finds a

    unique future. Question: If that is the case, and since I know the end, what in Oracle

    Night describes Bowens destiny?

    38

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    44/142

    Another corpse, less obvious, is the word, any word, the minute aspect of the text.

    My reading (and yours) creates immediacy, a presence. I may turn back in the book, to

    review what Ive already read. This is significant in that the act of rereading is not

    analogous to the act of remembering. The past, unlike the text, possesses an illegible

    quality; the text is always legible. The reader has a diachronic and oracular view; there is

    no past, present, and future, in the textual context. These states are self-contained, unified

    in the whole, and in this view, closed text. I become, in the reader, a rendition of Flitcraft.

    My present can be abandoned. I can after Orrs guidance, cutting through the time and

    space of his narrative switchback, spiral, zigzag over the terrain,

    32

    return to a prior

    position, old ground, and trace again, in search of the spot, the mark, an M, or O.

    8.ii The Measuring Bandit

    The end is imminent. Move on, the text says: move! The review reading

    backward is only figurative. The fact is that the narrative is a one-way street, and Orr,

    in his oracular mode, has a teleology in mind: he envisions, momentarily, the collision of

    three lines, Bowen, Rosa, and Eva. For unclear reasons, he postpones this collision. He

    wont complete the story. The cause is perhaps fatidic despair: the constriction of destiny

    around a moment of anagnorisis. Orr traps himself in a character who is enlightened (by

    Rosa), and buried (by Victory), in a character who only looks forward, but who works for

    a man (Victory) at reviewing, revising, and restructuring the past, in a character who

    abandons memory, but who works for a man whose raison detre is memory.

    39

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    45/142

    The trap is a coil, like a spring: linearity in one plane, circularity in another.

    The trap is a braid: one strand is time, another space, and the third matter. Victory

    wants to disassemble his spatially (geographically) ordered library, and reassemble it

    chronologically (74), which he claims to be the superior system.

    Whatever the final organization looks like, it will not be entirely chronological.

    The geography will only be dispersed. From a particular angle, a glance, a spatial-order

    will endure. For this reason, Victorys project is short-sighted, forcibly without horizons,

    ironically self-aggrandizing.

    Yes, said Dupin. The measures adopted were not only the best of their

    kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the letter been deposited

    within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond a question,

    have found it. The measures then were good in their kind, and well

    executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the

    man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a

    sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs33

    9. Grace II: Intermission

    Grace suggests a moral, karmic order in the universe. When she asserts that her

    sickness is caused by, and in exchange for, her behavior toward Orr the prior evening, she

    is half right. Her sickness is caused by her secret (which I approach); by her complicity

    40

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    46/142

    with Trause, in his quip at Orrs embarrassing affliction, At least you know youre not

    pregnant (41).

    10.Eva & Rosa

    The story ofthe missing husbandis popular. Every husband goes missing some

    time. Without evidence of a crime, there is nothing inherently criminal about Evas

    absent husband.

    The response of the police to Evas request ricochets the problem, and forces the

    inquirer to internalize it, to realize that the problem is her(quasi-) problem alone. There

    is nothing the Law will do for her. Such a response puts the inquirer in an un-lawful

    position, in how her view differs from that of the Law. It compels her to take the law into

    her own hands; if she is to solve the problem, or at least discover if it is a real problem

    (lawful) or her fantasy (unlawful), then she will need to take action outside of the

    jurisdiction of the law. She will temporarily invent her own laws.

    Consequently, Eva lies. She pretends, in relation to the world, that her life is

    normal, that her husband is home, sick. The lie gestates in incredulity. It is possible, Eva

    considers, that Bowen is notmissing but only a philanderer. And one step closer to reality

    (or is it one step away?) is the idea of Bowens kidnapping: that Bowen remains her

    husbandbut has fallen into a trap, and is held captive. In any case, Eva is terrified of

    revealing one of two possibilities: either she has been abandoned, un-wifed; or she is

    crazy, in believing that Bowen has been kidnapped.

    41

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    47/142

    Her condition is exacerbated by her actions. She cancels Bowens credit cards;

    what choice does she have? Soon she will pay his delinquent fees (83), pay, she thinks,

    for her husbands (a third scenario) dementia. If Bowen wanted to hide from her, if he

    had a secret, he would have covered his trail. Payment of the fee annuls the secret: the

    man is out of his mind, or kidnapped, taken, in both cases, against his will. Still, without

    him, Eva cannot confirm one suspicion or the other. And she realizes that her decision to

    cancel the credit cards assuming theyd been stolen; her action makes sense; what

    choice does she have? forces her husband into a form ofdelinquency, and has possibly

    widened a rift between them. She must fear her own sense of obsession, of unduly

    maternity, of wanting to be too close to her husband. This is why she breaks down: Eva is

    in an impossible position. Any action is the wrong action. If she does not cancel the credit

    card, then the thieves who kidnapped her husband will use them (Bowen is either out of

    his mind, or kidnapped); if she cancels the credit card, then the thieves cannot use them;

    but if there are no thieves, and Bowen is notout of his mind, and absent by his own

    volition, then he will need the credit card, and her decision to cancel the card attacks

    Bowen, something Eva, who hopes to recover him, can not do.

    The bestscenarios delinquent fees suggest to Eva are these: Bowen is out of his

    mind; or Bowen is kidnapped.

    The paradox I brush against is this: silence is the word that dies in being born.

    The thread binding Bowen, Eva, and Rosa, is their relation to silence, an inexpressible

    word. In the way Bowen appeals to Rosa (via her answering machine), Eva would appeal

    to Bowen: At least tell me that you dont want to talk to me. The silence creates a

    42

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    48/142

    secret, the potential of a secret. And that the secretis speech itself, turns the content of

    this secret into its form: refusal to give the secret is also, in appearance, a refusal to

    speak. However, the inquirer does not know this. Her (and his) language differs from that

    of the secretor. At least tell me that you wont tell me they might ask, not knowing that

    silence un-speech is also spoken, also a signifier.

    11.Ed Victory

    The balance of qualities between technological device (Flitcraft, pills, telephone)

    and character (Orr, Bowen, Rosa) is the anthropomorphism of the device.

    Those notebooks are very friendly, but they can also be cruel (45)

    I am not as piqued by this phenomenon as I am by the opposite transformation,

    the techno-morphism of character. I mean by this term the proximity the character has to

    the metonymic devices of its creation, namely, paper, pencil, pen.

    The entrance to The Bureau of Historical Preservation is through a door in the

    ground, in a derelict train yard. The land is hatched with parallel and intersecting lines.

    Apart from the figures Victory and Bowen cut into the horizon, this is two-dimensional

    space, a plane. The desuetude of the yard is accentuated by the vast sky, the immediacy

    of open space, of freedom of movement, of irony and reminiscence. It is a wasteland.

    Where are the trains? They have been replaced by planes. Travel is now primarily by

    43

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    49/142

    flight, by rising up, by entering other dimensions. The middle of the country, once a

    center of commerce, due to its position on the line, is now forgotten. Commerce,

    monetary transactions, information: these aspects of culture transcend the plane, are now

    metaphysical, poised against the attractive force of the earth.

    Victory and Bowen momentarily iterate Orrs position in relation to his fiction:

    above it, in scrutiny, skeptical of its reality. Nothing remains but to open the door and

    enter, to find the cause of artifice in the works.34

    Bowen, who is a sketch (22), who already wants dimension, now immerses

    himself in flatness, penetrates the hatched plane and descends (like a gargoyle) into the

    earth. The descent is unnatural: gargoyles should not break their footing; and only miners

    and the deceased enter the earth. Breaking the plane, inventing a different line, trajectory,

    and dimension, breaks the perimeters of the narrative.

    With the disruption of linearity, the cause of any moment is obscured.

    But whatlinearity? Orr is inside his Flitcraft, touring disjunctive space and time.

    His narrative is full of holes, loops, mirrors, passage ways. (Bowen, for instance, in

    entering The Bureau of Historical Preservation, trespasses in the domain of the author by

    entering a metaphorical footnote, a subtext and metatext, the site of explication.) If I am

    to define linearity I will need to include these qualities.

    Or should I abandon the word? Am I, in talking about linearity, standing in a

    wasteland, in the heartland?

    That is, linearity is obsolete. What I mean by this word is something it fails to

    describe. Something, I admit, that I fail to fully grasp.

    44

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    50/142

    What linearity? What is transgressive about Bowens penetration of the plane?

    The question does not have an answer. I am describing, I hope, the real vertigo I

    occasionally experience when reading having climbed higher in the book than I meant

    to, and looking back, looking down and also the vertigo (no, its inverse,

    claustrophobia; he climbs down, in,and looks up) of our protagonist, Bowen.

    Two shadows, then, rise and fall upon us: the first, from the house of memory; the

    second, from a shrine to the present (91). We might live in memory; but we worship in

    the present. I can relax, let myself be, eat, sleep, make love inside of memory; but when

    inside the present, I stand back, I lower my eyes, venerate, I look actually, spiritually

    at a hole in the ground, at an idea of my own presence, an idea of my love for the Law, in

    abeyance and good faith.

    11.i The End of Mankind I

    Victorys end of mankind(92) is the beginning ofOracle Night. The novel is a

    collection of short stories, satellites around the planet Mars.

    The novel is the story of an oracle, and orrery, and of everything they contain.

    Return to the beginning. Orr has poor vision. His eyes do not focus properly. He

    wonders if he is a stranger in someone elses dream.

    Is Orr Flagg, a blind oracle? Is Orr Flaggs vision, the avatar of destruction?

    I am contemplating, in notes such as these, a structure for an essay that will use as

    its foundation every story included in Oracle Night. Over this foundation will be a two-

    45

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    51/142

    part, maybe three-, superstructure Bowen, and post-Bowen; or Hammett, and Wells

    with periodic interruptions of present circumstances, Orrs excursions, say, to the

    stationary store, and diner.

    Return to the beginning. It is not clear whether Orr recovers from his condition of

    drifting along like a spectator in someone elses dream. The transitional phrase,

    connecting then to now, the introduction of his story to the story, or the present of Orrs

    reflection, is Time passed (3).

    11.ii Work

    Bowen persists in the delusion of the existence of fate. He is rigid, unwilling to

    the break the rules (and contact Eva). The rules, he believes, define him. Like Flitcraft,

    Bowen adjusts his life to falling objects, and then when objects stop falling, he adjusts his

    life to their suspension. The order of the day orders Nick Bowen.

    His reasoning is tautological. What does his refusal to accept what happens as if

    something else could happen; as if he has a choice in the matter suggest of the structure

    of his universe? What kind of man does not acceptwhat happens? Fate supercedes

    choice; acceptance is of fantasy. In other words, Bowen acts like a slave to structure

    (Fate) who rebels by retaining his will (his name). Secretly he knows that Fate is his

    delusion; and is not that knowledge what makes a delusion a delusion? That is the

    unsettling problem of Bowens (and Orrs) character. Ultimately the self-centeredness,

    46

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    52/142

    the reflexivity of his narrative corrodes the narrative. The fiction, in calling attention to

    its fictionality (i.e., being delusional), works against itself.

    Bowens reasoning is tautological not only in its circularity, but in its apparent

    uselessness. His project, the puzzle forget the past; start over as someone else like

    Orrs, is unsolvable as long as he continues to examine the structure and purpose of the

    project itself. A meaningful conclusion, and non-tautological solution,will use sources

    and references outside of the terms of the problem. The solution requires a selfless

    gesture. The other conclusion, fictionally speaking, the one within the self, is a kind of

    suicide. This is Bowens flawed demonstration, his willing denial of the past, and his (of

    which I will not yet speak) destiny.

    Victory offers Bowen parodies of this project. Victorys wives, he recounts,

    abandon him or die young. There is, Victory might suggest to Bowen, nopermanent

    erasure of anything. Victory can always marry again; and what will interfere with that

    choice is out of his control. It would seem Victorys notion ofnothingness contains more

    of an idea of permanence than does his notion of somethingness. The things of and in the

    world remind him, and me, of their disappearance, absence, loss, movement toward

    nothingness; the no-things of the world, should they appear, remind us not of their

    presence, but of their determination to remain no-things, their formidable endurance.

    Disappearance, then, is a phenomenon of the realm of the living, and is only an aspect of

    transience. Bowen, in this case, of something, only pretends to erase himself; he really

    has no idea, Victory is suggesting, of permanence.

    47

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    53/142

    Despite this insight, and my rendering of him, Victory is not dialogically

    philosophical. When he speaks, he speaks out, telling, not asking. Inadvertently, then, a

    tenuous equality is established between the two men over secrets, words that cannot be

    said. It is the trust shared by crooks of different gangs: the enemy of my enemy is my

    friend.

    12. Catastrophe I

    Bowen fails to see Victory as someone different from himself, as anything more

    than a small-time crook. Victorys warning goes unheeded, and a trap is sprung. Trause

    (97), the test and bait, infiltrates the narrative; the double-agent of Victorys story marks

    Bowen, and the unfortunate man is locked inside an underground bomb shelter.

    How is the room structured? What are the circumstances of Bowens demise?

    Ed has installed a self-locking door, and once a person enters that room,

    he cant get out again unless he uses a key to unlock the door from the

    inside

    This is a hydrogen-bomb shelter, not an ordinary room, and the

    double-insulated walls are four feet thick, the concrete floor extends

    thirty-six inches below him, and even the ceiling, which Bowen thinks

    will be the most vulnerable spot, is constructed of a plaster and cement

    combination so solid as to be impregnable. There are air vents running

    48

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    54/142

    along the tops of all four walls, but after Bowen manages to detach one of

    the grates from its tight metal housing, he understands that the opening is

    too narrow for a man to crawl through, even a smallish man like himself.

    (104)

    The room is a sibling to a jail. In order to exit, the person on the inside must be in

    possession of the key. The person on the outside does not need the key to go in. Without

    the key, that is, this partition is a one-way passage. Bowens dream of disappearance, the

    destruction of his past, is fulfilled.

    35

    The prisoner will pass the moments before his expiration reading Oracle Night

    and a 1938 Warsaw telephone book. The only way this activity can be interrupted is by

    his discovery; by the action of someone on the outside; someone, ironically, above, who

    will penetrate his impregnable ceiling. Bowen is helpless; nothing more, at this point,

    than a reader.

    With his premature burial (immersion in a strange flat land), Bowens two-

    dimensional likeness is disseminated in the streets of Kansas City, appearing on walls and

    lampposts.Have you seen this man? (105).Will the viewer of the image consider looking

    down, looking up? The missing man, it is assumed,is among them, on their plane, in their

    market, or bar, at their gas station; not beneath the ground. Furthermore a further

    distortion of Bowen the missing man has attributed to him a signifier of guilt. The

    innocent do not disappear; the innocent do not have their image disseminated. Bowen is a

    narrative anomaly, a kind of criminal. He is outside of the Law, which will not recognize

    49

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    55/142

    his disappearance, since the so-called (by Eva) disappearance possesses no criminal

    evidence. Simultaneously, Bowen is also de-criminalized, in that there is nothing

    contextually criminal about his condition (so what if youre accidentally locked in a room

    it happens all the time). A suiting description of Bowens state would be narrative

    purgatory: like Wakefield, Bowen momentarily risks falling out of step with the universal

    order.36

    His condition is neitherdisorderly nororderly; he is on the edge of, and between,

    paradigms of understanding, risking his character, risking my ability to read him and talk

    about him.

    I will clarify this condition in another way, by contextual analogy.

    Bowen will pass the moments before his expiration reading Oracle Night. The

    manuscript ofthe novel is therefore inside the locked room, the site of Bowens death.

    Any ontology I associate with this characters situation, I can logically associate with his

    possessions. (His things will meet his doom.) When the lightbulb is extinguished, and

    replaced by the orange coil of the space-heater, Bowen is clearly in his penultimate

    moment. The problem is this: Oracle Night, or something we must call Oracle Night, is

    not in the same moment. It is here, in my hands; it is the subject of this essay. And if the

    novel is salvaged, how and why is Bowen not?

    The paradox is presently in this form: the manuscript titled Oracle Nightis lost

    and unreadable, but also extant and readable. The ontological status of the manuscript is

    ambivalent. It demands of its reader the momentary suspension of understanding, of a

    complete categorical description. Like Wakefield (another ambivalent figure), Oracle

    Nightforces its reader into a tenuous position, into the cleft in the states of order/disorder,

    50

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    56/142

    and movement/stasis. There is no telling on which side we might rise. Worse, Oracle

    Nightdoes not offer a choice.

    Im afraid that from this silence

    something monstrous may come bursting forth. (Oedipus 1181-82)

    The moment prior to revelation, prior to an understanding of the structure,

    destiny, is horrific. Reading Oracle Nightelevates the reader to such a point of eminence

    that I become like a king, a riddle-master, a man of action, who will very soon learn the

    ignominious truth: who I think am is a fiction, and one with cruel consequences.

    In the silence of this novel it is ubiquitous; I am complicit I permit the

    gestation of a monster.

    51

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    57/142

    Part Two

    The strange demise of Nick Bowen marks the end of Orrs story. The nature of

    the death-sentence startles Orr, in how it reminds him of the vicissitudes of fiction, and of

    the exigencies, in the same stroke, of reality. He reconsiders his condition. He reminds

    me of the beginning, of a hospital.

    In this part of the essay, I analyze the next twelve sections of the text. Orrs

    reference to the beginning (106) suggests a backward-fold in the narrative; coupled with

    the fact that Orr creates an oracle, what follows is a prophetic fulfillment of the first part.

    The foundation I have delineated is now built upon and developed.

    13. Silence I

    Orr, playing a god-like author, adumbrates a system of ethics. He considers

    saving Nick Bowen; as ifhe, Orr, were not solely responsible for what befalls his

    character.

    Still, Orr rereads. I had put Bowen into the room (108). He is not only the

    author; he is, like me, an analyst, a reflector, and a player in the fictional experience.

    Like me, he reads deconstructively, resisting the flow of time, causality, and

    expectation. We look beneath the hood, at the works: the engine, the texts, the cosmos.

    The Aleph.37

    Bowen, at this pause and juncture, should be given a choice contra

    Hammetts episode.38

    Bowen, unlike Flitcraft, needs a way to evade destiny, a way to

    52

  • 7/27/2019 Max Ranken Burg

    58/142

    create his own destiny, to write his own conclusion. Orr will invent a form of

    independence, of self-reliance; he will abdicate his position, and make Bowen the author

    of Bowens narrative. The universe, Orr wants to believe (or wants Bowen to believe) is

    as Jocasta envisions: Its all chance, chance rules our lives (1070). The chancy

    universe, I wonder, is the universe in which the individual may realize his Will, may

    impose his order. But there is a quiet paradox about this vision. If I take the chance-

    ordered (chaotic) universe to mean that there is no discernible, meaningful order in the

    universe, and also thatthere is so-called free will, and that individuals, aware of their

    freedom, construct for themselves meaningful lives, then will not such meaningful lives

    appearorderly? Furthermore, for the aware (i.e., enlightened) and ambitious of society,

    will not hisfreedom of will impinge on the will of someone who is less aware and less

    ambitious; and will not the inferior end up depending on the superior; and will not this

    relationship have structure, and through this structure to accomplish the end of the

    superior will predictability, and order? The universe aside,free will implies, and

    necessitates, societal order.Meaning is a communal phenomenon.

    That is an optimistic and unrealistic reading of chaos. The truth is tyranny, at its

    best, intends to batte