On The Formal

Hello everyone. Thanks for the thoughtful commentary so far. It's interesting to see Perec come up in the discussion as a possible influence on OE, as he's not someone I read before very recently (not sure why, since he seems like such an obvious fit with several strands of my work). Only in the last month or so have I started to enter his world, and I've become very enamored of his work, particularly Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. There's a sensibility--all that order, the formal structure pressurizing and guiding the content, one among many ways to order experience, place, the world--that I am rapidly falling in love with.

A lot of the conversations surrounding the book (both here and elsewhere in Q&A sessions, reviews, and such) have focused on the role of what readers often seem to see as the maybe-extraneous structures throughout the book, surrounding it (physically, often, the circuit board tracing diagrams, surrounding and punctuating the text), bookending it, and such. It seems like that's one of the big questions readers have (or try to address themselves): how these other materials (the extras) affect or interact with the "real" book, the narrative at its center. You can guess that I don't see these things as separate at all (and increasingly I'm noticing, what with graphic novels and all, and the increasing transparence and ease of writers designing (as well as writing--if there is a difference) their own books (InDesign, Quark), more and more books that are playing with these ideas. You see it in a big way with the McSweeney's crew and the way that Eggers et al are enjoying playing with the different sections of the book, and their interest in design. I get less interested, though, when it edges into self-indulgence, which is a risk of what I'm doing in OE, of course, too).

The book itself is very obsessed with structure--finding ways to deal with and order grief, despair, these otherwise irreducible human experiences--and I see the structures as one of several lenses through which readers can approach the book. One thing I was thinking about in its creation and revision was trying to find other ways of satisfying readers, of creating a rich, complex reading experience without simply relying on narrative arc. Partly that's a weakness in my own writing, I think, my inability to get into (or disinterest in) straightforward narrative, and as such my use of what can come across as trickeration, but in my writing I have tried to tie the formal innovations and constraint as closely as I can to the emotional content--the heart, if you want--of the story. So the structures in OE aren't just a head game, but come out of this central desperation, this big white space at the heart of it. Form is a major subject of the book, I think, and a subject of a lot of my work, most recently this book of weirdo essays I've been working on. Some of that comes out of my interest in the visual, in the artifact of the book, and in design, and mathematics. I like to think of Other Electricities, in one way, as math + desperation. Or, given desperation, math following directly from it. I like these kinds of equations, ridiculous as they may be. They're nicely (and hopefully usefully) provocative.

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

"but in my writing I have tried to tie the formal innovations and constraint as closely as I can to the emotional content--the heart, if you want--of the story."

Ander, is this where you draw the line as to what is and is not self-indulgent? Having any innovative, non-narrative, material tied into the story?

[Sam]

Maybe readers differ in terms of how they approach "extraneous structure," based on what they've read. I was reminded of McSweeney's too, but also of writers like Cortazar in Hopscotch, or even Melville, with the etymology and extracts that begin Moby Dick. I love that openness to the fact that there are a lot of different ways to read a book.

[Gwenda]

Your explanation about the book being obsessed with structure was like a lightbulb going off for me. The whole cohered pretty well seamlessly for me, but adding that component to the way repetition (in all the various senses) is used in the book makes it even sweeter.

It's the intricacy of it, I think, that makes it feel like a bigger book than it (physically) is.

[AnderMonson]

Dan--yeah, absolutely. The form has to be in some way organic with the piece, necessary, tied in, central. I'm not sure I want to go so far as to say that any "non-story" material should have to fit into the "story," but that the form--especially if it deviates from our expectations, and even if it fits our expectations (we shouldn't just default to the usual without thinking about what advantages it offers, what problems it solves)--should have a reason for being, should feel useful, productive. It should be central to the book.

[AnderMonson]

Sam--I think yes, certainly. If readers have read stuff that does this kind of thing before, they're more likely to take all the elements of the book into account. I do think, though, that many readers are unused to the idea of the book being more than this thing to contain text, without pictures or esoterica, that it is a technology designed to convey story. It's more than that. And there are plenty of happy examples in recent publishing history (or not-so-recent: I love Moby Dick too, or look at Sterne, etc.), but the more typical book we see is produced without thought to its contents or design, without thought to its form. I will give McSweeney's a shout-out for what they're doing and supporting, even if I don't always feel it has enough of a heart. I hear a lot about this PEOPLE OF PAPER book, though, which seems to come up in conversations about OE.

[AnderMonson]

Gwenda--I love intricacy. That's one reason I love the idea and execution of diagrams. And I like the idea of having the book be conceptually bigger than its physicality--which is part of the reason why I liked the idea of the website, even if I had grander plans for it than I ended up being able to do. I love Stephanie Strickland's book of poems, V: WaveSon.nets / Losing L'Una, partially for the third half of the book, the spine which exists only online at http://vniverse.com ...

[Dan Green]

"It should be central to the book."

This seems to make a kind of separation between form and "the book"--as if "the book" is simply the "story", which itself is preexistent and on which form gets imposed. Presumably you don't really mean it this way?

[AnderMonson]

Dan, true, though I don't think of the book as being equivalent to the story. I'm thinking of the book as an artifact (which has its own form, obviously), but which also contains the story, which can have its own form. What I'm proposing (or trying badly to propose) is that the form of the story should be intrinsic, essential, closely tied to the story, and that both should be tied to the form of the book, and what it has to offer--these things shouldn't be going off at tangents from each other but be tightly gathered together, ideally one and the same.

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