Acknowledgement
Kane X. Faucher, July 2009
The author, not wishing to resurrect the anger and frustration his readers have experienced in the past, is deliberating on the catchphrase that would best open his novel. Perhaps the author would do well to begin with a snippet of dialogue, something startling, engaging, yet not too impenetrable as to turn his readers off. He would do well to plan this beginning, for this shall not only set the tone for his story, but will determine the level of reader interest. The author has never been daunted by the blank page, knowing very well that by his prolific, graphomaniac nature he has filled so many of them - with exceeding craft or hackery, he refrains from saying. He ponders opening his novel with an action scene of some kind, setting the space and time coordinates clearly so that less reader guesswork has to be done later when attention flags. But, then again, perhaps he would like to at least lure the reader further into his pages and make that discovery without having such things as place and era so baldly stated.
The author is negotiating a new kind of style, one that may maintain his literary integrity with sophistication, but not so niche that it becomes, like Joyce or Beckett, inaccessible and of interest only to scholars and the ostentatious. A straightforward story is what the author is trying to hash out, but since his previous published outings have been more character- and idea-based, he worries that he does not have the creative chops to arrange an active and interwoven plot. Perhaps, the author thinks, he can study Gogol's use of the arabesque in writing, emulate first, and then synthesize the right elements he requires to forge a style of his very own. He does worry about emulation, or being declared a copyist. He now knows that, after having written so much juvenilia where he thought revealing the method of his craft so visibly to his readers was a means of demonstrating his cleverness, it is better to hide the messy kitchen and its dirty cooking vessels from the sight of the finished meal. Nothing of the process should remain in the final product, unless - and this is where his silly and irreverent attitude makes its insistent reprise - he wishes to side with the conceptual arts where process and documentation is itself the art. But, as he well knows, it has been done to death, and conceptual art does not obtain, sells poorly, and runs the risk of alienating potential readers who may have much better things to do.
The author sets aside all misgivings and doubts, rushing headlong into inscribing that header line that will open his book: "The salad fork was balanced on Clark's finger, much to amusement of his dinner companions." No, this will not do. It already sounds unbearably stuffy, classist, ridiculous even. More importantly, it lacks any real edge, and it is doubtful that any reader would feel compelled to investigate further as to why this unknown figure named Clark is balancing a salad fork on his finger. There is no hook in this. The author must delete this line and make another attempt, but he finds it hard not to dwell on this salad fork. But, then, he fears that by focusing on this fork, he is emulating again, borrowing from the formula of Proust and his spoon. The author also acknowledges that he refers too much to authors and philosophers, which runs the risk of making him appear pretentious.
The author would keep digging...Sift through that tangled bracken of memories, blowing off miniature siroccos of dust from old sentiments, dipping his hand deeply into the dark and craggy depths blindly until he could come up with whatever it was he was looking for - not that he had any idea what that was, yet. He feels like a miner in his own memory, his face a sooty smudge. And now he is worrying that with such tiresome delay that his readers will once again take flight even before he has the opportunity to conduct his little opera of words. Another empty house. Another miserable failure of an opening night. If only he can just start the novel rightly, with something clever, catchy, flashy, sexy...something that will at least catch the attention of the financiers at the publishing house. Maybe he will go for something topical or a cause for justice, like a wretched detention camp where the innocent huddle in the cold, are disgraced, frightened by snarling German shepherds, and bullied by men in uniforms that are meant to signify righteousness. And then he can mask it, just so, and in that way not directly implicate any one group or nation, bringing it up to that timeless universal that will ensure that his work - despite its rooted historical context - will be an enduring lesson in service of true liberty.
And now the author takes a break to have a cigarette and calm his feverish thoughts. He realizes they are far too lofty and ambitious, and, besides, there is a veritable glut of writers out there - some with direct experience - that are far more capable hands at this kind of work. No, he is not the right candidate, and would only make a hash of the whole thing, make it perhaps too polemical or wheedling. And, again, besides, without direct experience his testimony would lack any credibility, and he would be exposed as being some kind of fraudulent sensationalist, an exploiter, an emotion parasite, an avaricious cretin making his literary fortunes on the suffering of others.
Carpe noctum, the author thinks, but the times have changed and he no longer writes furiously into the night, preferring now the early morning. Should he bluff the plot? Was his misguided zeal secretly to trick publishers into contracts only to capsize them with dismal sales? No, the author is resolved to do something about that fork, if not Clark. Clark is too plain a name compared to his usual exotic choices, but perhaps a bit overreaching and compensatory, fey, condescending, lifeless, insincere. The author ties up the long train of his adjectives now, for it is doubtful anyone would actually believe his self-deprecation is anything more than an act. If that were not enough, his own guilt at not providing much in the way of plot in his previous outings is barely masked by his penchant for padding his paragraphs with long and exasperating descriptions. He is dimly aware from his own reading of Victorian literature that over-description makes for a bland and bloated read. No, he must take aim at setting down a plot, and not just any plot. It must have complexities and twists; all the elements must enter into golden braids. The plot must tackle something relevant and topical, so he must forego the usual standbys of experience and patently refuse to write about writers, artists, and all those with whom he has intimate familiarity. Such a preoccupation with such figures is narcissistic and weak on realism...Not that writers, artists, philosophers et al are not real per se, but they occupy a central and overwhelming demographic in his books at the exclusion of people in other occupations. But here emerges his worry: if he were to portray, say, a birdwatcher or truck driver as his central character (or even a deuterogonist), would it lack credibility? Could he write the unknown convincingly.
Ha ha. The author laughs, a bitter laugh, for if the last proposition held, then it could be very much questioned that in his writing about writers he himself may not be one. No, he is a writer, but perhaps not a good one. Perhaps, then, he should write about bad writers. It would be a gesture of good faith that if he were to do that, that he continue to write badly. Writing badly about bad writers in a bad writing style. Appropriate, yes. Credible, yes. Interesting? Again, not quite.
The author becomes reabsorbed to an obsessive degree with that salad fork. Why, he thinks, is there a specific fork for salad? It is a silly and meaningless question, he concedes, because the answer is too readily obtained with one trip to the internet or the library. If he had meant the question in a more philosophical way, it may have had some potential for profound exploration...but it would prove rather unlikely that this would be of much interest to many. Perhaps instead he should play with some kind of hidden metaphor between the fork and the salad. Something pastoral? The hayfork and the bale? An ironic insertion of the rural to this otherwise classist and urban scenario, or rather that the urbanites prosper from the toil of the farmer without paying any gratitude. No, no, that would stink of Marxism, and the whole novel would be thrust into that enormous waste bin of leftist ideological preaching masquerading as literature. The urban-rural, capitalist-worker motif has been overdone and is terribly boring at this point.
Clark stabs Simone with the fork for no apparent reason. One moment in laughter, and the next the fork is protruding from Simone's eye. Hm. The author can see some merit in this construction, but again it falls afoul in the zone of sensationalism and the absurd. Clark is being positioned as some kind of modern Caligula, but that, too has been done. Start over.
Clark turns from the table, pointing an accusing fork at the author, castigating him for clumsy phrases and stillborn plots. Hm. Not so much a novel idea in either sense of the word novel...The author is already running a risk of performing a poor rewrite of Tristram Shandy. Perhaps the author may elect to move Clark's accusing fork at the reader, direct implication and the very basis of a second-person perspective. What books are written in second-person? Choose your own adventure and self-help manuals for overcoming gluttony or one's failure in business. Not good company, but perhaps the perspective could be redeemed even if it does violence to the reader.
Ah, yes, the author thinks: he does enough violence to the reader as is with his poor writing. But it always runs the risk of reducing the reader to becoming as flat and universal so as to avoid any assumptions, and writing that aims for universals tends to be...uninterestingly non-specific.
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