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Novels and Indexes

Pull a biography from your shelf and flip to the back. In almost every case you'll find an index there, a listing of access points to the interior of the text. You can go back and find information about the subject's time at the university or something about his or her siblings. Pull some of other non-fiction book from your shelf. You'll find indexes in most of them too. Now try a novel, maybe a few, maybe all of them. Find any indexes? Probably not, maybe a small handful (I have less than a shelf full and I've specifically searched them out).

Convention tells us that novels don't have indexes; novels don't need indexes. What about in your reading group last week when you couldn't remember that great passage... it was while the protagonist was on vacation... but... where was that in the book? In the middle somewhere? Time to start paging through and skimming the text. Better hope it's not a 900 page William Gaddis novel.

Indexes in novels have their uses, but not many novels use them. A number of novels use indexes as a way to blur the fictionality of the novel. With an index the novel might appear less fictional (Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando, subtitled "A Biography," has an index). Others use indexes as parody (Lucy Ellmann's Sweet Desserts) or as embellishment on a theme (Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves' index mirrors the labyrinth at the center of the novel with its indexing of every occurrence (or so it seems) of even the most banal of words (a column of tiny references to "so"). JG Ballard even wrote a story that is all index to a novel that doesn't exist ("The Index"). The rarest of examples actually have useful indexes (Perec's Life: A User's Manual has more than one).

But some novels use indexes not only as they are meant to be used (information access) but as clues and addenda to the work itself. Nabokov's Pale Fire is a classic example. Brian Boyd (in his Nabokov's Pale Fire) found numerous clues to the novel in the winding references of its index.

Anders Monson's Other Electricities has an index, and I believe it follows in the footsteps of Nabokov's. Not only does it provide paths back into the book, but it helps organize themes and it might provide information left unsaid in the book proper. Unless I missed something on my reading, the index tells us a little more about some of the stories in the book.

Matt has discussed reading the stories out of order; the index would provide an alternate method of reading the book in a non-linear way. What if we traced all the references to ice? or God? What if we just wanted to revisit a passage we really loved?

Monson's Editors

Sarah Gorham, Editor-in-Chief:
Ander Monson submitted his manuscript Other Electricities to the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Peter Rock was one of the first readers and plucked it, as well as the winner Edith Pearlman, from the slush pile. Both manuscripts, along with a few more from the other first readers went along to the judge Joanna Scott. To tell you the truth, we were rooting for Ander's book, but were satisfied with the judge's choice as well. Since Sarabande publishes finalists too, we grabbed OE faster than you could blink an eye. In our mind, the book was ambitious, strange, moving, inventive, and very very cool. We loved it, but also felt the structure was a little messy. There were threads of this and that intimating connections between stories, and we thought these could be tied up a bit. We suggested a map to keep the characters straight, for example. My suggestions were macro, Kirby took over for the micro edit. Ander generously agreed to many changes and rewriting. The result was something wondrous to behold. This book was a perfect example of something we do because we love innovation and unusual talent: take a chance on a book that might not fit into the mainstream and give it the full Sarabande treatment. We're delighted to see how much dialogue has surrounded this title, and how much wonderful press it has received. It's great, and the book is more than deserving.

Kirby Gann:
The manuscript of Other Electricities stood apart from the usual manuscripts we receive because of a number of factors that we only rarely see coalesce in the same writer: an energetic, sometimes even manic prose style that, while capable of wild flights of lyricism, reveled in its own exactitude of language; inventive structures that did not come off as coy or overly contrived; philosophical and emotional depth combined with ribald humor; and, finally, that rarest of gifts—a unique vision.

My first read-through left me fumbling for what to do as the book’s line-editor. It was a pleasure to read, but the original manuscript sprawled a bit more than the published version, and confusion became a risk. Thus the editing process turned on how to maintain the book’s expansive reach, with its many characters—an entire community, really—while at the same time tightening its focus, limiting the number of strands a reader would have to keep in mind as he or she read further into the collection (or novel, as the author prefers it). Although we loved the more playful aspects of the manuscript (the diagrams, maps, et cetera), there were many more examples of these in the original version, and Ander and I worked on trying to employ these in ways that would only enhance his prose accomplishments, and not detract from them.

All in all, I believe Ander pulled it off beautifully. I cannot think of another work of fiction that “functions” in quite the same way as Other Electricities: how the stories and people seem to fold over and into one another, the deeper one reads; how the author evokes absence and explores its ramifications in so many ways, as he does also with distance, and emptiness, and, of course, cold. It’s a ghostly and sad and wintry book, appropriate to its milieu of the U.P., and yet there’s so much hilarity and fervent love of life in it, too. To balance so many concerns in such a short space—a mere 164 pages—is a feat I don’t believe many writers can do.

Interview with Ander Monson

The following is an interview with Ander Monson, author of Other Electricities, and the poetry collection, Vacationland.  Ander is editor of DIAGRAM, as well as a professor at Grand Valley State University.

Dan:

Hello Ander, thank you very much for taking some time from your busy schedule to respond to some questions today.

Ander:

Not a problem. It’s late, my wife’s asleep, I’m in my great antique Sleepy Hollow chair watching snow come down.

Dan:

You are the wearer of many hats – fiction writer, poet, essayist, teacher, and editor, not to mention (I believe) book designer, at least on a recreational level if not more.  Are there spreadsheets all over the house and car keeping you on track in all of these endeavors, or do you utilize some other method?

Ander:

True. My attentions are many. I have lists and little hats. A lot of caffeine. A flexible schedule and probably too much work ethic, if you define work as anything I enjoy doing that has a potentially literary result. I try to let what I’m doing spill over into my other projects as best I can—thus creating a strength from what could appear otherwise to be weakness.

Dan:

You grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and then found yourself in school in Alabama.  How big of a shock to your system was that?

Ander:

I was looking for something different—a departure from the midwest, where I’d mostly lived (aside from Saudi Arabia), and Alabama seemed like too odd of a project to pass up. And there’s plenty weird down there, my favorites being the Cross Gardens, the Coon Dog Cemetery, and the Ave Maria Grotto, with the world’s attractions in miniature, to scale, made from bottle caps, and tiny tiles, and marbles, and such. Really awesome stuff actually. But much about the deep south is similar to the far north—the isolation, the rural life, the wilderness, the importance of weather, the extremes of temperature. I found it to be similar in a lot of ways to the Upper Peninsula—the two are much more alike than they are like coastal culture. Still, being down there, away from snow, was what really started to crystallize the projects (Other Electricities, Vacationland) for me, in my memory, my mythology.

Dan:

When you attended the Alabama MFA program, who were your professors?  Do you find yourself using any of their methods while you teach today?

So Static

I just lost a much better version of this post. Growl. Anyway, welcome to a new year of the LBC. Please participate, please? We are wrecked with insecurity. (I'm kidding. Or am I?) (This was charming in the original post.)

The boys spent the weekend having this fabulous discussion, batting emails back and forth like crazed Cheshire Cats (I invoke because I heart), while I was too lame/busy/exhausted to weigh in. So, this book, this Other Electricities book by Ander Monson. What did I think about it?

I fucking loved it.

I know, I know, I'm not exactly known for my measured responses to things I cotton to, and I cottoned to this. (In fact, my three favorite books from this round were pretty much a statistical tie in my heart.) Is Other Electricities a story collection? Yes. Is it something more than a story collection? Yes, definitely. Is it a novel? Maybe ... but that doesn't really matter to me. One of the things I responded to most about the book is that it doesn't feel like a conventional novel or a novel-made-up-of-stories (like, say, Kevin Brockmeier's The Truth About Celia). It reminds me of a kids' toy, one of those mirrored kaleidoscopes or prisms that fractures the person or people you're looking at into dozens of different images. We see the characters in Other Electricities like that, from so many different angles  -- sideways, through the funhouse of time, from the inside out, being reflected off other characters or other stories. The book as a whole is the toy. The prism. The link.

(This analogy isn't that great, but it amuses me because Monson loves diagrams!)

It's this depth of connection that places these imaginary people all so solidly in this very cold place (Michigan), trapped with their own individual losses and memories, which are always overlapping or drawing back from the town's collective loss and memory. These feel like people who really have spent a long time together in a very cold place (again, Michigan). The weather is a heavy physical and psychological presence throughout the book, in a menacing, preservative way, not a frustrated-meterologist way.

I have a special soft spot for Harriet, the plow driver with a reaching soul. And for Yr Protagonist and his brother, always straining to see the floating light of Paulding. Hell, I'm enchanted by the floating light of Paulding itself (who among us hasn't stalked such a light on some random hillside?). More, I am enchanted by this icy little universe Monson has diagrammed.

Matt (I believe) said that he felt an emptiness from this book, but that it might actually be quietude. I can completely see that side of things, but at the same time I must admit to being left with a feeling of fullness. I chalk it up to the candor that radiates from these characters and this world. Despite all this cold, all this isolation, there is transparence and truth. Yr Protagonist has only to clip into your phone wires to hear what you're talking about and to who. Everyone knows about that girl who died. Or the story of the other one who died even before that. Everyone carries the same stories in their pockets like stones.

I'm rambling (this really was much better before) and still looped on cold medicine, so I'll leave you with one of my favorite short short stories in the book -- even though it's not about Harriet. Hopefully, the author won't mind, because I think he's coming by here in a couple of days and what's to stop him from kicking my ass? Anyway, I can't think of a better way to convince you to read the book, or give you something to react to. Plus, it's instructive. Behind the cut.

Other Electricities - Some Extras

Some further dialogue amongst LBC members:

Dan Wickett

Sam's original post also made mention of the radio schematic diagrams - how did everybody view these?  As an integral part of the book?  Just something to break up sections?  Did you try to determine how they related to the stories before or after them?


Derik Badman

The radio diagrams have the appearance of connecting in some way, but I failed to get any satisfaction from them. They all relate to the concept of distance, and thus their discontinuous place in the book
is at least thematically relevant. But in the end I found them an unnecessary embellishment (I felt the same way about much of the front matter: the McSweeney's-esque table of contents, character guide,
etc.), a veering into poetry, that didn't impress as much as the prose. The radio stuff did not capture my interest here or in the title story, so I may be prejudiced.

Matt Cheney

I thought it was nice the diagrams were there, but I didn't pay much attention to them.  I'd look at them now and then, but for me they were decorations.  I don't mind decorations.  Why does everything have to be central and relevant?  I felt similarly about some of the other things, what somebody called the ephemera of the book, the things Derik found McSweeney's-esque.  None of it bothered me, but I also didn't spend a lot of time on it.  I felt it all suggested that this was a book that wanted to encompass a world, and I was happy to travel around through the book giving attention to the parts that most interested me.  In fact, I'm always grateful for a book that leaves that option open.  There's a tyranny to the standard sort of novel that wants all its words (and diagrams) to be important and necessary, and I enjoy the freedom now and then to travel through a book at my own pace, stopping at the tourist attractions that most vividly reward my time, while other people linger elsewhere.

Ordering and despair

Pardon me if this post is not fully formed, but I've been called out, so I must comment.

Sam mentioned a sense of connection with the Oulipo in some of Monson's stories: "the interplay between order and emotion, the sense that the ability to create order, even of the most trivial kind, is our only defense against despair."

While I agree with the idea of creating order to deal with despair (in fact I just finished up a review of the wonderful French graphic novel Ordinary Victories by Manu Larcenet (NBM, 2005) whose protagonist takes photographs to capture a moment of order in his chaotic life (he suffers from seemingly random and delibitating panic attacks)), I'm not sure this creating of order is directly relevant to an oulipian type of constraining order. Or perhaps I take more to task the idea of this type of constraint as, in the end, really creating order. The end product of much oulipian work is much less ordered than one conventional expects from a novel. The organization of the constraint often brings out more elements of chance and chaos than one gets sticking to a conventional Freytag's triangle structure.

That said, in the case of Georges Perec, many consider his work an attempt to deal with his parents' death in a concentration camp. For instance, his novel La Disparition, is completely lacking the letter 'e', which in French sounds like "eux" ("them").

I see the ordering as a way to distract from despair, to reach out to other areas of the world, by forcing the artist to concentrate on following the rules. A mind in despair tends to focus on that dispair, and like playing a game, a constrained work is a distraction, an amusement, a respite.

In the case of Other Electricities, this is quite apt for the sense of fended off despair that suffuses the book and many of its narrators. It's one of the elements of the book, that sense of despair and distance, that makes the book such an engrossing and emotional read. The formal qualities of the text, the aspects of ordering (such as the index) just make it that much more novel and worthy of repeated reading.

Dialogue on Other Electricities, Part 1

As promised, on Monday and Tuesday of this week, a few members of the LBC will be in dialogue about Ander Monson's Other Electricities. Here's the first installment.

Dan Wickett:

I have to admit, until I read the post by Sam, I had strictly read the book adhering to the cover, where it referred to Other Electricities as "stories." Reading Sam's post made me reconsider what I had read (and heavily suggested a re-reading of the book which I've made it through). I can now easily see this working as a novel as Sam detailed.

WINTER NOMINEE #2: ANDER MONSON'S OTHER ELECTRICITIES

Perhaps you recall, from last summer, a moderately interesting post on this blog about how to find authors "struggling to be noticed." Well, that was me. I mentioned Ander Monson's Other Electricities in that piece, and here I am again, this time telling you that I nominated the book for the Winter 2005 LBC Read This! event. What can I say? Six months later, it was still the best new book I read all year. And probably next year, too.

The story takes place in Keweenaw, the upper reaches of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Once the area was dominated by copper mines, logging, and commercial fishing. Now it's mostly vacationland. Year-round residents are aware of the natural beauty but also of the shuttered mines and the rusted remnants of long-gone industry.

The narrator of the book is a 19-year-old boy. His mother recently died of cancer. Since his mother's death, his father spends all his time in the attic, playing with his shortwave radio:

He stopped going to work. He told us he had enough money stashed to keep us up for a year. He kept provisions downstairs and would make excursions once or twice a night for salty snacks. He was always up on the night. Radiating some signal of distress.

The narrator spends much of his time thinking about Liz, a friend who died when her car went through the ice in a prom-night accident. Other dark events occur as well: someone else goes through the ice on a snowmobile; a girl is murdered by her thuggish boyfriend. There's also a generous amount of teenage and not-so-teenage crime, from shoplifting to vandalism to bank robbery, mentioned in passing.

In fact, Other Electricities is a long meditation on the things in life that surpass our understanding: love, fate, the unfathomable mystery of other human beings. And, of course, death:

Whereas Liz is gone, and there is only a slight emptiness now, a year after the fact, I think she is somehow here – caught in the detritus dust caught in the pale green living room curtains, somewhere in the radio waves coming through the air, or perhaps misaddressed in the mail, eventually to find her way back to me. I don't know if this is a healthy feeling.

What do I like so much about Monson's book? First, the form. The characters and themes wind through thirty short chapters ranging from two to twelve pages. There's also an enhanced table of contents (with "brief key word index and identification of speakers/main characters as appropriate"), an annotated list of characters and themes, and (at the back of the book) an index. And, oh yeah, the text is decorated with schematic diagrams from the 1985 handbook of the American Radio Relay League, the US national organization of amateur radio operators.

You may smile at this material but don't dismiss it as a gimmick. Together with the book's loose structure, it means you can read the chapters in almost any order. In fact, it's better to read the chapters randomly, since your indirection mirrors the hero's own approach to the central mysteries of the book – things always to be circled, never reached. In the end, though it's described on the cover as a collection of stories, Other Electricities coheres in character, theme, and narrative voice like few novels I've read.

Speaking of voice, Monson is a master of tone, and in this respect the book is a brilliant balancing act: dark, strangely soulful, yet funny too. Monson also writes poetry and some of the figures are beautifully drawn, as in his description of a gusty wind, "kicking through the trees like a vandal."

Finally, Other Electricities reclaims a little part of the world for literature. So often, tales of the upper Midwest are either Hemingway or Anderson, testosterone-charged adventure or small-town desperation. Monson doesn't borrow these myths; he makes his own. Other Electricities is one of those rare books that takes a part of the world we think we know, and makes us see it as if for the very first time.

Thanks to Nickole Brown at Sarabande Books for her support on this nomination. Next week, January 23-27, we'll have a week-long discussion of Other Electricities, featuring a podcast interview with the author and other special features. Come back and join us, won't you?