. Spinning .

It dawned on me what this book reminds me of:  Heronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.  I’ve always loved that piece because it fascinates, there is so much going on at once that one cannot take it all in in a single viewing.

O’Brien’s novel has three stories going on, one nested within another like the Russian wooden dolls.  They belong together, but the thread is tenuous and the reader must seek to fit them together just so.  One must look and wonder about one scene, and before it’s completely understood in itself, we are pulled out and dropped into another.  The birth of the reader perhaps?

Not really into this book; there’s a lot else going on so that I’m easily diverted.  It’s also a matter of the way this book is written.  It’s like reading several novels at once–which, of course, it is.

But I picked it up again for a few minutes this morning as I counted to 300 slowly while holding down  the pilot light knob on the shop heater since it keeps going out on me overnight and it’s freezing in here.  But I loved this sequence in the "coming to life" of the character, Mr. Furriskey:

He found it in the third wall he examined and it may be valuable to state–as an indication of the growing acuteness of his reasoning powers–that he neglected investigating one of the walls as a result of a deduction to the effect that the door of a room in the upper storey of a house is rarely to be found in the same wall which contains the window. (p. 71)

There are several things happening here:  Furriskey is the creation of Trellis, who is the creation of the first person narrator of the physical book which is the creation of Flann O’Brien.  So we’re several layers deep here.  O’Brien is telling us how a character is created–born then, at the exact point in which he appears in a story.  What intelligence do we give him?  What experience?

And all the while, O’Brien is having a good laugh.

O’Brien separates the stories in this novel by prefacing them with the narrator/author’s notes:

Further extract from my Manuscript on the subject of Mr. Trellis’s Manuscript on the subject of John Furrisky, his first steps in life and his first meeting with those who were destined to become his first friends; the direct style:  He remarked…etc.  (p. 67)

These prefaces are in italics, and separated by white space.

Thank God.

But the idea that O’Brien presents us with, that of a writer writing about a writer (not counting O’Brien himself), would of course be complicated without the "mapping" that he provides. 

I wonder how hypertext would work in this particular novel, but the idea is interesting. 

O’Brien also takes on the problem of a full grown protagonist:

He remarked to himself that is was a nice pass when a men did not know the shape of his own face.  His voice startled him.  He had the accent and intronation usually associated with the Dublin lower or working classes.  (p. 67)

It amazes me how much planning and attention to the progression of story line this novel must have taken.  And yet, this also had to be a work inspired.  That, I suppose, is one of the elements necessary in such a complex novel:  an author who enjoys and knows how to plot, how to storyboard.

Which brings me to another question: How much would new technology such as a software program like Storyspace have helped O’Brien plan this out?

Amazing to read; must have been near impossibly amazing to plan out, the beginning of the novel within the novel:

Propped by pillows in his bed in the white light of an incandescent petrol lamp, Dermot Trellis adjusted the pimples in his forehead into a frown of deep creative import.  His pencil moved slowly across the ruled paper, leaving words behind it of every size.  He was engaged in the creation of John Furriskey, the villain of his tale. (p. 54)

Thankfully, writers aren’t all pimpled in prose, but O’Brien gives us a picture of the determined writer, the serious mindset of creativity.  What I love here is the "leaving words behind it of every size" that implies a mad, rather frantic outpouring of story. 

Extract from Press regarding Furriskey’s birth:  We are in position to announce that a happy event has taken place at the Red Swan Hotel, where the proprietor, Mr. Dermot Trellis, has succeeded in encompassing the birth of a man called Furriskey.  Stated to be doing "very nicely", the new arrival is about five feet eight inches in height, well-built, dark, and clean-shaven. (p. 54)

So somebody has finally been honest about how fictional characters are "born."  At least this is one way of thinking about it.  We don’t normally start our story with the birth of our protagonist, but he/she must have a beginning, and that beginning, O’Brien may be saying, is a fully grown adult birth.

On the other hand, given the premise O’Brien has already put forth of X number of existing characters that are merely redrawn by or recast into different scenarios by novelists, this may explain Furrisky’s birth announcement.

Either way, any writer is going to learn something from reading this novel.  And besides, what fun! 

O’Brien told us in the very first pages that this book would be like no other.  That it would be multi-layered with many beginnings and endings.  That its characters would be drawn from a well of personalities already established.  That the only way to write a new book of fiction is to take the knowns, shake them up in a bag, and pull out plot, action, story, theme, character and setting at random.

Here he tells us (and he does tend to tell us a lot–exactly how the novel is written, exactly what is happening so we don’t get lost) the setup of the innermost (?) story, one being written by the character in a story written by the character in a story written by the character in his story:

Most of them are characters used in other books, chiefly the works of another great writer called Tracy.  There is a cowboy in Room 13 and Mr. McCool, a hero of old Ireland, is on the floor above.  The cellar is full of leprechauns.

(…) Trelles, I answered steadily, is writing a book on sin and the wages attaching thereto.  He is a philosopher and a moralist.  He is appalled by the spate of sexual and other crimes recorded in recent times in the newspapers–particularly in those published on Saturday night.

Nobody will read the like of that, said Brinsley.

Yes they will, I answered.  Trellis wants his salutary book to be read by all.  He realizes that purely a moralizing tract would not reach the public.  Therefore he is putting plenty of smut into his book.  There will be no less than seven indecent assaults on young girls and any amount of bad language.  There will be whisky and porter for further orders.  (p. 47)

Now what, do you suppose, is O’Brien saying about the reader?

Without that first bit of research I did on this, I might not have realized what is going on, but O’Brien, at his own pace, handles that:

I was talking to a friend of yours last night, I said drily.  I mean Mr. Trellis.  He has bought a ream of ruled foolscap and is starting on his story.  He is compelling all his characters to live with him in the Red Swan Hotel so that he can keep an eye on them and see that there is no boozing.  (p. 47)

Metafiction–a story about writing a story.  There are many things going on here, and O’Brien has indeed rather brilliantly tied them in together.  Trellis is one of his own characters.  Trellis intends to write about two of the other characters that our main protagonist has been slowly revealing. 

Some of the things I’m noticing:  The vivid descriptions of the main character’s characters appear to be in sharp contrast to his own physical demeanor; they are bold and strong whereas he describes himself as having "the feeble citadel of my body."   

There is also the reluctance of the narrator to define his characters with specific status, and yet, his character of Trellis intends to actually compartmentalize them by putting them in rooms within his setting of a hotel.

I believe that O’Brien has carefully, very carefully thought out exactly what he wants to impart–meaning that there is a message within this, and it may be particularly for writers–and has put much time into coming up with the means to properly lay it out.

Amazing.

O’Brien, with this novel, has shown that he knows the conventional form and elements of story, and therefore has become quite expert at twisting and flaunting them.  His novel approach of the many-faceted seemingly unrelated plot paths is even more complicated with his method of tieing a semblance of story together. 

One of the interesting ploys is to use "notations" to make a flat statement that might otherwise be presented in imagery or standard infodump form:

A Tuesday evening at the Red Swan, example of:  In the darkness of the early night Trellis arose from his bead and drew a trousers over the bulging exuberance of his night-clothes, swaying on his white worthless legs.

Nature of trousers: Narrow-legged, out-moded, the pre-war class.  (p. 42)

Offered as an author’s manuscript note, by allowing it in, there is no necessity of writing it in another form, weaving it into the story by conventional methods.  It’s rather ingenius.

But then there’s also the question of knowing some of the information that an author doesn’t always include.  Too, the question of why the author (and which author?  O’Brien his character of the young novelist?) gives us what he does. 

I don’t know that "concept" is precisely what I mean here, but with the multilayered structure of this novel (narrator present (?) plus three more separate story lines), it is a learning experience in itself, but the author teaches even more because of the nature of the form.  Listen to this:

The novel, in the hands of an unscrupulous writer, could be despotic.  In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of credulity.  It was undemocratic to compel characters to be uniformly good or bad or poor or rich.  Each should be allowed a private life, self-determination and a decent standard of living.  This would make for self-respect, contentment and better service.  It would be incorrect to say that it would lead to chaos.  Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another.  The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet.  The modern novel should be largely a work of reference.  Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before–usually said much better.  A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimbleriggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature.  (p. 32)

Holy guacamole.  This is pretty heavy stuff.  On the one hand, it would appeal to Barthes in the taking of control from the author and putting it in the hands of the reader.  On the other, it appears to reference the fact of the limited story lines and the extent of variation of character traits.

Storytron may figure into this.  I have to think on this some more, but wanted to get it written down and highlighted because I have a feeling that we’ll be coming back to this again and again.  I’m inclined to believe that here, in this paragraph, is the clue to O’Brien’s whole concept of writing fiction.

Okay, I admit that I had to check this out so I did just some quick research to figure out what was going on here.  While at another time in life I might have joyfully accepted without question, or perhaps understood it without question, the way my brain’s been working lately I became lost after the first few pages.

This is hypertext before hypertext was invented, I think.  There’s a narrator, a college kid who appears to be writing stories (looks like three of them) and he’s got the absolute right idea:  Why just one beginning?  Why just one end?

Perfect timing for my reading of this–if I can follow it–as I come closer to developing something in hypertext myself.