Toy Boats
Among San Francisco Language writers, Carla Harryman stands out as a poet working with narrative forms. Her mini-manifesto “Toy Boats” appeared in the context of a “Symposium on Narrative” (PJ 5) where poets, visual artists, and musicians were asked, “What is the status of narrative in your work?” Participants responded with statements on their use or avoidance of narrative in their projects, but the motives for the question were somewhat larger. The turn to language in the 1970s, and the semiotic and poststructuralist theory that encouraged it, called for a privileging of nonnarrative and a suspicion of narrative. In wanting “to distribute narrative rather than deny it,” Harryman considers both sides of the question: narrative is the location of a suspicion that undoes it (the story’s lack of veracity), while the undoing of narrative is still a story to be told in its fragments. Narrative turns out to be a deeper issue than a mode of formal construction or even genre, while nonnarrative form can never be entirely separated from narrative. For Harryman, working critically within narrative form is a poetics: “I don’t have to tell a story to make a point. / The story is an example of your point.” Harryman’s assertive and playful (non)narrative writings have had an important influence on experimental, hybrid-genre prose writing and poetics.
I prefer to distribute narrative rather than deny it.
The enemies of narrative are those who believe in it and those who deny it. Both belief and denial throw existence into question. Narrative exists, and arguments either for or against it are false. Narrative is only a ping-pong ball among blindspots when considered in the light of its advantages and defects.
Narrative holds within its boundaries both its advantages and defects. It can demonstrate its own development as it mutates throughout history. This is its great advantage. I.e., in accomplishing its mutability, it achieves an ongoing existence.
Narrative might be thought to be a character, and its defects lie in his “potential to observe his own practice of making falsehoods.” If this narrative is imitating anything, it’s the intention to convince the audience to enjoy its imitation, whatever the lack of truth or reasonableness.
Those who object to this artifice are narrative’s enemies, but they, too, are part of the story. They are subjects in the hypothetical world of a story. “I” too am a subject of narrative; I see enemies all around.
Because nothing is happening these days, no weather, no fighting, morning and nights, I had thought to begin my account with a little fable or narration. But I have been intercepted en route by a question, attempting to trap in flight that which forms a narration. What does it mean to allow oneself this indulgence? The indulgence of a little story? (Meanwhile we have gone down in defeat and my account has entered history.)
This is a more or less inaccurate translation of a bit of writing from Jean Pierre Faye’s Le Récit hunique.1 It is a story about the temptation to tell a story whose fate by the mere coincidence of time is to enter history. Faye tells us the story about the story rather than the original story, which has disappeared into history along with the enemy. The original has been replaced with a story that functions as a critique. The critique holds its story up as an example. Or, another way to look at this is a story can be an example of a story and so serve as a critique.
What Is the Status of Narrative in Your Work?
Oh, the boats are large, are they not?
Whatever gave you that idea?
From looking at myself.
You are introspective?
I am an indication of what occurs around me. For instance, some snakes occur in forests; whereas, others occur at the zoo. This is something zoos will not confess, for when you read the labels, snakes occur someplace other than in their cages.
Your argument doesn’t follow. You are a false philosopher.
I am showing you around behind the scenes and you call me a false philosopher. You don’t have to call me anything. Look at those large boats, dream of the ports they have come from. Think of the miscellany they carry, the weapons that can drive anyone into a frenzy of fear and conjure a story. From out of the blue, the boats descended upon us. We were dwarfed by their size. What were they doing here and why so many? The German and the Mongolian were nearly touching hulls. It was as if they were human and we were ants. The children playing behind us had not yet noticed this ominous display. But as you can see, I can only make fun of the possibility of your tale.
My tale?
Isn’t that what you wanted?
You have no tact, no skill, no frame of, frame of …
Nor do you produce resemblance or have a serious purpose or struggle with truth.
Or dally in genre literature.
There are no sentiments. It seems we are beginning to find some points of agreement. A resemblance to death and destruction is death and destruction, etc.
Like beans on the same shelf.
Yes, a bond.
The reality principle is continuous with our relationship so we don’t have to trace things.
The facts we have come up against are in need of processing.
I don’t have to tell a story to make a point.
The story is an example of your point. An ugly howling face comes out of nowhere. It is artfully executed.
You mean a bad boat.
No, you have provided that information. But don’t get upset by the disparity. An harmonious relationship produces a tedious vanity and a single repetitive conversation …
(Then the boats sank, leaving behind them pieces of purple debris floating out of the harbor.)
The question of the status of narrative presupposes a hierarchy of literary values I do not entertain in my work. Narrative is neither an oppressor to be obliterated nor the validating force of all literary impulse.
“You get to the world through the person. Anyway, it’s true. And yet, I keep wondering what does this mean in some larger sense? And then I wonder what larger sense I am getting at. There is something on the other side of what I can articulate that grabs the writing to it.”2
Extension is inside and outside of the writer. But I could also say that the thing pulling the writing toward it is chaos: the words fall in place in anticipation of a jumble. Or equally it could be an as yet unarticulated theory, which if ever made articulate will comprise a number of fragmented histories. Histories that have been intercepted en route by questions. The result might be something like a montage of collapsed ideas. This is a reflection on the enormity of the world. I am not in possession of all the facts.
Because I continue to avoid those absolutes like morning and then night, I cannot get back to the original statement. And yet I contradict myself, as these statements distribute themselves in their oblique reference. The word ground here comes to mind. The ground is the constructed ideology. Or a world of print.
Do I see the ground but can’t make sense of it?
I am already anticipating exhausting this subject.
A structure for writing that comes from anticipation relative to an elsewhere, which to become somewhere—i.e., a writing—must borrow from the things of this world in their partiality.
NOTES
1 Jean Pierre Faye, Le Récit hunique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967); see Carla Harryman, The Middle (San Francisco: Gaz, 1984).
2 Letter to Steve Benson.
PUBLISHED: Non/Narrative (1985), 5:104–7.
KEYWORDS: nonnarrative; genre; performance; manifesto.
LINKS: Carla Harryman, “Pedestal/Tulip Chair” from Chairs of Words (PJ 10), “What in Fact Was Originally Improvised” (PJ 2), with Steve Benson, “Dialogue: Museo Antropología, Mexico” (PJ 8), with Chris Tysh, “Interview” (PJ 10); Larry Price, “Harryman’s Balzac” (PJ 4); Bruce Campbell, “‘But What Is an Adequate Vice to Limit the Liquid of This Voice’” (PJ 9); Kathy Acker, “Ugly” (Guide; PJ 7); Beverly Dahlen, “Forbidden Knowledge” (Guide; PJ 4); Daniel Davidson, “Bureaucrat, My Love” (PJ 10); Jerry Estrin, “Penultimate Witness: On Emmanuel Hocquard” (PJ 8); Barbara Guest, “Shifting Persona” (PJ 9); Peter Middleton, “The Knowledge of Narratives” (PJ 5); Delphine Perret, “Irony” (PJ 3); Viktor Shklovsky, “Plotless Literature: Vasily Rozanov” (Guide; PJ 1).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: Percentage (Berkeley: Tuumba, 1979); Under the Bridge (San Francisco: This, 1980); Property (Berkeley: Tuumba, 1982); The Middle (San Francisco: Gaz, 1983); Vice (Hartford, Conn.: Potes & Poets, 1986); Animal Instincts: Prose Plays Essays (Berkeley: This, 1989); In the Mode Of (Tenerife, Spain: Zasterle, 1992); Memory Play (Oakland: O Books, 1994); There Never Was a Rose without a Thorn (San Francisco: City Lights, 1995); The Words, after Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories and Jean-Paul Sartre (Oakland: O Books, 1999); Gardener of Stars (Berkeley: Atelos, 2001); Baby (New York: Adventures in Poetry, 2005); Open Box (Brooklyn: Belladonna, 2007); Adorno’s Noise (Athens, Ohio: Essay Press, 2008); with Rae Armantrout et al., The Grand Piano; with Amy Scholder and Avital Ronell, Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker (eds.; New York: Verso, 2006); with Lyn Hejinian, The Wide Road (New York: Belladonna, 2011); with Jon Raskin, Open Box (CD; New York: Tzadik, 2012).