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Gutters and Comics

For my take on this assignment, I will focus on our reading from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and the two terms he wrestles with: comics and closure. I choose to focus on this because of three reasons. First, McCloud directly ties in with the new medium we focus on for this section and our primary readings. I think it is necessary to look at new mediums as other narrative forms. Second, this ties in with previous readings from our Abbott book. And lastly, I found the material particularly informative and entertaining because of the creative approach McCloud takes in delivering his arguments.*

 

In his first chapter, McCloud focuses on setting a definition for the word “comics”. Apparently, he did a solid job in 1993, since the only other definitions that pop up if you google “comics” are either something that is funny or is used as another word for comedian. McCloud bounces off of Will Eisner’s take on comics with the phrase “sequential art” to build his own definition (7). He goes on to define comics as: “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (9). As he mentions towards the end of the chapter, this definition is broad enough that it includes “comics” of different mediums, (even fotonovelas! A fave for Latinx abuelas, which he alludes to on page 20). I appreciate that it does include different modes because it gives a sort of legitimacy and history to extract from to the study of comics. The definition sets boundaries for what constitutes a comic, yet also sets limitations to it, so that something like last week’s “fiction vs. fictionality” debate does not happen (though maybe our in-house comics/pop culture expert may differ). As McCloud points out, this definition also excludes single panels, like those of political cartoons etc (20). By his definition, memes (I bring this up because they are my favorite) are also excluded. But what about those memes that have two pictures? (Here are some examples: A and B) Does this mean only some memes can be comics, but not others? Or are memes completely separate from comics?

 

Still, I think it’s of importance here that McCloud sticks with the word “sequence” as it ties in with the idea of time or cause and effect (he expands on this idea in his TED talk here). This sequence idea calls back on one of the first definitions of narrative we encountered in class: David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s “A chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space”. In particular, the assumptions of cause-effect as it pertains to the narrative form in comics tie in with the idea of sequence and the idea of closure. In this way, we see directly how comics fit in comfortably within narrative.

 

In his third chapter, McCloud ties the word “closure” with the usage of “gutters” in comics (70). We have encountered the term closure quite often in class and Abbott even spends a chapter on this. Remember that according to Abbott, closure refers to the resolution of conflict in a narrative that may or may not occur (Abbot 53). It is mostly based on the reader to find it and fill in gaps (also expanded on in Chapter 9 of Abbott) in the narrative if necessary. McCloud uses this term similarly as it pertains to the use of “gutters” (the blank spaces between illustrations) (66). He maintains that the gutter in between a sequence of images is where “the imagination takes two images and transforms them into a singles idea” (60). Because our different lived experiences and how our mind works to fill in gaps, two images are pinned together and thus formed into a story of sorts in our heads. Our mind provides closure in filling in the gaps and creating a story for the two images to be related.

 

At the end, McCloud details out 6 different forms in which closure through gutters can be delivered in comics for different effects (70-2). First, he gives us the example of movement-to-movement, an example in Watchmen is on the first pages where there is a zoom out from the happy face sticker and up to the point of view of one of the detectives (8-9). Like McCloud states, in this sequence we don’t need much closure in the sense of understanding what we are seeing. The gaps are filled in by the zoom-out and the text boxes. Second, is action-to-action which can be seen in page 56 when Eddie Blake/The Comedian is hit by the woman. We see the woman raise the glass and then hit him, one action expressed in two sequenced panels with little effort on behalf of the reader in concluding what was represented. Third is subject-to-subject, which I believe is exemplified by the panels from 198-9, especially the images of Rorschach/Kovacs with the meat cleaver since the audience has to picture what happened next to the dogs given previous images/dialogue. Then there’s scene-to-scene, in Watchmen it appears at the beginning of Chapter II, with the changing scenes between Blake’s funeral in New York and Laurie’s visit to her mom in California. We, the reader, have to fill in the gaps of where we are depending on the conversation and characters. In terms of the aspect-to-aspect example McCloud refers to, perhaps the panels on 96-7 in Watchmen classify under this definition. I say this since the reader does not get a general location and we only get a general emotion and action that is happening with no other clue other than John looking up at what ends up being Mars. I was pressed to find an example of the non-sequitor in the comic book, but maybe my colleagues can help me out? If we want to look at an example, the ones provided by McCloud on page 72 might suffice.

 

I want to conclude my post by pointing out two last things and asking for your thoughts. First, I think this happened more than once, but on pages 250-251 there are two scenes that I found interesting and did not know where they fit within McCloud’s categories for gutter-usage. The top scene on page 250 and bottom scene of page 251 both depict the same background split by gutters, but with the same characters appearing within them. What did you all make of this? Where would you place this in terms of McCloud’s definitions? Lastly, what did you all think of the imaginary paratext provided in the comic book? Does it take away from the “comic”-acy of Watchmen or add more to it? Why?

 

*Complete side note: small shout out to McCloud for being a relatively #woke white dude and including Mexican art and other non-Eurocentric art forms in the history of comics. I think it would be too much to assume that this was intentionally planned as a small recognition to the end of Latinx Heritage month, but I’ll take it nonetheless. Still, this begs another question: if non-European folks/communities of color have contributed to the shaping of this medium, why have they continuously been underrepresented/ignored in these narratives (Watchmen included)? Maybe McCloud does tackle this elsewhere, but it wasn’t in our reading so just dropping this off here.

Text, context, and fictionality in “Ten Theses”

In my discussion of “Ten Theses about Fictionality” by Henrik Skov Nielsen, James Phelan, and Richard Walsh, I would like to begin with the last of the ten theses because it seems to provide a plausible impetus for the article as a whole. Thesis Ten reads, “The importance of fictionality has been obscured by our traditional focus on fiction as a genre or set of genres” (70). Nielsen et al. then continue, “The conflation of fictionality theory with fiction theory has been to the detriment of both, since it has meant a general neglect of the study of fictionality outside fiction as well as of some of the most important cultural functions of fiction itself” (70). Thus, this article serves to rectify an oversight which Nielsen et al. see in the way we think about fiction and fictionality, lumping them together into one category “to the detriment of both” (70). Since any discussion of “fictionality” will necessarily take place within the imposing shadow of “fiction,” I think it will be useful to consider how Neilsen et al. at different times compare, parallel, and distinguish between these two categories throughout their article. 

While the project of the article is primarily to differentiate the two and to emphasize fictionality, the first thesis lays a foundation which can apply to both equally: “Fictionality is founded upon a basic human ability to imagine” (63). This description of a “basic human ability” recalls Aristotle when, in the Poetics, he describes the “two particular causes, both natural” for poetry’s existence: “From childhood men have an instinct for representation…And then there is the enjoyment people always get from representations” (13). Imagination and representation are not directly analogous, yet there is a shared creative component to both which I believe is worth noting. 

Nevertheless, Nielsen et al. are primarily concerned with distinguishing fictionality from and preventing its being subsumed into fiction. So, how do they distinguish the two? Nielsen et al.’s approach is to highlight the “rhetoric of fictionality” (which, incidentally is the title of Richard Walsh’s book) (64). Thus, fictionality is in the context. While scholars and theorists of literature, in the shadow of the New Critics, focus their attention (primarily) on the text itself, analysis of fictionality (from a rhetorical perspective, at least) focuses on the context—the sender, the receiver, the rhetorical purpose, the setting. All of these things make fictionality something different from, say, a benign make-believe story or a malicious bald-faced lie. As, Nielsen et al. state, “fictionality resides in context rather than text” (67). And theses Three, Four, Five, Seven, and Nine, in particular, deal with these contextual concerns (i.e., the rhetorical situation) of how and where a work of fictionality is formulate, sent, received, and interpreted: theses Four and Nine deal with the sender, theses Three and Seven deal with the sender’s intent, theses Five and Nine deal with the sender and reception.

If, in fact, “fictionality resides in context,” then a necessary side effect of this is that, as thesis Six states, “No formal technique or other textual feature is in itself a necessary and sufficient ground for identifying fictive discourse” (67, 66). This argument might call to mind H. Porter Abbott’s discussion in Chapter 11 of whether textual markers can enable readers to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction. While Abbot relies on Dorrit Cohn’s assertion that thought report is a dead giveaway that a work is fiction, that argument doesn’t seem to suffice when discussing fictionality. In contrast, if fictionality is defined by context, as Nielsen et al. make clear, then it stands to reason that fictionality cannot be identified by means of the text alone. Thesis Six serves to underscore the fact that, although fiction and fictionality may have sprung from the same imaginative tendencies, they are defined, identified, and evaluated in entirely different ways. 

Furthermore, the fact that, as Nielsen et al. state, “Global fictions can contain passages of nonfictionality, and global nonfictions can contain passages of fictionality,” reveals that fiction and fictionality are not different, mutually exclusive categories of the same thing (analogous to different genres of literature, for example)—rather, they are entirely different types of things altogether, which may be used together or separately (67). As Nielsen et al. state, “Thus, nonfictionality can be subordinate to fictive purposes, and fictionality can be subordinate to nonfictive purposes” (67). The mention of “purpose” here brings us back again to rhetoric and to the importance of context. 

I have tried, thus far, to distill some broad premises from Nielsen et al.’s article. I would now like to pose a question for discussion. To return again to the last thesis, which criticizes the way fictionality has been obscured by fiction, at the end of the article Nielsen et al. state, “The conflation of fictionality theory with fiction theory has been to the detriment of both, since it has meant a general neglect of the study of fictionality outside fiction as well as of some of the most important cultural functions of fiction itself” (70). Nielsen et al. are here criticizing a lack of distinction—an inability to discriminate between these two very different modes of discourse. This is understandable. Yet in the last paragraph of the article, Nielsen et al. list off some of the examples of fictionality they have employed throughout the article: “The Hunger Games, Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Barack Obama’s speeches—the list could go on and on” (71). I get the sense that Nielsen et al. are intending this roundup to illustrate the widespread and sweeping usage of a mode of discourse which has hitherto been ignored or unrecognized. However, can a category which includes a civil rights leader’s poetic use of metaphorical language and a president’s elaborate joke at a correspondents’ dinner—and much, much, much more in-between—be a useful category to talk about? The fact that so much can go into this category of “fictionality” suggests to me the possibility of an inability to discriminate between very different things. I buy into Nielsen et al.’s presentation of a rhetorical approach to fictionality, however I am not convinced that this category is not too enormous and unwieldy to be a useful topic for discussion. Perhaps you might say the same thing about fiction or narrative, but I’m not convinced, and I’d love to hear an argument defending fictionality as a useful category.

Language in the Un/truth of a Murderer

Socrates once spoke of the duplicitous nature of writers, suggesting that because writers are merely copying the words of another’s action, the final truth of that action is thereby unknown to them. It is in a sense, as though you are viewing a kind of artisanship through a mirror and then attempting to describe the work yourself. If that is, in essence the work of writing, and ultimately what typical writers do, then Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer removes the “true” artisanship of criminal journalism by a degree of at least four. In an almost funhouse mirror representationalism of the relationship between a journalist and their subject, the straightforward narrative of this story becomes diffracted a number of times:

  1. told first as the story of Jeffrey MacDonald’s attempt to reorient his life after a trial of murder
  2. through the eyes of Joe McGuiness, whose motivations are being reflected
  3. through the eyes of the various trial lawyers who worked with and against him,
  4. finally in a story being told by Malcolm herself.

We know that readers within a story always have to consider the idea of an unreliable narrator and in this (story? novel? report? biography?) Malcolm’s hyper-focalization on the unreliability of the hydra of tales around a singular moment makes up the bulk of the story she’s attempting to tell. For me, none of these moments are showcased stronger than the two points in the saga where the ideas of Untruth and Language are examined in great detail. Considering that this is the genre of nonfiction, the fact that these two points both glue together and destroy the story, is a significant one because as Malcolm herself explains throughout, you can’t deliver understanding on anyone’s side without both being ultimately questioned. The degree to which each concept represents itself in the story however, is the question I think, most worthy to be considered.

On page 50, when it comes to the concept of Untruth, Malcolm acknowledges both here and later in the story that it was this particular testimony that did the most damage to MacDonald’s defense. She writes, “Wambaugh’s ‘category of untruth’ concerned what everyone later agreed was the pivotal moment of the trial,” and later suggests that the fact that the way the defense tried to present this argument ultimately cost MacDonald his freedom, by negatively impacting the attitudes of the jurors. However, I find this juxtaposition of the argument the defense presented of themselves as writers simply “doing what they do,” against say, Socrates’ own understanding of writers, interesting. The argument was simply that in the craft of writing, for the sake of the story one much simply do what is necessary to get it done. The narratological argument of living characters makes an appearance here as well, as Wambaugh argues against Bostwick suggesting that the book (curiously only “interesting” ones) is like a living person, and that writers have a moral and almost parental-like obligation to bring the book to fruition, like childbirth. This grey area also concerned Socrates because it meant you considered yourself part of whatever you observed, and this connection is the heart of Malcolm’s story. But what then, is the Untruth here? MacDonald never confesses to the murder, merely that he can’t remember it. McGuiness never tells the jury that he deliberately mislead the defendant only that appears that way. Malcolm is attempting to understand the connections of the trial, only to break off the majority of her connections, and gets piles of factual data with no cohesive result. The untruth rules the narrative.

With regards to Language, on page 67 while having dinner with Michael Malley she and Malley discuss the fact that MacDonald’s penchant for flat, uninteresting language and suggest that this too, cost him his chance at freedom. “Language is not one of Jeff’s skills,” Malley says, “If I were to remake Jeffrey MacDonald, I’d start with his language—simply to make him more expressive. Language is what makes people human, and it is the primary way we have of knowing who other people are.” In this, however, repeatedly throughout the story, Malcolm talks about the fact that this too, was McGuinness’ problem with MacDonald and that he invented a character on the page to cover up for this perceived shortcoming. Later, she reveals through her conversation that MacDonald was a different person before the 20 years of trials took their toll. In that same dinner, we discover that he was effectively able to convince the Army tribunal to dissuade their conviction. So does this mean he used to be a round character who has been subsequently flattened? It can be read that way, for sure. But I also think the question of language is important for the story since of course what we know of the trial, the subsequent lawsuit for defamation and the settlement all exist from the language Malcolm chooses to express. Most of the trial lawyers won’t speak to Malcolm in the current work of her book. The language she has (I assume) comes from taped depositions of the trial itself, her own interviews, and the letters all parties sent around. So like she laments herself, in a sense, Malcolm is building a story where there isn’t one, prompting the question what story is this, even? How has she herself not built literary characters out of people’s lives pre-existent in the actual world? Isn’t that itself non-fiction?

Ultimately, it’s clear that for this story, Wambaugh is subtly suggested (as Malcolm has made clear she prefers not to confirm in absolutes) as a kind of villainous influence. Through a kind of inherent purity of “straight talk,” Bostwick and the prosecution successfully convinces the jury (and Malcolm) that this Wambaughian narrative device of “untruth” is essentially white lying. Even the fact that she uses his name as a verb has effectively reduced him to an indirect scoundrel of lawerly sorts.

In effect, he and the other “elite” nonfiction writers who make up MacDonald’s defense maneuver their understanding of language and character to invent—or due to the negative connotation of that word, maybe construct—places, times, and conversations that suit their needs for a given tale. But what instead, has Malcolm done? Given that this is the first time I’ve ever read a nonfiction story that wasn’t explicitly autobiographical, the layout of this particular story would suggest a novel, ish. We don’t have the epitext of things like chapters, but the reading of the pages definitely suggests a kind of narrative that lends itself to the chronological flow of a sort of morality tale, wrapped in layers of deceit, manipulative heroics, and subversive understanding.

Malcolm herself states this very obviously. Subjects want to be used. Writers want to use them. So if we take her at word, considering the lenses of both the Untruth and Language, what then, can we do as writers to avoid the pitfalls of narratological parasitism? Where is the agential confirmation of boring subjects to express their equally boring lives? The backbone of this psychologically capitalistic meat grinder is effect, the publishing house. So where can we effect change to ensure restorative justice becomes separate against the abiding concreteness of language and/or the ephemeral truth of the accused?

The questions are ones I think every crime based nonfiction attempts to consider. But perhaps instead, I think that Malcolm’s ultimate complexity behind the conception of Untruth is closer than any of us would willingly like to admit.

There are four theoretical frameworks for time, plot and progression that are outlined in this chapter of Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates.

1.) James Phelan/Peter J. Rabinowitz

The two authors seek to explain the difference between ‘plot’ and ‘progression.’ ‘Plot’ has typically referred to the chronological sequence of events within a narrative, with special attention paid to the ordering of the events as well as how they are connected.

‘Progression,’ on the other hand, refers more to what is called ‘textual dynamics’: “the logic of the text’s movement from beginning to middle through ending” (58). Here, rather than a chronological arrangement of events, many stories are arranged somewhat atemporally as a means of creating a difference in story-time (the chronology of events) and discourse-time (in what order they are presented). This is because rearranging the events can aid in strengthening symbolism and themes, add character insight, or simply create more tension and therefore make a more enjoyable reading experience. In other words, there is a point to presenting events out of order, and the author knows this.

The authors also seek to combine the ideas of ‘plot dynamics’ (broadly, the events/characters/etc. which drive the story forward and seek closure) and ‘narratorial dynamics’ (gaps in knowledge between the narrator, narrative audience and authorial audience, as well as how narration is used with respect to the relationships between the narrator, narrative audience, authorial audience, and characters).

The authors then outline several ways of looking at the beginning, middle and end of a narrative. The first two are fairly straightforward and adhere to traditional understandings of how a story works (Exposition, Exposition, Exposition/Closure being a rather technical way of looking at it, and Launch-Voyage-Arrival, which is a much-simplified version of Freytag’s pyramid, or perhaps Campbell’s monomyth/hero’s journey). The third row is how the text progresses in terms of narratorial dynamics (and how those dynamics change over the course of the text) and the fourth is ‘readerly dynamics’ which focuses purely on how the reader experiences the text and what they come to understand about the narrative as a whole upon completion of the text.

2.) Robyn Warhol

The author examines how a narrative unfolds with regards to the works of Jane Austen. With the exception of Persuasion, each story is a sort of lateroversion of the familiar ‘boy meets girl’ plot: “girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl and boy are united in the end (66).” However, there are subtle variations regarding how even such a simple plot can play out, and the author suggests Austen’s talent was in “the details, the subtle renditions of conversations and situations (67).” However, Persuasion offers a lesson in diverging narratives in that two endings were written, and many editions of the text include both, with one inserted in the main narrative and the other separated. Such a choice allows for greater interaction with the text, as both endings are valid.

3.) David Herman

The author constructs a series of questions regarding the difference between a narrative’s chronological ordering and its structural ordering. The questions can be (to a degree) boiled down to ‘How are the chronological events related to their arrangement in the text, and how does this relationship create a narrative world?’

The author refers to ‘simultaneous narration’ such as in sportscasting, but focuses on ‘retrospective narration’ and how the arrangement of events can cast some of these events in a new light, as well as how the use of certain tenses such as subjunctive can imply their impact on an imagined future (or one that comes later in the text). The author also discusses how duration and frequency can be used to further highlight a reader’s understanding of the text, with examples such as a longer period of time being compressed into a shorter amount of text, or the increased frequency of an event suggesting its importance. Both of these help to make meaning.

The author ends with the suggestion that rereading an atemporally organized text can and does create a different reading experience, as the reader now enters the narrative world cognizant of the events both as they unfold chronologically as well as textually, and can better pick up on how they are related, thus answering the questions the author poses at the beginning of this section.

4.) Brian Richardson

The author begins by attempting to discern where the true beginning of a narrative lies. Typically, a text will introduce a problem. However, as the text continues and perhaps begins to incorporate atemporal organization, the reader sees that the textual beginning is not necessarily the narrative beginning, as events further back in the past have an impact on the story’s ‘present.’ This can be further complicated by how many modern writers use a textual beginning simply to establish setting, mood, etc., for the time being ignoring narrative conflict, while some postmodern writers have ‘deconstructed’ the narrative’s beginning in various ways.

The author goes on to reiterate the difference between fabula and sjuzhet, then giving many examples of the latter, with several that even avoid one set sjuzhet by allowing the reader to arrange the events in whatever order they please. The author also gives a number of examples of texts that play with temporality in terms of creating a closed loop (Finnegans Wake) or a narrative where time acts upon characters in different ways (Orlando), even a narrative that allows readers to choose which events are canonical (The Mixquiahuala Letters), which throws the concept of sjuzhet out the window, as such a text shows there is no actual fixed order of events to sort through and arrange chronologically. The author then considers the ways a narrative ‘progresses’ to borrow a definition from Phelan/Rabinowitz. A text can model its progression on that of an earlier text, or it can impose artificial structural constraints, or even ‘denarration,’ where certain events that have been recounted are then exposed as false (or at least suggested to be).

Finally, the author looks at how a narrative ends, and the trend of moving away from endings in which the closure firmly wraps up all lingering elements. Beginning with realist authors, narratives started moving away from this as it was arguably unrealistic, as real life does not just end. Some texts end with some, but not all elements satisfied, while others end in unexpected and/or ‘unsatisfying’ ways, such as an ending being deliberately withheld by an author, or multiple endings being presented.

If we consider Herman’s questions in regards to the episode of Fargo we watched this week, we can make a few connections between the first two scenes. The first is a flashback of Dodd Gerhardt as a child accompanying his father to a meeting with a rival crime boss. The meeting ends with Dodd and his father killing the competition. On its own, this scene retroactively shows how Dodd was set on the road to ruthlessness we see in 1979, and also explains why Dodd is more loyal to his father than his mother: his father taught him how to run the business. Putting this directly before the second scene in which Dodd takes his nephew to rough up some of their current competition shows that Dodd sees himself as the successor to his father, not only in terms of actions and ideology but in passing down the skills needed to keep running the family business.

Keep reading if you want something a little more interesting.

Consider an Editor, or A Supposedly Good Thing I’ll Never Read Again

This marks the second time that I have attempted to ‘get into’ David Foster Wallace, as well as the second time I have utterly failed. This is due to the fact that I love cult authors like Philip K. Dick but am unnerved by those who seem to actually have a cult built around them, like Wallace. I previously read a few sections from Consider the Lobster, choosing that over Infinite Jest because the latter is admittedly intimidating. This is purely due to its length and not its reputation as a book that will ‘totally blow your mind, dude,’ as more than one (white male) person who (probably) never read it has told me. Proust is intimidating for exactly the same reason. Wallace might find such a comparison pleasing, whether he would choose to admit it or not.

First, Host. I think there’s something in here, nestled beneath the unending streams of asides. Unfortunately, that something isn’t much, and this is due to the massive problems with focalization. Ostensibly, this story is about John Ziegler, conservative radio host. But I will argue that this story is actually (heavily) focalized on Wallace himself. In the course of telling his story about John Ziegler, he falls into constant asides showcasing his own thoughts. Page 338; “He keeps saying he cannot believe they’re giving Simpson airtime. No one points out that his shock seems a bit naïve given the business realities of network TV news, realities about which Ziegler is normally very savvy and cynical.”

The first sentence in this quote is a very simple, factual account, which supports the idea that Wallace is providing a narrative of Ziegler. The second sentence confirms two things. First, that this narrative is not at all the story of John Ziegler but is actually about what Wallace thinks of his subject. Sure, you could argue that every narrative is constructed by the author, sewn with the threads of rhetoric. I’ll buy that. But rarely is it so tangible as it appears in Wallace’s writing. While he rarely makes reference to himself in text, his writer’s voice is so overwhelming (I’m deliberately not using the word ‘strong’) that we are constantly aware of his presence. He hovers over everything, like a god watching His subjects.

Which brings us to point the second. This is a narrative about how David Foster Wallace is smarter than you.+ Who, you? Yes, you! Don’t feel bad, he’s smarter than me, too! Despite the fact that Wallace in this piece is encroaching on a world not his own (broadcast journalism), he makes it clear through these constant asides (arguably ‘paratextual’ material in regards to Genette’s definition of such) that he actually knows everything about it. More, in fact, than the people within it. That seems to be the major point of this narrative device of what I’ll call ‘Floating Footnotes’ (for reasons I’ll get to in a moment). To show that he knows everything.

Sure, you could argue that this piece is meant to be read online (as I did supplementarily), where these FFs can be clicked on, minimized, maximized, where they can be ignored if the reader so chooses, and that putting the piece in print more or less defeats the purpose. But a) here we are, reading it in print, and b) they are clearly not meant to be ignored. They are THE most critical part of this narrative’s construction as they give weight to Wallace’s omniscience.

Imagine coming across this article without the FFs. Wallace is talking about lots of stuff you’re unfamiliar with (because, remember, he’s smarter than you), so it becomes necessary for you to do a little more research. ‘Peaking?’ (Page 278) What’s that? Don’t worry, Wallace has you covered. He’s already done the research and has made the work of looking it up unnecessary. He has curated the research for you.

A problem with that, though. He is firstly introducing a term most laypeople (as we all are) are not familiar with, and he is then providing you his subjective answer. When confronted with a new concept, I tend to do a little research and then form my own thoughts about it. It’s a three step process. 1) encounter new concept, 2) research it and learn objective facts about it, 3) form my own somewhat subjective understanding of it. But Wallace has, in his quest for omniscience, completely skipped over step 2, which is really the most important one, as it is a meeting point for all the subjective opinions that are birthed from an objective set of facts. But there’s no step 2 here, and instead of being given the opportunity to figure something out for ourselves (because, remember, we are not as smart as David Foster Wallace) we are instead told how to think about something and what to think about it by a more subjective voice. The opportunity to make ourselves smarter by engaging in the infinite cornucopia of information on the internet has been taken away from us because Wallace already knows how and what we should think. The infinity of the internet has been shrunk. And that defeats the purpose of the internet (and, by extension, the structure of this article as something akin to the internet folding in on itself).

The problem is more complicated than that. In this example regarding ‘peaking,’ his explanation is not up to snuff and we aren’t really given enough information to come up with a clear definition of what this is. I chose this example deliberately because, as someone who did his undergrad in this stuff, I do know what peaking is and could provide a detailed, thorough and objective explanation of what it is. In this one small sense, I am actually objectively smarter than David Foster Wallace. His FF here is simply not very good at accomplishing what it seems to want to accomplish. I only know what peaking is because I already knew. I had someone else read this FF and they were unable to understand what it is. So I had to explain it.

Unfortunately, I cannot hope to compete with DFW because of the scope, number and measure of his knowledge, as evidenced by the FFs. Even if I beat him once, he’s got me beat a thousand other times. And that’s the issue I seem to have with Wallace’s writing. He seems to be in constant competition with everyone and everything, from the people he’s writing about (foreshadowing of the last paragraph here) to you, the reader.

To get deeply into the nitty-gritty theory here, I turn to Slomith Rimmon-Kenan’s Narrative Fiction. Put as simply as possible, there are two types of ways to create and/or develop characterization. The first is ‘direct definition’ by the author, i.e. me saying “David Foster Wallace is a bad writer.” That is a direct definition. The second way is ‘indirect presentation’: “A presentation is indirect when rather than mentioning a trait, it displays and exemplifies it in various ways.” There are a few sub-groups here such as action, external appearance, and environment (both physical and social). But the important one here is speech: “A character’s speech, whether in conversation or as a silent activity of the mind, can be indicative of a trait or traits both through its content and through its form.” Since the entirety of Host is, in essence, Wallace’s ‘speech,’ much of it completely extradiegetic and therefore outside the purview of the other ‘characters’ (to the point where, on the surface, he is barely even a real character in the narrative) we can examine how it indicates his trait(s). And the conclusion that I have come to, for the reasons listed above, is that his central trait is that he is smarter than everyone else. I would go even further and suggest that, due to the prevalence of this one trait, he is as E.M. Forster would suggest, a ‘flat’ character. Now, to be fair, Rimmon-Kenan herself points out that Forster’s simple binary classification falls apart quite easily, as in his hypothesis, ‘flat’ is to ‘simple/undeveloping’ as ’round’ is to ‘complex/developing.’ Rimmon-Kenan rightly sees ‘simple versus complex’ and ‘undeveloping versus developing’ as two different axes rather than one, and gives a number of examples of characters who are simple but developing (‘Everyman’) or complex but undeveloping (Dickens’s Miss Havisham). All well and good, and I don’t disagree. However, I concur with Forster here in that there are characters who can be both simple and undeveloping.

Rimmon-Kenan, by way of Ewen, further defines these axes. “At one pole on the axis of complexity he locates characters constructed around a single trait or around one dominant trait along with a few secondary ones. Allegorical figures, caricatures, and types belong to this pole.” Well, Wallace is a type, alright. Furthermore, the other axis: “Allegorical figures, caricatures and types are not only simple but also static, and can thus also occupy… one pole on the axis of development.” If you agree with my assessment of Wallace as having one dominant trait, then it must therefore follow that he is simple and undeveloping.

This is not always a bad thing. Allegorical figures, caricatures and types do serve a purpose in certain kinds of narratives. Unfortunately, they don’t in this one. And if the central character is inappropriate to the narrative, the narrative is going to suffer. Imagine Hamlet with the titular character staying a sad sack throughout the entirety of the play. Imagine the Creature from Frankenstein never learning to read and write.

False equivalencies? Maybe. Probably not. But I maintain that Wallace, despite anything else, is acting as both focalizer and focalized here (as per Genette’s definition). He is in charge of shining the spotlight wherever he wants it to go, but through his constant internal monologues, it is clear that he is the one we are supposed to be focusing on. More from Rimmon-Kenan: “In principle, the external focalizer (or narrator-focalizer) knows everything about the represented world.” Well, that certainly applies to Wallace in this sense. Also, “When the focalized [Wallace] is seen from within, especially by an external focalizer, indicators such as ‘he thought,’ ‘he felt,’ ‘it seemed to him,’ ‘he knew,’ ‘he recognized’ often appear in the text.” However, since this is a first-person account, those kinds of phrases are already built in due to Wallace’s perspective in relation to his own thoughts. So what is interesting, and perhaps even innovative (I’m loathe to admit) is that Wallace serves as both external focalizer and internal focalized. We could perhaps call this ‘first-person omniscient.’ Innovative, yes, but also ridiculous. The only other famous example I can think of which comes close is Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, another character who seemingly knows everything but really knows nothing, who narrates the lives of those around him only through a lens of how they relate to himself, who goes on far too long and says little of import. The difference though, and this is very important, is that Shandy is a fictional character meant to be ridiculed. Shandy’s constant digressions and inability to just shut up and tell the story are the entire point. He, the narrator-character, is the butt of the joke. Wallace plays this same role but plays it straight. If Sterne is telling a joke, then so is Wallace. The difference is that Wallace’s joke isn’t funny.

What makes it extra frustrating for me is that, in both of these pieces, Wallace seems to largely be looking at the world around him and saying ‘look at these idiots/freaks/assholes/foreigners.’ His role as focalizer diminishes those around him, subjecting everyone else to what Woloch calls ‘character compression.’ Despite the fact that the people around are, in fact, real people and by definition not ‘flat,’ Wallace makes them as such. And despite the fact that Woloch was talking about Jane Austen in the following quote, the point can just as easily be applied to Wallace: “[V]arious minor characters exemplify certain traits or ways of thinking that the protagonist must learn to discard. This is the pattern in all of Austen’s novels: dialectical progress for the central protagonists, and the flattening, fragmentation, and dismissal of many minor characters who facilitate this progress as negative examples.”

OK. There’s nothing wrong with that in theory, even supposing that we are allowed to, in the course of non-fiction and journalism, ‘compress’ people around us so that they serve a narrative function. But, as Woloch says, the entire point of this compression is to aid in the protagonist’s development. Now, you could argue that Wallace is not the protagonist of Host (and you’d be wrong) but there is no arguing that he is the protagonist of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. So, if you agree with Woloch’s point that reducing secondary characters to the level of “parody” is justified if it results in character development for the protagonist, then it’s OK that everyone around Wallace is an idiot/freak/asshole/foreigner. But as I already said, Wallace’s character doesn’t develop throughout these pieces at all. He begins and ends as the smartest person in the room, anywhere and everywhere he goes. And to me, a narrative where the central character spends all of his time showing off how smart he is and not learning/growing as a person is a shitty, shitty narrative. It can work when it isn’t played straight, such as in Tristam Shandy. It can’t work when it is played straight, like with Wallace.

[Sigh]… On a purely structural level, I suppose the main thing I should be getting from this essay is the narrative gimmick of the FFs. But I find them to be often pointless, as the one with peaking added nothing just as many of them add nothing. They are, when you get right down to it, footnotes in the traditional sense (at least structurally… sort of). But they are not placed at the bottom of the page. They are everywhere, visually muddying up and interrupting the main narrative (I suppose we could use the term supplementary, to tie this back to the Abbott readings). And what’s more, they aren’t even good footnotes. Real footnotes are for further explanation along with references and pointing interested readers toward further resources. Wallace only gets the first part of that in his FFs, with his own knowledge and opinions as the only necessary resource. This clearly posits him as the ultimate authority. But as I already explained, he’s not. Far from it. And furthermore, there are just too many of these FFs. There are FFs that have their own FFs. And beyond non-explanations, they add nothing of importance.

It’s clear to me that what Wallace really needed was an editor. Someone to tell him when to stop. I’m sure he had an editor, and I even found an interview with one while writing this, but he obviously didn’t have a good editor. It’s hard to tell someone who writes a 500,000 word smash success novel that he’s written too much. He can lean on that as proof that he knows better.

But both of these essays are entirely too long and entirely too pointless. If, hypothetically, we removed the unnecessary FFs from Host we are left with a not-that-interesting story which is somehow still too long, as Wallace couldn’t stop himself from interjecting even in the main, non-supplementary narrative. Again, on Page 338; “The poem’s final version… takes such a long time because of confusions about just how to conjugate ‘drown’ as a future contingent.” The implication that, during this completely unnecessary anecdote, Wallace’s subjects sat around discussing the future contingent in so many words is laughable. Instead, he is using his (unfinished) Harvard education to point out how stupid the people around him are, that they don’t know which tense of the word ‘drown’ to use. Does this (the complicated way of explaining something simple, or even the entire anecdote itself) add anything? I say no. But Wallace is a writer in love with his own prose (something, to be fair, I’ve been accused of myself) with ultimately little to say, so he puFFs it up.++ Everything in his writing is supplementary.

Which brings me to A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Like most of the think-pieces for literati magazines, such as Harper’s, which originally published this piece, this one is totally superfluous. As an avowed Marxist, perpetual poor person and descendant of generations upon generations of failed revolutionaries, anytime I think about the habits of the cognoscenti of the Humanities I am also reminded of people like Emperor Hirohito who, at the same time his country was committing unspeakable acts against humankind, was also one of Japan’s foremost marine biologists. My point is, those at the top can indulge in whatever they want, in whatever measure they want. This sometimes gives them the idea that whatever they want to indulge in must be very important, as they themselves are very important people who seldom hear the word no. Sometimes that’s good (marine biology) and sometimes that’s bad (crimes against humanity). And sometimes, as in this essay, it is utterly, utterly banal.

The best thing I can say about Supposedly Fun is that Wallace keeps the footnotes where they’re supposed to be.

Ever heard the song “Common People” by Pulp? Supposedly Fun set that on constant rotation in my mind’s ear. Let’s keep something else in mind, though. From the moment he was born until the moment he died, whatever depressive maladies he may have suffered from aside, David Foster Wallace was always going to be fine. He was always upper-middle class at the very least, and that meant he would never have to deal with things like choosing to pay for food or medication. You know, things ordinary people actually have to deal with. Furthermore, that meant there was a certain leisure-ness he and all people of his class can (and do) indulge in. ‘Ordinary’ life is vastly different for people of different classes, not just down to one’s ability to pay the rent, but ideas of value. Ideas of luxury. For people without money, what real money looks like is the very, very visible. A mansion. A Lamborghini. A gold toilet. All of those things are out of reach. But a ‘luxury cruise’ may not be, if you save your pennies for years and years (and years). It may just be a way for the have-nots to have, even if only for a few days. And in that sense, it becomes an object of curiosity for the haves. The ways, means, pleasures, etc. of the hoi polloi are one of those things that people with real money and real power can indulge in on a whim, just like Hirohito indulged in marine biology, knowing that when he got bored he could just discard it.

When we talk about cultural appropriation, we often talk about ethnicity. A celebrity showed up to a Halloween party in a Native American headdress, a singer wore a bindi in her latest music video. But we rarely talk about class, because it’s much harder to codify. I’ll be blunt. ‘Luxury’ cruises are not the kind of thing rich people do because their version is called owning their own boat and employing a crew. So the act of going on a luxury cruise and making a profit off it, as Wallace does here, is a form of cultural appropriation in that he is taking something that doesn’t belong to him and he only slightly understands, and using it for his own ends without understanding the repercussions. Is it as bad as the hypothetical examples I provided above? No. But it’s not exactly good.

This is my close reading of this article, and it stems from a few passages, but these stand out; “A certain swanky East-Coast magazine approved of the results of sending me to a plain old simple State Fair last year to do a directionless essayish thing. So now I get offered this tropical plum assignment w/ the exact same paucity of direction or angle.” Page 256. By equating the cruise with another stereotypically poor people activity (and he emphasizes how little money was spent at the fair), he and the magazine he is working for are again saying, ‘hey, let’s check out what the poor people are doing.’ He then spends the next two pages giving us a whirlwind chronicle of the wacky stuff that happens when poor people spend money and think they’re getting ‘the luxury treatment’ and the subsequent system that is set up to accommodate that. The article itself is a joke wherein class differences are the setup and poor people are the punchline. Wallace spends much of the article gawking at the other people on the cruise as if he’s at a carnival freak show. And when we get right down to it, that’s what poor people are to the rich.

I’d like to point out that, while I have no interest in going on a cruise, many of the older people in my extended working-class family have, and enjoyed themselves. Their stories were not unlike Wallace’s except for the presence of sincerity being swapped in for his ironic, smirking detachment (he is even ironic about being long-winded, as one footnote on page 274 simply reads “Long story, not worth it”). My relatives are the people he describes thusly; “I don’t think it’s an accident that 7NC Luxury Cruises appeal mostly to older people. I don’t mean decrepitly old, but I mean age-50+ people, for whom their own mortality is something more than an abstraction.” Page 263. Again, Woloch’s ‘character compression.’ Wallace then goes on to discuss how the ships themselves are monoliths of decadence, with the knowledge that such a word evolved from decay.

And so, while Wallace has a little snigger about these poor people who had to save up to get a (highly manufactured) taste of the good life, and how the ship is all just a big symbol of the inability to stave off physical and spiritual decay, we need to keep in mind that he, born into an upper-middle class life, was always going to be fine and as such could never really understand his subjects, despite his subtextual (and supratextual) assertions of being smarter than you, ‘you’ here being the other people on the ship in addition to you, the reader. This makes it hard to get behind anything he might have to say, as he takes great pains to not just ‘compress’ but other everyone and dehumanize them, at one point even comparing standing in line with them to “the Auschwitz-embarkation scene in Schindler’s List.” Dehumanization complete! He later discusses (in a three page footnote, of course, pages 280-283) the people he had dinner with, whom he liked because they laughed at all his jokes. He says he wants to “avoid saying much about them for fear of hurting their feelings by noting any weirdnesses or features that might seem possibly mean.” He then goes on to discuss exactly that. He later spends an inordinate amount of time fixated on the nationalities of the (service) people he encounters, which has the effect of othering them, as well.

Still, the beauty of his prose+++ is undeniable, as is his bank of knowledge. He not only knows what metalepsis is, he uses it (page 322, “Tibor’s cuteness has been compared by the women at Table 64 to that of a button.”)!

And that’s the shame of it all, to me. Wallace is obviously smart in a way.* However, he hasn’t done much with it besides show off how much he knows. He hasn’t contributed anything worthwhile to any adjacent field such as linguistics, semiotics, etc. Nor has he postulated any new, radical approaches to criticism. Instead, he has spent his career spouting recondite, sesquipedalian platitudes and writing about mind-numbing minutiae as if it’s incredibly profound.

I am still wondering how these pieces qualify as journalism, and if they even do. I don’t think they do. If anything, they’re a warning against self-indulgence. Wallace is the kind of writer who appeals to a certain group of people I cannot, and do not, find myself part of. Toxic masculinity, toxic whiteness, toxic upper-classness. All of which should be railed against, and rightly is in our current zeitgeist. I suggest forgetting him for every reason other than as a cautionary tale. He is the id of privilege, let loose upon the literary world.

Perhaps the only redeeming part of these entire essays, and by far my favorite part, is pages 325-326 when Wallace faces off in chess** against a nine year old girl named Deirdre. She prefaces the game by telling him something about how different cultures symbolically interpret different colors. His response is “I tell her I already know all that.” Even with a nine year old stranger on a boat in the middle of nowhere, where the stakes are as close to zero as they can get, he feels the need to point out that he is smarter than her. So it’s beautiful to me that he then immediately gets his ass kicked by this girl. Of course, any symbolic power this incident might have is completely lost on Wallace and the incident is not referred to again.

+First superfluous footnote; “Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.” From his 2006 commencement speech, “This is Water.” Is he outing himself here? Does he, like so many other learned white men, not understand the difference between knowledge and intelligence?

++Second superfluous footnote; funny story. My word processor kept auto-correcting ‘FFs’ to ‘Ffs.’ After I finished writing, I hit ‘Find and replace’ to fix this. It had the unintended side-effect of changing this word from ‘puffs’ to ‘puFFs.’ I think it’s appropriate, so I kept it.

+++This is another superfluous footnote: read that as “the interminability of his prose.”

*This is yet another superfluous footnote; by “in a way” I mean “has acquired a great deal of knowledge.” Again, the difference between knowledge and intelligence.

**This is the final superfluous footnote; chess, that perennial ‘smart white man’ game, is arguably racist in a number of ways. White always moves first. A number of chess organizations have been accused of racist policies. And chess has been used as one of the many arms of nationalism, specifically in Western (often Anglo-Saxon and even ‘Aryan’ nations). Here, a citation! http://chesshistory.com/winter/extra/nationalism.html That’s how you do it, Mr. Wallace.***

***Holy crap, a superfluous footnote of a superfluous footnote? My real opinion on DFW, if it wasn’t clear from all this, is that he was a terrible writer who churned out pablum just sophisticated enough to be mind-expanding, but only to people who don’t actually read/think a lot, evidenced by his shallow, easily-digestible, reference-heavy style and his toxic fanbase of Book-Readin’ Bros. DFW is the Ur-Example, at least in the modern age, of every white man who read a few books he half-understood and assumed his opinion on everything was suddenly one billion times more informed/important than everyone around him. I am immediately suspicious of anyone who claims to be a true aficionado of his work. Also, DFW was a horrible, disgusting human being. Citation! https://medium.com/@devonprice/a-brief-on-hideous-things-about-david-foster-wallace-72034b20de94

The Redemption of Lydia Bennet

In episode 88 of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (“Okay”), the titular character’s youngest sister Lydia reveals that the website hosting her sex tape with George Wickham has been removed from the internet. Lizzie, who had been bracing against its release throughout several of the previous episodes, is instantly relieved that both her sister’s reputation and her family’s reputation have been salvaged through this seemingly-miraculous circumstance. In both the novel Pride and Prejudice (the protagonist of which will be referred to as “Elizabeth”) and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (protagonist of which will be referred to as “Lizzie”), this revelation relieves a major source of tension for Ms. Bennet, and in both instances, she expresses gratitude toward the perceived agent of that relief.

In the original story, Lydia Wickham is precisely the same girl as Lydia Bennet. As the narrator says, “Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless” (Volume 3, Chapter 9). Rather than feeling shame at the stress and expense she imposed upon her family, she demands both congratulations and a place of higher esteem at the table. She is a quintessential flat character (Woloch 25). Lydia Wickham does not grow.

In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, on the other hand, Lydia is sensible of both the potential consequences to herself and the emotional implications of George Wickham’s actions (i.e., that he does not genuinely care about her), which is best expressed through her emotional breakdown at the end of episode 85 (“Consequences”). She acknowledges in episode 88 (“Okay”) that “maybe I’m not so good at dealing with things the right way sometimes” and asks Lizzie for her time and emotional support. Here Lydia communicates both a change in attitude and a level of self-awareness that the Lydia Bennet of the 1813 novel never approaches. In that same episode, Lizzie also acknowledges Lydia’s multi-dimensionality, telling her “I didn’t really know you, I guess,” to which Lydia replies, “I never really let you.” This realization, one Elizabeth Bennet has in regard to Mr. Darcy but not her own sister, is a further acknowledgement of Lydia as a round character, both as demonstrated through Lydia’s own words and actions and Lizzie’s observations.

In both versions of the story, Elizabeth/Lizzie fundamentally represent what Woloch describes as the narrative’s “referential core” (18). In both instances, Ms. Bennet’s worldview and observations drive both the storytelling and the reader’s understanding of the other characters. For instance, Ms. Bennet’s one-sided understanding of Darcy’s dealings with George Wickham cast Darcy in a negative light. However, both versions also work to give a certain amount of “roundness” to its side characters. In Pride and Prejudice, its free indirect discourse gives the reader access to Darcy’s earliest feelings for Elizabeth even when she is not sensible to them, and it gives space for Charlotte Lucas’ intentions in her friendliness toward Mr. Collins. In some ways, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries goes even further to provide outside perspectives on the narrative, most notably through “side” episodes like number 15 (“Lizzie Bennet is in Denial”), in which Jane and Charlotte speak to the camera directly in Lizzie’s absence, and through the various side vlogs and other parallel social media accounts ostensibly run by the characters themselves (most notably Lydia’s independent vlogs of her time in Las Vegas with Wickham).

In most traditional narratives, “secondary characters. . .become allegorical, and this allegory is directed toward a singular being, the protagonist, who stands at the center of the text’s symbolic structure” (Woloch 18). Though Pride and Prejudice does provide a fair amount of stinging social commentary, it does still present itself to the reader as an example of a traditional marriage plot. Elizabeth and her sisters are single in a world where single women are unprotected and socially stigmatized, and through the machinations of the story, the sisters who “matter” (Elizabeth, Jane, and Lydia) find themselves husbands. Elizabeth and Jane both proceed through courtship in (more or less) the expected way, maintaining the appearance of propriety throughout. As a result, they are rewarded with fulfilling marriages to wealthy men. Lydia, on the other hand, is “an eccentric” who “grates against. . .her position” (Woloch 25). She is so focused on achieving the goal of marriage that she does not follow the correct procedure, causing her family boundless stress, potentially ruining the chances of good marriages for her sisters, and ending in a loveless relationship (Volume 3, Chapter 19). Though the opinions of Mr. Collins are obviously ones which the reader should take with a grain of salt, Austen’s audience would ostensibly have found it believable that a clergyman would assert, “The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison to this [i.e., the appearance of having out-of-wedlock sex]” (Volume 3, Chapter 6). Particularly in comparison to her blissfully-married sisters, Lydia serves as an allegory for “what not to do.”

On the other hand, the Lydia Bennet of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries loses some of her allegorical function as a result of her comparative roundness (Woloch 20). Because Lydia is sensible to the pain she has caused and Wickham’s disregard for her (as seen in episode 85), the audience is asked to sympathize with her plight. By utilizing the multi-platform storytelling capabilities of the internet and ignoring the simple strictures of the marriage plot (both allowable by the time in which it was made), The Lizzie Bennet Diaries provides a roundness to Lydia unmatched by the original text; she can no longer be a simple warning to the readers of the text when she openly feels pain and is nearly as fully realized as Lizzie herself. In both texts, Lydia is susceptible to George Wickham’s manipulation. While the Lydia of the novel is a lamb lead to (social) slaughter, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ Lydia escapes manipulation and does not fulfill a simple allegorical function. She is a woman who reclaims agency over herself and her choices through her own self-awareness combined with the support of loved ones.

Paratext in the Fargo TV Series

I found Genette’s chapters on paratexts useful in thinking about the term beyond what I learned of it in my undergrad literary theory course. Even though the focus is exclusively on print texts, I found myself thinking more about televisual paratexts, trying to see what I could connect to the Fargo TV series and my own interests in Netflix comedy special paratexts.

This quote from Genette stuck out to me as I was thinking about how to classify some of the paratextual elements of Fargo beyond the “where? when? how? to whom? and to do what?” (Genette 4) approach, “The functions of the paratext therefore constitute a highly empirical and highly diversified object that must be brought into existence inductively, genre by genre and species by species. The only significant regularities one can introduce into this apparent contingency are to establish these relations of subordination between function and status and thus pinpoint various sorts of functional types, as well, reduce the diversity of practices and messages to some fundamental and highly recurrent themes.” (Genette 13). The genre of “TV viewed on streaming services” (I’m watching Fargo on my Hulu account) has many unique paratextual elements which I’m sure have been written about elsewhere, and then the Fargo TV series itself can be viewed as its own species, with individual seasons or episodes being perhaps subspecies. For this short essay, I’ll focus on Fargo 202, “Before the Law” to try and list some of the paratextual observations I have made and hopefully gesture towards inductively deriving some sort of functional type.

I need to begin by trying to define the opening sequences as paratextual elements before going further. To even classify this sequence as an opening/title sequence goes against many older generic forms such as the copy and paste title sequence with the same theme song and no variation (think any older cartoon series). However, many recent TV series have modified the opening/title sequence in creative ways like Fargo to diversify it to have meta-textual elements to the episode or the season (Better Call Saul, Bojack Horseman). One could contest that these newer, savvier opening sequences are not paratextual because they are so embedded into the text because of the production. However, I would say that they are paratextual by virtue of their repeating qualities that frame the episode. In Fargo (at least 2 episodes in) the opening sequence features a nondiegetic soundtrack, the opening text, split screen edits, and an eventual title sequence. These commonalities codify these sequences as title sequences.

The opening text that appears onscreen is the paratextual element that interests me the most. This writing seems to serve as the first indication of the show’s opening/title sequence, since it has occurred in both 201 and 202 with music accompaniment leading up to the reveal of the title (in 201 it comes after the cold open). As a refresher, the text reads, “This is a true story. True. The events took place in Minnesota in 1979. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred. An MGM/FXP Production” written out slowly between scenes with nondiegetic typewriter clicks. As discussed in class, this writing is nonsense, as the stories are fictional. As an uninformed viewer, I would have bought this as I did with the film version, and so I guess Genette would classify this as private paratext? At the very least, including this information at the beginning of each episode reminds viewers either to consider (wrongly) that the show is about an (un)true story, or, remind them that it is a farcically violent romp through the Midwest. As opposed to the film version where this paratextual element only occurs once, having the TV version repeat it, and repeat it as an indication of the show’s opening, amps up the functionality of this paratextual element.

The nondiegetic soundtrack is one of the other main indicators of the opening/title sequence and one that has perhaps the most “illocutionary force” (10) on that particular episode. For example, in 202 the song is “Reunion” by Bobbie Gentry, which depicts a fraught family reunion where multiple parties attempt to appeal to the Mama of the family. The song itself is satirical in that the bulk of it describes petty fights between seemingly younger family members such as hair pulling, but then the speaker states, “It’s first time ever that the family been together. It’s so nice that we all get along so well.” As a paratextual element the song has more force as it sets up one of the main conflicts of the episode: who will lead the Gerhardt family? In the episode we see the matriarch, Floyd, negotiating effectively with the rival gang, only to be challenged by her son Dodd solely due to her femininity. We know from the previous episode that the siblings of the family squabble much like the characters in the song, only instead of pulling hair, it’s questioning Rye’s masculinity and ability to do his job. Through all of this, Floyd (Mama) is the one who mediates these conflicts and is likely keeping the family unified, as is often assumed through gendered roles of motherhood.

Wowee there’s so much more to say!

“A deal’s a deal”: Cause and effect in Fargo

“These are personal matters,” Jerry Lundegaard says, when pressed by Carl Showalter to explain himself. Carl is curious why on earth Jerry would hire a couple of thugs to kidnap and hold his wife for ransom. We learn that Jerry needs money, that Jerry’s father-in-law has money, and that Jerry can’t, or won’t, ask for it directly. But beyond this, Jerry only says, “These are personal matters.” Despite his reticence, Jerry’s actions—coming to the bar with the tan Ciera in tow and making the deal with Carl and Gaear—set in motion a chain of cause-and-effect events which constitutes the plot of Fargo and which confirms David Bordwell’s assertions that “In classical fabula construction, causality is the prime unifying principle” and that “the syuzhet represents the order, frequency, and duration of fabula events in ways which bring out the salient causal relations” (157). 

The causality of Fargo’s major plot is crystal clear: Because Jerry brings the Ciera to Fargo, Carl and Gaear drive it to Minneapolis to kidnap Jean, and because Carl and Gaear are driving the brand-new car with dealer plates, they are pulled over by the state trooper, and because Carl and Gaear have Jean in the backseat, they kill the suspicious state trooper, and because they kill the state trooper, they attract the attention of the passing motorists, and on, and on, and on. In this way, the film is organized and driven forward by causality. 

There is also a way in which this chain of events satisfies viewer expectations (what Abbott calls “closures at the level of expectation”)—the film’s epigraph has promised a “true” story about murder—and so far it has delivered a nitty-gritty (if not strictly true) story of murder. But what about Abbott’s “closure at the level of questions”? The first question that the viewer has been explicitly prompted, by Carl, to ask is “Why does Jerry want his wife kidnapped?” We are given a half answer (that he needs the money), but this only inspires another question: Why does he need the money? Because of the strong chain of causality and the many other little questions that are raised and answered (for example, Will the kidnapping work out as planned?), the viewer is perhaps encouraged to set this question aside for the time being—in expectation of later answers. As Abbott states, “at the level of questions, we anticipate enlightenment” (60). But do we every get this enlightenment?

Even though after the initial meeting Jerry is no longer pertinent to the kidnapping plot (at least until the ransom), the narrative keeps up with Jerry, but these scenes don’t bring the closure or answers we expect. In fact, our questions only multiply and our expectations about Jerry are confused. We might even begin to question what we thought we knew about Jerry from that first meeting in the bar: First, we see Jerry at home with his wife, son, and father-in-law, whom he is asking for a loan on an investment opportunity, intensifying our pre-existing question (Again, why does he need all this money?). Then we see him shaft a customer at the car dealership, upsetting our expectations about mild-mannered, soft-spoken Jerry Lundegaard (Is this a well-meaning family man forced by circumstances to desperate measures—or a habitual thief and cheat, cleverly disguised?). Finally, we see Jerry ask a coworker for an extra hockey ticket (the coworker’s response lets us know what an absurd request this is—Apparently, Jerry is in the habit of asking for more than he ought to), then lie to his customer with a plastic smile (Does he have any scruples at all?), and clumsily side-step the requests of a GMAC official for the VIN numbers substantiating a very large loan he has apparently forged. Perhaps it is at this moment that the cause-and-effect chain of Jerry’s actions becomes obviously jumbled for us—with so many underhand money-making schemes, it is unclear if Jerry is trying to cover up one dirty deal with another, or if he is collecting all this money for some other reason. But by the time Jerry discusses the investment deal with Wade and Stan, and he urges, “I don’t need a finder’s fee. Finder’s fee that’s…what? Ten percent? Heck, that’s not gonna do it for me. I need the principle!” we might begin to wonder whether this investment deal is just another of Jerry’s scams. 

Eventually we realize how wrong we were about Jerry Lundegaard: the expectations and assumptions we didn’t even realize we were making about him—that he seems like a nice, mild-mannered, soft-spoken kind of guy forced into a desperate situation—are unraveled and, furthermore, we still don’t know why he needs the money. And we never do. Thus, while one narrative thread (Jean’s kidnapping) moves forward with clear causality and routine gratification of the viewer’s expectations and questions, another parallel narrative thread, which we believe will takes us “backwards” into Jerry’s motives, only multiples our questions and confuses our expectations.

It seemed to me unconventional (and maybe even a little risky) to embed such a large question into a film’s narrative yet never deliver on it. Of course, we’ve all seen films which revel in taunting the viewer with the missing pieces (one example that comes to mind is the end of Inception, where unreliability of perception is a theme of the narrative and interpretation becomes a fun game for the viewer to participate in). But with Fargo, we find a significant gap in a film whose narrative seems in every other way perfectly willing to fulfill Bordwell’s description of omniscient and highly communicative classical narration, giving us almost unrestricted access to all details of the story, including cues when the location changes from Fargo to Minneapolis to Brainer (Bordwell 160). The narration is so attentive and omniscient that we even witness Jerry’s private outbursts of frustration—but are never made privy to his deeper motives. So the questions I’d like to pose to the class for discussion are: Is this a liability or a strength of Fargo? How would knowing or not knowing Jerry’s ultimate motives change our experience and perception of the film? My own inclination is that we as the viewer are made to understand that, to a certain extent, motives can be immaterial—Jerry causes the deaths of seven people regardless. That fact can’t be changed by intention. In addition, the pretense of a “true story” creates an expectation for all the pieces to fall into place—for “a growing awareness of absolute truth” (Bordwell 159). Yet this is not always the case—true stories may in fact be those most likely to be incomplete and unclear.

characterization differences in classical, art-cinema, and serial narration

The readings from Bordwell and Newman both present key elements and structures within different filmic forms. While Bordwell describes characteristics of classical and art-cinema narrations, Newman describes features of serial television, specifically focusing on the prime-time serial (PTS). The chapter from Abbott explores adaptations of stories to different media and what components of the story can be shifted and exaggerated or are stunted in these adaptations. My synthesis post for this week will be based largely on Bordwell’s and Newman’s articles. Though the articles outline many components of classical narration, art-cinema narration, and the serial, I will focus primarily on character (though there is much to be explored in closures as well).

Before jumping into character, I want to take note of two important terms used throughout Bordwell’s article: syuzhet and fabula. The fabula is the story itself, or the “aerial perspective,” “raw material” of the story. The syuzhet then delivers that story in ways that impact the viewer—creating suspense, intensifying emotions, revealing and hiding information, etc.  The syuzhet can be briefly defined as the plot — the way the story is organized and unfolds. Bordwell describes, “syuzhet represents the order, frequency, and duration of fabula events in ways which bring out the salient causal relations” (158). Two features or expressions of the syuzhet include the scene and montage—pieces that construct how viewers receive the story.

Both articles provide numerous distinctions between filmic narrative forms, namely classical narration, art-cinema narration, and the prime-time serial (PTS). The distinction that stood out most to me, especially in light of watching Fargo (feature) and Fargo S2E1, was character. In classical narration, the character is presented through a “objective” notion of realism. The character is “psychologically defined” and often “struggle[s] to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals” (157). Bordwell states, “In fabula terms, the reliance upon character-centered causality and the definition of the action as the attempt to achieve a goal are both salient features of the canonic format” (157). We learn within minutes of the arrival of Frances McDormand’s “Marge” on screen in the feature-length Fargo that she is a pregnant police officer in a loving marriage who must solve three murders. Her identity and objectives are defined at the offset and obeyed for the duration of the story.

In art-cinema, the character is presented through a more “’subjective’ or ‘expressive’ notion of realism. The art film aims to ‘exhibit character’…But the prototypical characters of the art cinema tend to lack clear-cut traits, motives, and goals. Protagonists may act inconsistently…or they may question themselves about their purposes” (Bordwell 207). The focus on character psychology as ambiguous and at times contradictory is a divergence from the classical narration. We learn within minutes of the arrival Kirsten Dunst’s “Peggy Blumquist” on screen that initial clues of her contented satisfaction as a homemaker and nearness to self-actualization were misleading: she had hours before committed a hit and run and is seemingly only pretending to share her husband’s dreams of having children and settling in Minnesota. Her behavior is contradictory on different levels, which can leave the audience to wonder if her actions are the result of a recent trauma (committing a hit and run) or extend deeper, illustrating her character as one that lacks clear-cut traits.

Newman mentions the allowance the serial gives in gaining a deeper understanding of the character as we follow the character through numerous events and interactions. He states “the investment in a serial character is based on a more novelistic progression of events over a long duration, with episodes like chapters in an ongoing saga rather than self-contained stories…Characterization in the PTS is more likely to have a certain kind of depth as the audience knows more about the characters’ inner lives in serials than in many episodic shows” (23). Thus, in the serial, the characterization may lean more toward the classical or art-cinema variety, but either way the audience is given a deeper understanding of the character and more time to observe growth and change (or lack thereof). Many questions about Dunst’s character, goals, and future are left unanswered in S2E1 of Fargo, presumably to be taken up in later episodes.

Okay then.

Questions:

  • What did you notice about the use of the camera as an “invisible-observer” especially in S2E1? What knowledge about the fabula was conveyed or confused through the lens of the camera and editing techniques?
  • What allusions or “citations” are present in Fargo S2E1 of Fargo (feature), in terms of syuzhet, fabula, character, etc.?
  • What cause-effect chains were left open in Fargo S2E1 and which ones were resolved?

A Need for Closure

Chapters Four, Five, and Six of H. Porter Abbott’s book The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative bring in many new elements and terms to narratives that are worth considering. Chapter Four explores narratives’ power, as they drive people to make connections and feel certain emotions, through the terms causation, normalization, and masterplots. Causation means that people will make connections between events told in narratives, while normalization points to a narrative’s ability to make people believe its events are real, at least when it is told in a convincing manner. Masterplots are repeated stories with similar structures and events, some universal but most linked to a specific cultural milieu, and all with the power to evoke great emotion from those familiar with them.

Chapter Five discusses various elements related to closure, meaning when the conflict driving the narrative is solved. Though closure often occurs at the end of narratives, it can also happen at other points or, indeed, not at all. A lack of closure, or suspense, is necessary to keep the audience engaged and the narrative going, as is surprise, wherein the audience’s expectations are disrupted. Narratives must strike a balance between meeting and disrupting some of the audience’s expectations, for they will disengage if the story is too cliché, and answering at least some of their questions. Narratives may even end ambiguously without giving the audience the closure they desire, perhaps to engage the audience and keep them thinking about the story and its themes even after it has ended.

Chapter Six explains different details about narrators. Scholars debate where the narrator’s narration ends, with some saying this occurs anytime a character is directly quoted in either their spoken words or thoughts. This is complicated somewhat when the author employs free indirect style, allowing a character’s thoughts and feelings to bleed into the narration at various points. Voice is another important aspect that refers to who is doing the narration, whether a character in the story (first-person) or someone more removed (third-person). Focalizaiton is “the lens through which we see characters and events in the narrative,” and while the narrator is often the focalizer, this can sometimes switch to different characters, such as with the free indirect style (Abbott 73). Another term Abbott focuses on is distance, meaning how closely involved the narrator is to the story whether in terms of their role in the story or when the story occurred. With narrators, especially in current times, there is always a question of reliability, as it is often unclear if the facts they present and/or their interpretations are entirely accurate, a fact that authors may purposefully exploit to some end.

Though all Abbott’s terms are significant to an understanding of how narrative works, his points on closure can be focused on in more detail. Authors must utilize some level of suspense and surprise to play with their audiences’ expectations, something Aristotle even commented on in Poetics thousands of years ago. As he deciphers what makes a tragedy, Aristotle explains, “tragedy represents not only complete action but also incidents that cause fear and pity, and this happens most of all when the incidents are unexpected and yet one is the consequence of the other” (39). Despite Aristotle’s focus on tragedy, the heart of his words still aligns with Abbott’s explanations of narrative in general: mainly, that it contains events which are meant to evoke specific emotions from the audience by presenting incidents that are unexpected but still connected.

Suspense and surprise are utilized by various authors for different effects. Charles Chestnut uses these techniques in The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales not only through Uncle Julius’ tragic, often magical tales but also by contrasting his sneakier behavior with the happy-go-lucky Uncle Remus character-type Julius satirizes. Jhumpa Lahiri similarly plays with audience expectations in Interpreter of Maladies. “A Temporary Matter,” for instance, leads audiences to believe that the couple is on the path towards reconciliation after the unfortunate death of their child, only to foil these expectations when Shoba and Shukumar reveal a final secret that will hurt the other the most. Lahiri’s presentation of these events fits both Abbott’s and Aristotle’s description, as this tragedy evokes fear and pity through these unexpected yet connected events (IE. Shoba’s plan to move out and Shukumar’s hidden knowledge about their son). Yet expectations can also be played with to other ends, such as in the foiled tragedy of “When Mr. Pirada Came to Dine.” Because the story revolves around the various tragedies that occurred during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, both the characters in the narrative and the audience are led to believe that Mr. Pirada’s family is almost certainly dead. Therefore, when Mr. Pirada is reunited with his family against all odds, the audience’s expectation of tragedy is foiled and arguably, their happiness at this reunion heightened.

Closure is a key part of narrative, one that is played with or left ambiguous to produce different audience reactions. Lahiri’s stories all arguably close in unexpected ways, but for what purpose? Why bring together all these tales that purposefully foil audience expectations? Are these foiled expectations at least partially a result of cultural differences? Do they contribute to a larger theme about expectations? Furthermore, does her anthology of short stories give the audience closure with the ending of its last tale, “The Third and Final Continent,” or does this tale too only leave the audience with more questions? Focusing on closure, or lack thereof, in Lahiri’s book reveals how many questions are left unanswered though this, it seems, serves a larger purpose of keeping the reader thinking about at least one of these tales long after they’ve finished reading.

Meet Bob Chill

Hope I’m doing this right.

As we are charged with extrapolating a moment from one of the texts, I considered each and came to the conclusion that Robert Frost was worth examining in the context of the Abbott chapters we’re reading this week. I’m not choosing any one poem to look at because it’s my opinion that having been held in such high esteem for decades upon decades, Frost’s individual poems are not what people think of when they discuss him. Sure, maybe there’s a line from this one, a line from that one. But in conversation (at least in my experience) people say “this is like a Robert Frost poem,” rather than “this is like that specific Robert Frost poem.” That is to say the poems tend to possess a certain character that remains somewhat homogeneous. And this character, the character of a fictional Robert Frost, whom for simplicity’s sake I will dub ‘Bob Chill,’ tends to exist within a rather narrow spectrum of narrativity.

Bob Chill loves to go for walks. Sometimes around the quaint village where he lives, sometimes in the bucolic, autumnal paradise of trees, bushes, and shrubs populated with all manner of bugs and critters. That seems to be the extent of his narrative. However, the limited nature (excuse the pun) of his narrative is not a problem. According to everything we’ve read, that is indeed enough for a narrative to have taken place. “I walked past a bush and saw a bug” is, by some manner of measurement, a far more complicated narrative than our theoretical frameworks require. And, since this is the entirety of the narrative, I guess every Robert Frost poem is already an exploded moment. He has already done the hard work of unpacking a smaller moment, which seems to be what the assignment requires. So instead of doing that, which Frost has already done, I guess I’ll go over what I was thinking as I read this, the many chapters of the odyssey of Bob Chill (significantly less interesting than the odyssey of “The Odyssey,” I’m afraid) in conjunction with the Abbott chapters for this week.

I thought about the idea of the ‘implied author’ and realized how closely this aligns with the public narrative of Robert Frost. One would think by reading his poems that Robert Frost is, in fact, Bob Chill. There is nothing to suggest otherwise, as the ‘I’ who appears in the poems is never identified. Who but Frost himself could it be? Well, by most accounts the real Robert Frost was a total asshole. Maybe he did like walking in the woods, maybe he did like sitting on the trunk of a chopped-down tree to contemplate ‘stuff.’ But since he is composing these poems, creating these small narratives and constructing this myth about himself, then he is in charge of giving birth to Bob Chill, a heavily idealized version of Frost. After all, when writing a work that melts into Americana under the assumption of being semi-autobiographical (that was always my assumption when I had to read this crap in middle school, anyway), who among us could resist the temptation of making our asshole selves not look like assholes? Is Frost’s poetry all a sort of performativity? We are, after all, talking about the guy who would go to readings given by other poets and heckle them. Does that sounds like something Bob Chill would do? No, of course not. And I should know, because I know Bob Chill very well.

Bob Chill is the implied author, and I have filled in the ‘gaps’ in his character and narrative. If I may…

Bob Chill wears a straw hat at all times, as well as slacks and moccasins. He has a corn cob pipe in his mouth (largely as an accessory) and wears a brown coat that may or may not be made of burlap. He is old, but not too old, with a completely white beard and white hair that is only beginning to thin. Maybe Bob Chill has a wife, but probably not. Bob Chill doesn’t want to be tied down. That’s not Bob Chill’s style anymore. He’s been there and done that. When he walks down the street, always through a fine, pure white mist early in the morning, the few neighbors who are awake at that time wave hello and Bob tips his hat politely. But Bob Chill never stays long enough to chat. There are woods to be walked, bugs to be spotted, tree trunks to be sat upon and ‘stuff’ to be contemplated. This gives Bob Chill a reputation with the neighborhood kids as the village kook but all the adults agree he’s a really deep guy. He moves with purpose. The lines on his face convey wisdom. Bob Chill himself takes it all in stride with a slight smile and a wink. Then he disappears into the woods.

Your version of the implied author in Frost’s poems may differ, but I doubt it does by much.

Bob Chill is a pretty cool guy, I think. As a fellow left-leaning white man born and raised in America, I could kind of see myself growing into Bob Chill. After all, I do like going to the woods, staring at bugs, and sitting on tree trunks to contemplate stuff. However, like many other people, I don’t get anywhere near enough time to do this as I would like. Is this the appeal of the narrative, then? That this idealized implied author is free to do what people like me want to? Is this pastoral, idyllic porn? Is Bob Chill the idealized white American male for everyone on the left? Is Bob Chill really Frank Serpico after he disappeared into upstate New York? Why does Bob Chill actually look like Walt Whitman instead of Robert Frost? I don’t know. This, for me, is the crux of Robert Frost’s work.

Regarding his appearance, it occurs to me that I don’t know what Robert Frost actually looks like. Pardon me while I look it up.

Ah. As we can see, Bob Chill and Robert Frost are vastly different people. Robert Frost looks like an incredibly uptight person. He probably was. That clinches it for me. Bob Chill is not just the idealized version of myself and every other white American male as an old man. Bob Chill is Frost’s idealized version of himself. Someone who knows more than he does and only lets slip bits and pieces of his accumulated knowledge, thereby creating a sense of mystique.

Anyway, other thoughts in conjunction with the Abbott readings. Underreading and overreading. I have tended to do both with Robert Frost every time I read his stuff. Underreading because I have always thought of his work as contrived, cloying, twee, etc. The repetition, the themes and motifs become grating after a while. This is a strange position to find myself in since I so desperately want to have more time to look at bugs in bushes. Because of my position as a literary critic in training, I also tend to overread his stuff because it’s my job to come to some sort of conclusion about his work, and obviously I have a conclusion. And that conclusion is based on my interpretation of his work as cloying and twee. Perhaps that has to do with the primacy effect that Abbott mentions. When I was first exposed to ‘beloved American poet’ Robert Frost in middle school, I had long since devoted myself to Poe and all things spooky and dark. Robert Frost is the exact opposite of that, and the many adventures of Bob Chill are the opposite of being buried alive or suffering some other macabre fate. All of this leads me to wonder to what extent the new narratives we encounter are mentally stacked up against the ones we’ve already encountered and come to prefer. And to what extent this leads us to a symptomatic reading of any given work.

For what reason do we engage in a symptomatic reading of a narrative, anyway? For purely rhetorical reasons, right? I believe that my interpretation of Robert Frost’s work is the correct one, and in order to prove it, I have to pick out the parts that support my thesis. I would hope that I am considering the work in its entirety and that I’m not simply cherry-picking, which would lead to a thesis that falls apart under almost any scrutiny.

Hm. I’m still trying to reconcile my dislike for Frost with the attraction to Bob Chill’s lifestyle. Do I really want to be Bob Chill? What is it that bugs (in bushes, wink wink) me about this? Is it that Frost made the act of quiet contemplation so public, and how all of his poems read like that one guy you work with who wants to move to England because they just ‘get it’ over there, not like America does, and repeatedly suggests that you meditate, although this suggestion is really just him bragging how he meditates and is therefore more enlightened than you (thereby making him a ‘flat’ character desperate to appear ’round’)? After all, the action of walking through the woods does hold some cultural cache, does it not? It is indeed an activity of refreshment, enlightenment, attenuation, etc. And that this action, this narrative, holds such connotations creates a broad implication about the character of one who indulges in this action.

And, perhaps even more horrifyingly than finding myself lusting after Bob Chill’s life, Abbott’s chapter 10 has me agreeing with Henry James, master of the turgid. There can be no separation of character and action, at least not in the study of narrative theory. In real life we can know someone in almost all of their complexity. In a narrative, what’s the point? We’re engaging with the narrative to see some action, you know? And by that token, we want to see characters doing stuff. Rarely in a narrative are we given the space to know a character outside their actions. Therefore, it would seem the best narratives are often the ones in which character and action are intertwined.

Bob Chill does not exist outside of his daily, early morning pilgrimages to the woods. In his case, the narrative is the sum of his character. It’s not just the farce of placing Bob Chill in the work of another author. Imagine, if you will, Bob Chill in a Poe story, being buried alive or suffering some other macabre fate. It’s that Bob Chill can only exist in this tiny world Robert Frost has constructed, and nowhere else. He can only carry out the extremely limited actions that his character permits. Imagine Bob Chill standing in line at the DMV. Imagine him opening a jar of pickles but the lid is on too tight. Imagine him taking his daily, early morning pilgrimage and there’s a trail of toilet paper stuck to his shoe which he doesn’t see but the neighbors do. These are not narratives that he can exist in because they obliterate his character. And as such, the narrative and the character here are the same thing.

Ah, I can see I’ve written too much.