The Next Level Down:
By beginning with a fictional
account of nonfictional, autobiographical events, I set the stage for a new
form of metafiction, one wherein both the fictionality of the account and the
author’s own fictionalizing bias are redeemed as one, since it is in the
ACCOUNTING of the events, rather than the events themselves nor the quality of
the account, that the work takes on serious philosophical implications. Whether
or not Drake is a reliable narrator is just as dismissible as whether or not I
am; the integrity of the work is not in the point of view but in the clash.
If I may attempt to simplify this by
expounding upon it at greater length, it is so: that there are several layers
to a metafictional narrative. In this instance, the base layer, which has its
life and death outside of the work itself, well before conception, is comprised
of the Facts Themselves: Events within My Life. These events become Experiences
which are “mine”, and upon them I might comment, albeit subjectively. Then
there is the author’s attempt to represent those events, More or Less As They
Happened, as events within my fictional narrative. These are conveyed, for the
most part, through the voice of my Protagonist, (Drake Andersen) who presumably
shares my point of view and acts as mouthpiece for my ego, yet since he is
quite clearly an invention of the fiction he absolves me of responsibility for
voicing them.
Beyond these layers of abstraction
we arrive at the first truly “fictional”, however realistic and inspired,
facet: the Conversation. By setting up the play as a Dialogue betwixt my
fictional Protagonist and a nebulous Deuteragonist, the latter at least as dubious
as the former, I create a world which can bend to my creative will. Because it
is a work of fiction, since the Dialogue never transpired as I have transcribed
it, I am absolved of accusations of libel, even as I expound upon Events from
My Life. Yet the genius herein is not confined to the mere masterful
concealment of autobiography. By setting up a fictional dialogue about
nonfictional Events, I resolve a conflict between two warring extremes alike in
dignity and in futility.
The autobiography, as well as the
transparently autobiographical fiction, come under a storm of contemporary
derision owing to their presumably “biased” nature. They are also considered more
symptomatic of neurosis and maladjustment than of craft and vision; not only is
the writer reduced to a mental case, but the act of writing itself is treated
as though it were the foremost symptom.
On the obverse end, there lies the
realm of Pure Fiction and Fantasy, one which is so surpassingly synonymous with
neurosis that the critic does not even bother to laugh. Once the Author ceases
to write “what he knows”, it is presumed he knows nothing, and his flights of
fancy are deemed irrelevant to practical and ethical life.
In this way, all modern fictional
forms are ostensibly doomed, unless they become artillery for popular propaganda
and/or vehicles for subversive information. Fight Club can be read in
the same manner, in this sense, as the Anarchist’s Cookbook or the Communist
Manifesto, and Harry Potter is “about” slavery and elitism.
Yet something is redeemed in my
metafiction, though it never pretends to serve any “practical function” and it
cannot be convincingly accused of being a mere “vehicle” for (anti?-)Marxist
Propaganda. As I have said, and as I shall now decode: it is not in the QUALITY
of the ACCOUNT that the narrative redeems its fidelity, but the ACT of
ACCOUNTING. It is ironical and paradoxical, though satisfyingly and brilliantly
so, that the single most objectively redeeming aspect of this layer-cake of
context is that top layer which was prepared, as icing is, in nearly utter
independence of the Facts Themselves: the Conversation.
All of the play’s remaining contents might be presumed to have “happened”, though perhaps “not as the Writer or the Hero have recounted them”. Yet about the Dialogue no contest can be made except for an aesthetic plaint, which in itself appeals to bias on the critic’s part. The Author never seeks to convince you that either Drake or Jackson EXISTED, nor that they ever met at a café and reflected upon these autobiographical Events, nor that this meeting serendipitously carried them, by an invisible hand, through a misadventure which in itself connected the History to the Present and left them both as self-aware protagonists in the very Drama they were analyzing. What I have achieved is transparently not the ACCOUNT of such a relationship, but rather an extraction of its essence from SIMILAR Relationships in EDUCATED Life. The Conversation could never have transpired between uneducated men, nor educated old men; it HAD to be between college dropouts. It is precisely for this reason that the Dialogue appeals to my target audience, composed almost entirely of such youths.
Ergo, the problems of fiction are
resolved at the very height of fiction. Drake’s constant musings upon his Life,
more or less a direct report about Events from My Own Life, are in and of
themselves dubious, as are Jackson’s counterpoints to his musing. Yet it is
precisely BECAUSE these takes upon the same events contradict, coupled with the
fact that Jackson barely has a public story of his own, (though he clearly
demonstrates the agency necessary to produce one) that their dialogue is Rich
with Context and Subtext; I can praise it without praising myself, for I have
simply dreamt up this Dialogue, and I cannot claim to have produced it in
Actuality. Even as the Author, I act as an astonished witness, though I don’t
pretend towards humility in BEARING witness to the process. The verisimilitude
and factuality of either my take or Drake’s take on the Events is beside the
point, as are the clearly improvised events of Pure Fiction; what matters is
that everything is ACCOUNTED FOR by SPECULATION, and that Speculation serves a
transcendental purpose outside of the work.
[({Dm.A.A.)}]
No comments:
Post a Comment