Il faut que je vous fasse un aveu: je suis absolument en faveur du plagiat. Je crois que si on veut arriver à une nouvelle renaissance des arts et des lettres, le gouvernement devrait encourager le plagiat (…) Je ne plaisante pas car les très grands auters n’ont pas fait autre chose que d’être des plagiaires et ça leur a très bien réussi: Shakespeare, Molière… Cette habitude d’utiliser une histoire inventée par un autre vous libère de ce qui n’est pas important. L’histoire n’a pas d’importance, ce qui est important c’est la façon dont on la raconte. Ce qui est important c’est l’attention porté aux détails.

[I have to confess to you: I am absolutely in favor of plagiarism. I believe that if we are to arrive at a new renaissance of the arts and letters, the government must encourage plagiarism (...) I'm not joking. The greatest authors, Shakespeare, Moliere, haven't been anything other than plagiarists, to their great success... The custom of using a story created by someone else frees you from the unimportant. The story isn't important, what is important is the way the story is told. What is important is the attention brought to the details.]

-Jean Renoir. Quoted in “Avis d’orage en fin de journée” by Chiestian Rosset. L’Éprouvette 2 (2006): 73. (My translation.)

If, driven by an old compulsion, we were to define what the gods were to the Greeks, we might say, using the principle of Occam’s razor, everything that takes us away from the ordinary sensations of life. “With a god, you are always crying and laughing,” we read in Sophocles’ Ajax. Life as mere vegetative protraction, glazed eyes looking out on the world, the certainty of being oneself, without knowing what one is: such a life has no need of a god. It is the realm of the spontaneous atheism of the homme natural.

But when something undefined and powerful shakes mind and fiber and trembles the cage of our bones, when the person who only a moment before was dull and agnostic is suddenly rocked by laughter and homicidal frenzy, or by the pangs of love, or by the hallucination of form, or finds his face streaming with tears, then the Greek realizes that he is not alone. Somebody else stands beside him, and that somebody is a god. He no longer has the calm clarity of perception he had in his mediocre state of existence. Instead, that clarity has migrated into his divine companion. A sharp profile against the sky, the god is resplendent, while the person who evoked him is left confused and overwhelmed.

-Roberto Calasso. p243.

[A source for the new comic I'm working on.]

I originally discovered Markson’s work thanks to a happy coincidence of juxtaposition. An issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction which I bought for it’s half on John Barth, featured Markson in its second half. I ended up reading some of the articles and seeking out his works. I feel in love with his work from then. Through his work, I ended up reading Lowry and, even more importantly to me, Gaddis.

Time to go reread some of his works. And maybe it’s time to reread Under the Volcano and finally read Markon’s study of same.

I have previously written on his novel Televison.

“The detective is a true son of the murderer Oedipus, not only because he solves a riddle, but also because he kills the man to whom he owes his title, without whom he would not exist in that capacity (without crimes, without mysterious crimes, what would he be?) because this murder was foretold for him from the day of his birth or, if you prefer, because it is inherent in his nature, through it alone he fulfills himself and attains the highest power.”

Butor, Michel. L’Emploi du Temps (1957). Translated as Passing Time by Jean Stewart. John Calder, 1965, p.145.

And so we both maintained a heavy silence which our sparse words did not infringe, as we listened to him pointing out that in detective fiction the story goes against the stream, beginning with the crime, the climax of all the dramatic events which the detective has to rediscover gradually, and that this is in many respects more natural than a narrative proceeding without a backward look, where the first day of the story is followed by the second and then by subsequent days in their calendar order, as I myself at that time had been describing my October experiences; in detective fiction the narrative gradually explores events anterior to the event with which it begins, and this, though it may disconcert some readers, is quite natural, since obviously in real life it is only after having met somebody that we take an interest in his previous actions, and only too often it is not until some disaster has struck our lives that we wake up enough to trace its origins.

Ibid., p. 167.

Thus each day, evoking other days like harmonics, transforms the appearance of the past, and while certain periods come into the light others, formerly illuminated, tend to grow dim, and to lie silent and unknown until with the passage of time fresh echoes come to awaken them.

Thus the sequence of former days is only restored to us through a whole host of other days, constantly changing, and every event calls up an echo from other, earlier events which caused it or explain it or correspond to it, every monument, every object, every image sending us back to other periods which we must reawaken in order to recover the lost secret of their power for good or evil, other periods often remote and forgotten, whose density and distance are to be measured not by weeks or months but by centuries, standing out against the dark blurred background of our whole history…

Ibid., p.283

I’ve been trying to read more about criticism lately with some hope of improving my writings for this blog (and potential branch out to writing for other places). What is the purpose of criticism and how is it accomplished? In this short and readable volume Noel Carroll, a philosophy professor, argues his view on criticism, a view that I find reasoned and attractive.

His primary thesis is that criticism, as differentiated from other forms of discourse on art (art history, cultural studies, etc.), is about reasoned evaluation of art, assisting “readers in discovering what is of value in the artwork before them” (8). “Criticism is strong criticism insofar as it renders its evaluation intelligible to audiences in such a way that they are guided to the discovery of value on their own.” (45) In his opinion, while pointing out flaws can be an element of criticism, readers of criticism gain more by seeing the loci of value in art.

Throughout, Carroll avoids any attempt to define any specific values that should be found in artwork, rather the value of art is based on the “success value” of the work. Carroll’s success value is concerned with the artist’s achievement in relation to the his/her intentions in creating the work. The artist’s intentions are gleaned in various ways, in particular, the category the work falls into–that is, we would evaluate a superhero comic based on its success as a superhero comic, not as an autobiography (unless we found reasons to believe the intention was to mix those two genres). One does not base a criticism of a Jackson Pollock painting on the fact that it is not realistic, because Pollock’s intentions were not to make a realistic representation.

All other functions of criticism: description, classification, contextualization, elucidation, interpretation, and analysis (as Carroll sees them) are subservient to evaluation, they work to provide the “reason” supporting the evaluation. Description is, hopefully, obvious, while classification involves placing a work in various categories (from as broad as “a comic” through genres, sub-genres, styles, etc.). Contextualization is the descriptions of external circumstances, “art historical, institutional, and/or more broadly socio-cultural,” (102) relevant to the work (i.e. we might evaluate a comic differently based on its context in relation to the institutional factors of “mainstream”/”independent”). By elucidation, Carroll means the “operation of identifying the literal meaning, narrowly construed, of the symbols in the artwork” (108) Symbols meaning images, words, anything really. Examples of elucidation given include identifying actors in a movie or defining the meaning of an obscure phrase. Interpretation, on the other hand, is about the sense of the artwork, more commonly speaking, the meaning in a broader sense, the theme. Analysis, then, is about how the “work works–of how the parts of the work function together to realize the point or purposes of the work” (111). The difference between these last two is the subject of a longer passage in the book. Interpretation is a subset of analysis, which makes me wonder why Carroll felt the need to separate it out. A formal analysis would be another form of analysis.

Carroll spends most of the book making arguments for his thesis as well as offering counter-arguments, which he then argues against. In the above I have merely summarized his thesis and ignored the numerous arguments he offers. Suffice to say, I found his arguments convincing, thoughtful, and well written, if rather long.

In considering my own critical writings, I know I tend to focus more on analysis (formal) than any of the other elements, and I probably do not back-up what evaluations I make as much as I should. My argumentation skills have never been very good. That’s a skill I never learned. In a lot of criticism I read, the description tends to take over with a large percentage of the piece being used to recount plot and a small evaluation being tacked on at the end.

Something to think about for next time, both reading and writing.

Lindon asked me, one day, if I knew what this new literary movement could be called. Back then, I had dodged the question, but now, eighteen years later, I think I can answer it. It took me quite some time, about twenty years of reflection, but I found the answer. The answer is in the last words of Making Love, where I’m writing about an infinitesimal disaster. I didn’t write “infinitesimal” thinking of a theory, but I didn’t write this word lightly either. Infinitesimal is the response, and I suggest speaking of “the infinitesimal novel.” The problem with the idea of the “minimalist novel” is that it’s very simplistic. The term “minimalist” calls to mind the infinitely small, whereas “infinitesimal” evokes the infinitely large as much as the infinitely small: it contains the two extremes that should always be found in my books.

Jean-Philippe Toussaint in a 2007 interview with Laurrent Demoulin (translated in Context 22).

All these are but memories that delude and inflame, all are desires of the night, but Georgette had understood that, to be beautiful and desired, she must identify herself with the night, with the quotidian mystery.

Soupault, Philippe. Translated by William Carlos Williams. Last Nights of Paris. Exact Change, 1992. p.50. (my emphasis)

Bonus quote:

…for some, those discoveries, a new way of walking and a new way of talking, would dramatize the contradictions of everyday existence for years to come, would keep life more interesting than it would have otherwise been.

Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces. Harvard, 1990. p.36-7

Issac also commented:

It’d be interesting to hear you talk a little more about the ways in which the form of, for example, a sonnet counts as “constraint,” when other formal considerations (Schulz’s four-panel layout in Peanuts or the generic assumptions of, say, detective fiction) don’t count. In some ways, the formal constraints of a sonnet are dictated by genre, so that they hardly seem optional for Shakespeare; on the other hand, if someone chose to draw a webcomic with the same constraints of panelization that Schulz used (four square panels only), wouldn’t that be a formal constraint?

Some key differences are apparent between the sonnet, the Schulz example, and generic conventions. Generic conventions are easiest to place outside the realm of constraint because they lack systematization in almost all cases&em;excepting an Oulipo offshoot, called Oulipopo (the extra po standing for “policière”) which worked to apply constraints to detective fiction.

The case of Schulz and comic strips are “institutional” constraints (a term which I think I took from Jan Baetens (this article)). The key part for me is that these constraints are pushed onto the artist from above. Granted, the artist voluntarily chooses to create work within the institution (in this case newspaper comic strips), knowing the constraints that will be applied, so they probably do fit into all the elements of my definition of constraint as I list them in my presentation.

How does this differ from the obstruction model taken up by Madden and Hart, where Madden passes the constraint down to Hart? Perhaps there is no real difference, and I should modify my statements in that presentation. I can’t help feeling that an issue of power and authority comes to play here that makes me want to push the institutional constraints to the side. I would say that your example of someone choosing to work under a panel structure similar to Schulz’s would be an example of constraint. That element of choice contrasts nicely in my mind with the idea of constrained creation. The institutional power issue is what makes me balk at including the Schulz example in my particular categorization. Though, if you’ve seen the Von Trier film, The Five Obstructions (where Madden and Hart’s project originated), the exertion of power is a major part of the film and its tensions.

The case of Shakespeare and sonnets may be even more thorny as my knowledge of the subject is limited. I’m not clear on how sonnet structure is dictated by genre (perhaps you could elaborate on that). I don’t see poetic forms as genre, but a sonnet is a systematized form. The goal of the Oulipo at its early stages (and perhaps still, though I believe the idea has lessened greatly in importance) was to create forms for use by other writers. The actual creation of works would serve as examples of those forms. This harkens back to forms such as the sonnet where it is shared and used by many writers. One can imagine that a form gaining such widespread use would create a different perception (more genre-like) than, for example, the constraint used by Harry Mathews to write his book Cigarettes (a constraint based on permutations that he has never fully divulged) which was only used once.

To connect this to the previous case, I don’t believe anyone was imposing sonnets on Shakespeare. He could have easily written some less structured type of rhymed couplets (though at the time, I believe there were expectations of what a poem was that are more restrictive then modern times). The difference between the sonnet form as genre-like and a prose genre like detective fiction is the strict formal constraint of a sonnet, absent in detective fiction. Detective fiction has certain expected elements, but there is no definitive structure to it. In some strange sense this makes me think of different ways people have tried to define “comics” from the very clearly delineated definition (like Kunzle in his History of the Comic Strip) to less structured ideas like what I put forth in my column on the topic.

MR: Critics comment on your interest in the minutiae of daily experience. Do you feel that you have a particular interest in minutiae?

JPT: What really matters is to pay attention to what is both infinitely small (the most pathetic, trivial things, the most insignificant details of daily life) and infinitely large (the essential questions we have, the meaning of life, the place of human beings in the universe). A book must contain both darts and philosophy, bowling and metaphysics.