The milieus are open [in the/to] chaos which threatens them with exhaustion or intrusion.

Deleuze and Guattari

Intrusion – a recurring concept which haunts and tempts me at the same time. My simultaneous nemesis and salvation. My imperishable confirmation and, synchronously, the unscrupulous pitfall within which I ensnare myself all too often. I had to put my 6-part farewell review on hold due to its unfathomable and unpredictable machinations. Yet, somehow miraculously – miraculously as if I had once again gone back in time to unintentionally exploit my past serendipity towards literature which moves and dances – I have put my hands on a novel which not only grants you insight into how different and multifaceted nothingness of the 21^st Century appears to be, but also shows the other concept mentioned in the opening quote – exhaustion. And its puckishly splendorous consequences.

The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier, is one of these novels which you can only read once, just like Iain Reid’s I’m thinking of ending things, yet it perches on the opposite side of the concept-inducing spectrum. So closely does the Frenchman’s novel resemble a beautiful inevitability of not being able to resist a new dimension of meaninglessness associated with life itself, it takes a courageous mind not to crumble under its sentences. ‘Courageous’ here meaning being able to withstand the stares, with which uncharted types of abysses – ‘granddaughters’ and ‘grandsons’ of Nietzschean Abyss – so gladly and eagerly x-ray us each and every day. Provided the novel ‘accepts’ you. Contrary to the Canadian’s book which retains the accessibility of a mystery novel, The Panda Theory, with its post-existential vibe, is highly exclusionary. How so? It’s time to meet our Protagonist.

It’s fairly safe to assume, the only precise method of defining things is by way of showing. Pointing your grubby finger, your not-so-square chin, your presupposedly round head. Not only is this ostensive brazenness required to demonstrate who Gabriel – The Panda Theory protagonist – is, but there simply is no other way to depict what remains of everything a human being constitutes after nothingness has overthrown it all. That’s why I would like you to imagine my words are fingers, chins and heads. At least, until the following paragraph ends.

Gabriel appears in a small Breton town where the devil says goodnight. At first, he seems like a regular type of guy, although a bit introverted one. He knows how to get by and has some money. What he has more, though, is a somewhat penetrative ability to get into the orbit of other people’s lives. Yet, this penetrative passiveness of his – that’s what my crooked finger would point at – somehow escapes the clear definition. As if it were peppered with something unnamable which enriches it with frank dejection, a bold, stout, self-evident refusal to become fully attached to something and/or someone. Or to anything and everyone in general. A presence without being, an unfounded appearance, a banshee of the state-of-the-art Nothingness, Gabriel is an intrusion, a ‘grandson’ of Nietzschean Abyss, whose eyes neither reject nor approve, neither judge nor do they cut anybody any slack. He is an active man – he wanders around the town, talks to people, befriends them and – first and foremost – cooks for them. Just like any other open-hearted fellow would do. However, there is something irrevocable about him, something which separates him from everything and everyone, existentially, almost metaphysically. As if he were molded from a different type of clay, a more exhausted one. From the second, also pretty intrusive, narrative we get to know why is that so, and suddenly the slow-paced yet lucid goings-on accelerate through the build-up and twist phase… and we are struck by sensations which escape well-trodden paths of description.

What strikes the most in The Panda Theory, though, is the straightforward delicacy of language. I like to call it “The French Subtlety”. Name-wise, a slightly questionable trait, especially for authors of different nationalities who also possess it, nevertheless, it fits like a glove. Garnier himself oftentimes claimed that he kept his narratives plain and simple due to his insufficient education. A gross exaggeration bordering on self-flagellation, especially when the instantly perceptible intensity of his writing style hits us like a bludgeon. The book reads smoothly, surprisingly, considering the weight it carries on its back. Garnier’s pen ‘strokes’ (apparently, the Frenchman was also a painter), distinctively calm, with unpretentiously poetic touches here and there, are as far from numbing your thoughts and making your heart yawn as a fingerless vet is from becoming an origami master. The brilliance of Garnier’s writing lies in his honesty. He is one of those authors who write not with their blood, but the blood of their spirits, blood of their hearts, blood of their souls. This “trisomy” of blood springs warrants there is no beating about the bush, every sentence is like a finely oiled cog and sprocket, fitting seamlessly into the true-to-life machinery of narrative, being only one step removed from the natural flow of events. The memorable mimetic prowess of Garnier’s prose is almost unmatched and resembles a harmonious melody of necessities. Perhaps that’s why we have no objections believing Gabriel is an intrusion, or, rather, inTRUEsion…

Juxtaposing Garnier’s main character with protagonists of David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress and Georges Perec’s A Man Asleep, we witness another type of outsider-ish alienation. It is less of a post-skeptical metaphysical somersault of Kate’s “no-other-wayness” than obtuse obfuscations experienced by the nameless hero penned in the 2^nd person by the OuLiPean Prince himself, however, by way of sheer tangibility of silent disgruntlement with reality, Gabriel is on a par with them both. He retains the firmest grip on it, though. The reality exhausted him thoroughly, sucked him dry, true, thus he resorts to the last thing remaining – becoming an intrusion, turning “antiseptic” to all identifiable internal human affects and afflictions. Yet, he rides the more subordinate wave of oddity, dejectedness and inexpressibility than Markson’s and Perec’s protagonist do. He is less philosophically flamboyant and oblivious than Kate from Wittgenstein’s…, as well as less language-bound and separated from externality than Perec’s ‘sleepwalker’ is. He may be patted on the back, smiled at, talked to, yet he is absent, his internal qualities are abject, depleted, nonexistent. He is a shadow of a shell, a none – if I may transform this indefinite pronoun into a regular noun – a none which is so used to its own exhaustion, it strips him down to the bare necessity of continuing to be without everything. If every facet of reality is laced with illusions, then Gabriel has to be what he is – a dis-illusioned none, a harbinger of unassuming nothingness. A nothingness which might be approached, even high-fived, yet it remains untouched. And will carry on doing so, from the bleak beginning on a grim train station to… well, I am not going to spoil the wide grin of Panda.

Amonne Purity

First, a couple of explanatory sentences. Every now and then comes a time when one simply knows the end is near. The curtain falls. But before it does, there need to be something left behind. It is an obligation which rejects any doubt as to the necessity of its happening. The last chef d’oeuvre, the swan song – no, wait! – the swan opera. The following text is the first “installment” or – if we follow the trail commenced by the crucial term above – the “overture” of my farewell. So buckle up or sprawl on your couch, if you like. The ugly duckling has finally metamorphosed. And it sings…

Angel made in heaven
All I want is your love
Gimme some of the action, reaction

Erasure

The Litera(p)ture of Ontological Enchantment

In 1988, my favorite philosopher of late – Gilles Deleuze – published one of the most intellectually enthralling books I have ever read: The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque. This brilliant lecture not only on notions of Baroque traits and characteristics as an epoch in general, not only on marvelous audacity and holistic tenacity of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s thought, but also a splendid example of Deleuze’s own interpreting prowess, with a prominent allegory of the Baroque House at the forefront – an ample approximation of how human being functions as a Monad – the key concept of Leibniz’s philosophy. This and many more scintillating profundities left me in a state of titillating rapture. I, being a bookworm par excellence, smitten by explosiveness of ruminations, with which The Fold… filled me to the brim, suddenly felt the inexplicable surge in infatuation towards literature, which was even more intense than my usual outbursts of tenderness towards it. So strong was the said affinity it resembled almost some kind of premonition. I just knew something was in store for me. All I had to do was keep my eyes open. So I kept them open. And then it hit me like a stray, flamboyant meteorite, propelled by Deleuze’s high-octane book and my ongoing rapture. The litera(p)ture…

Taking a simultaneous ride on the Ferris wheel of pondering and the roller coaster of excitation, I began mulling over the imaginary endeavor – to take Deleuzian allegory and “redecorate” it with the newly coined term as a heavenly guideline. The problem was I didn’t have any “materials”. Nevertheless, being a firm believer in serendipity, I wasn’t to be left at the mercy of chance. I quickly recalled I had had spectacular (mis)adventures with Nabokov’s Pale Fire which I happened to mention back in the day on one occasion, which have recently been somehow rejuvenated by yet another novel. Both of them, on a completely compossible plain or, rather, fold of perception, escorted me to a path, which in turn led me to the right confluence, allowing me to pick up the best novels along the way and compose my grandest literary ornament so far. The first of the books in question – the “overture” of my farewell opera – is Boris Vian’s 1947 novel Froth on the Daydream.

Entering the Baroque House

I have never shunned from my irrational fascination for metaphysics. The surreal depth of thought it offers, when favorable mental conditions meet appropriate stimuli of questions, always bedazzles, befuddles and bamboozles me thoroughly. Because of it, oftentimes I am hot under the collar, have ants in my pants. I exude overeagerness to ask further questions, to speculate boldly and without an ounce of hesitation, and extend my chain of thoughts via the wild new variety of unpredictable associations. However, the best, the icing-on-a-cake type of sensation I get out of metaphysics is during those rare moments when I see something completely unexpected somewhere where there was no telling in doing so whatsoever. When all the ensuing jumble of jubilation makes me jump out of my bed, for I always read in horizontal position. That was the case with The Fold… It cast a spell on me. It teleported me before the Baroque House itself. I stood in front of it, among the shrubs sheared with pious pruning passion of Edward Scissorhands. I regarded the edifice of the House. Its first floor wide, spacious, with several windows up front, some of them claustrophobically tiny, others gargantuan in size. The second floor, strangely soaring, skyscraper-ish, windowless. It resembled a body of an old overgrown smock mill without the sails. I was enchanted. Breaking off from the mesmerizing stupor, though only slightly, I set my eyes on the main door. The double rectangle of old oak wood pulsed and breathed. Videodrome style. It summoned me. And I stepped inside…

The best and most vivid representation of this rather anthropomorphic yet, on the other hand, simple entrance to the Baroque House of Litera(p)ture is Froth on the Daydream. Vian’s best known work is the finest example of what does it mean for a novel to confirm that something exists without neither material nor spiritual proof (let alone diligently discarding necessity to justify a “taking-it-for-granted” mode of existence). The book doesn’t have to do anything. It just is. Its qualities are pure. The story the Frenchman subjects us to (here, without the nasty connotation the “subject someone to” expression entails by default) is even purer, yet it makes us wander among thoughts and wonder on the fringes of imagination. The Lewis Carroll-ish language conjures up the Wonderland-like world with remarkable ease and without much ado (eels living in sewers being caught using pineapples, ice rink commuters stretching out due to velocities attained on ice, pianocktail concocting fancy cocktails out of fine tunes and even finer spirits, junctiquitarian forced to overbid due to customer’s munificence when bargaining, snow-moles with marmalade furs and noisy dispositions snooping around, rozza-erasers being pulled on rozzers, etc.) – as well as paints hearty, honest, oftentimes absurd exchanges between characters. But this is only the beginning.

There is this oldie with Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak entitled Strangers When We Meet which tells a story of a love affair between two married neighbors. And… that’s it. There’s nothing more. The movie consists only of the said fornication. Of course, there are some additional events within the story which lead to its melodramatic end, some qualities (like wooden acting on Novak’s part) constituting the “meat” of the movie, however they somehow disappear, as if gobbled up by the wholeness and simplicity of the main idea – the love affair in itself. In the same vein, Froth on the Daydream is the story of falling in love and nothing else (notwithstanding the fact, that, in truth, there is more to it than meets the eye). This paradox of having and not having anything else is the main latch on the entrance door to the enchantment. It is, in turn, the first of the openings to our redecorated Baroque House.

The Litera(p)turous interior

The unfolding of love in Froth on the Daydream composes the vestibule of our inflected lathery den. It is reciprocated, the love, free from the deathly torments of its murky, gloomy, unrequited opposite. Wholeheartedness, honesty, exultation, elation, delight – these are the words that come to mind when we recall the suave and chic fondling of reality procured by Colin and Chick – our two main male characters. The willingness, eagerness, the sheer hankering for love exhibited by the former, and the ongoing double limerence of the latter toward Lisa – his girlfriend – and Jean Pulse Hearte’s (sic! [if I may throw in a multi-faceted pun – almost noseating 😉 ) literary and philosophical output – are not only as straight as an arrow, but also surprisingly tender. Suddenly, we are beginning to pine for something similar for us to happen. Colin’s conjugation of the verb “to wish” at the beginning of the chapter X seems almost like a prayer or a chant, which is only one vowel and consonant away from our crucial verb “to enchant”… Not too many pages later do we realize we have already fallen under the spell of the novel, lithely, along a new fold…

Long story short, the characters are purely positive. Even when they do questionable or outright malevolent deeds, they are momentarily and miraculously excused. Vian achieved something truly remarkable – he created dramatis personae lacking in qualitative spectrum yet being able to shine bright with integrity exempt from the one-dimensional naivety and symbolism of fable heroes and heroines. Colin, Chick, Chloe, Nicolas, Lisa and Isis neither fumble with nor fume at themselves, neither forbid themselves, nor resort to pretentious altercations within confines of their psyche, yet they are solidified, far from paper-thin, trite literary machinations a certified bungler would pen. They invoke one charming association – a soft focus photography. The colors of sensations Froth on the Daydream invokes are pastel-like, bland, almost bleached, yet their atmosphere is dreamy, slightly shifted, as if expectant. Why is it so?

The geometry within the Mansion of Litera(p)ture

The end (taken literally here) justifies the means. Thus, I am going to quote Deleuze verbatim in order to show you the “point of departure” of my redecoration of the Baroque House:

Yet the Baroque trait twists and turns its folds, pushing them to infinity, fold over fold, one upon the other. The Baroque fold unfurls all the way to infinity. First, the Baroque differentiates its folds in two ways, by moving along two infinities, as if infinity were composed of two stages or floors: the pleats of matter, and the folds in the soul. Below, matter is amassed according to a first type of fold, and then organized according to a second type, to the extent its part constitutes organs that are “differently folded and more or less developed.'” Above, the soul sings of the glory of God inasmuch as it follows its own folds, but without succeeding in entirely developing them, since “this communication stretches out indefinitely”.

All we need to do is shift the allegory, push and shove it into something more… seductive. The Baroque House ceases to be the allegory of monadic human being. With all of its intricacies and generalizations, nuances and totalities, fluxes and influxes, flexibility and rigidity, redundancies and quintessences, modes of repetitiveness and one-time ingenuity, etc., ad infinitum, the Baroque House turns into a Mansion of Litera(p)ture. Our senses do not unfurl to infinities, swirling and swinging along right to the top room of the soul floor, do not occupy the interior of the first floor. Their motion of riding the wave, trailing along the ever-infinite folds, is overtaken by the geometry of literary intensity.

A cavalcade of immediate questions comes tumbling down on us. What does this new geometry look like? What is it based on? Does it have preferable shapes? What kind of topology of the ontology of letters is permissible here, on the premises? Is it dual? Does the Mansion retain two storys? Why is it based on intensity? Imagine a flicker in the eye casting a smoldering glance, just like the one in the Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting The Love Letter, or the other, half-coyly half-blatantly peering from behind a slit in a wavy blonde curtain of a peekaboo hair of Hollywood’s Golden Age star Veronica Lake. Imagine the alluring light of its sparks, the immediacy of shadows permeating your retinas, flirting with an opacity of their possible reciprocation, and their raucous triumph, thundering silently somewhere else, where prepositions give birth to the next generation of word allocations – a grand yet straightforward spaces of sentences to be, to denote, to invoke, to delineate, to subvert, to encrypt, to celebrate, to joke, to multiply, etc. Imagine the geometry of longing for the plausible beginnings of whatever you wished them to begin, as enchanted as Colin was when he danced with Chloe for the first time, as enchanted as I was “enliteraptured” while reading Froth on the Daydream, as enchanted as I wish you truly were at least once in a lifetime. I know you can sense what it all looks like, but are unable to describe it using mere hackneyed words of old. Lucky for us, the true enchantment hates descriptions and loves turning into mutual desire. It craves, covets, yearns to do so with every fiber, every fold of its post-infinity. So keep your eyes open. The Vestibule, the Overture ends here, but the desire that follows is nearer than you think…

Amonne Purity

Disasters do not exist, they are elsewhere.

Georges Perec

There exists a jarring paradox: silence is at daggers drawn with language, yet it breeds – in a gemmating fashion, thus with hardly any fuss or gidding – a demand to justify itself WITHIN boundaries of the latter. Therefore, it concocts a cumbersome cocktail of common courtesy, whipped with a whiff of whimsical whining: “Mr. Language, why are you being so strict? Are you trying to puzzle my well-being, sending me mixed signals? Why wouldn’t you let me have my own mode of expression, a means to communicate without your enforced necessities? Oh, Mr. Language, would it be too much to ask if you keep an eye on my previous duties, while I am going to try and be beside myself?”…

“Beside oneself” – taken as literally as possible here – is perhaps the key phrase which you may attribute to Georges Perec’s novel A Man Asleep. It has lodged on the same plane of mis-ontologized referentiality, sprouted up in the same kingdom of metaphysical stiff-upper-lipness, just as Wittgenstein’s Mistress and I’m Thinking of Ending Things had, the latter two simply occupying different hmm… “marches” of monstrous calamities, presiding over other “fiefdoms” of fiendish dread. Ensnared while crossing the impossible space between two sides of the looking glass (bizarre-wise, I suppose I don’t have to remind you which looking glass is it, do I…), the book neither pays heed to your reading comfort, nor makes any excuses for itself. It isn’t illegible, unapproachable, yet is inexorable, ineluctable to those who are just as beside themselves as protagonist of Perec’s second novel is.

A nameless 25-year-old sociology student – you – for the Frenchman uses 2^nd person narrative throughout the whole odyssey of how to make oneself scarce – not figuratively, but metaphysically speaking – realizes he is unable to cope with blatantly pointless mechanisms of life itself anymore. How does he feel? Disillusioned? With what? Rejected? By whom? Dejected? Why? Extricated? From what? Forget about questions. They are the most loyal lackeys of language anyway. You, on the other hand, are more, or less…or…well, “beside”. You have slipped through the crack in reality, into the crevasse of self-revelation so brutal, yet so numbing it cannot make anything more nor anything less than etherize and cut you off from this paradoxical notion, reduce you to shards of silence, turn you into mechanical wretch of a human shadow, becoming flatter and flatter on the ever less insignificant surface of reality.

For, in contrast to Kate – maltreated by no-other-wayness in Wittgenstein’s Mistress – and Jake – the Arctic wolf of ultimate loneliness in I’m Thinking of Ending Things – you accommodated yourself on the thin line of retaining your sanity (you wish you had lost it; would make life easier, wouldn’t it?…) while not being necessitated to perform a counterstroke against the vapid void of ever the same days and nights of walking and looking. Days made of verbs and nouns. You have turned into Verbman, a Noun monster. No qualities – just doing, listing, discerning without acknowledging. Lacking flair, bland, squalid seconds of sore scrapes, splinters of previous habits, now meaningless and, thus, at the verge of being nonexistent. Dis-endowed deeds of derring-do without any dare. You have become so homogeneously tautological you are no longer able to belong in general. Full stop. You are the end of a sentence nobody wishes to utter, yet, out of linguistic spite, vile bile or other despicable phenomenon, has been phrased. You still retain your consciousness, your sense of reasoning. You are an invisible slime at the threshold of proper, self-inflicted basket case conditioning you would love to fall for irrevocably, irreversibly, which, nevertheless, flees from your incapacitated mentality, existential inconsistency. You possess neither will to live nor will to death. You cannot continue and cannot cease to carry on. You are a nightmare of every classical logician. You are so beside yourself you are turning into a dream of becoming something else than a human being. What would you like to become? I bet my bottom dollar you would reject your human form in favor of the whole new reality, with an alternative set of pristine premises. Or, perhaps, you would not. All in all, keep dreaming, sleepless boy, keep dreaming…

What is so riveting in A Man Asleep? Is it the language, curt and mundane, full of enumerations, with verbs as main building blocks of narration (nouns coming a close second)? Does reality of a man who has been slashed with the “neither/nor” exclusion genuinely succumbs to verbal abuse (here, again, in a literal meaning) that badly? Is it the assertion you are prone to bestow: of all senses, sight is spatially the most passive one? Hearing almost always entails some sort of movement (finger drumming, leg bouncing, full-blown dancing routine, etc.), smell and taste – the underrated duo comprising hedonistic holism, with touch as their sidekick or, rather, the power behind the throne of sensuality – are, too, in complete cooperation with the body and its fidgeting around. But sight is different. You may just sit and keep your eyes open, perfectly motionless, be still and still be able to observe as many things as your pupils would allow you to. There is nothing that should convince your sight to give way for anything but its own self-centered continuation. Thank god you have eyelids. You would have been unbearable without them. But I digress, as usual.

Getting back on track with unquenchable charms of A Man Asleep, should the external nightmare of senseless activities, futile deeds, lackadaisical actions – bread and butter of Perec’s protagonist – be treated as a sign of general bankruptcy of the idea of personal identity? More than once, you are being exposed as someone whose life is something which cannot be equated with yourself. A perfect specimen of homo sapiens with stumps for qualities, a man curtailed. Not a single bad word may be said about you, the same goes for their opposites. You are Aristotelian golden mean incarnate. You are a perfectly balanced nothingness which evoke a sole connotation only – a drab individual with self-regurgitated life, having no strings attached to it whatsoever. You remain here and your existence went away. Better deal with it. Or, perhaps, don’t…

Perec’s novel – not yet subjugated to the literary rigor of OuLiPo – is another evidence of how unpredictable a flirt with skepticism (no matter whether inflicted by sheer chance or accosted deliberately) could be. In spite of not being in full bloom, and without ontological horror vacui, whose dire consequences might be witnessed in Wittgenstein’s Mistress and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, A Man Asleep remains their next of kin. It may be loaded with less conceptual “cargo”, with far less “ideas behind ideas”, nevertheless you are more than eager to forgive its literary faux pas. All thanks to the memorable, one-of-a-kind narration (the only other book I know of, which implements second-person point of view, is Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney and – partially – Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler) and for the underlying sense of inexpressibility – a blaring notion that behind being exempt from will to live and will to death, beside being beside oneself, there is simply something more, simmering underneath the rampant muzzle of words and many other oxymoronic expressions which are doomed to de-scribe you. What exactly is it? Why don’t you fall asleep and tell me. I am willing to prepare a glass of warm milk for you…

Amonne Purity

In a vast realm of anecdotes, being nothing more than just another floor of a multi-story edifice called “Life” (not necessarily the top one, neither the floor per se – it is probably more like an alcove so obvious in its presence, that we no longer pay attention to it, a not-so-heart-stopping crawlspace supplied only with an insignificant ‘cargo’ of chilling mysteries and thrilling miseries, etc.), there is a seemingly dull one about Karl Popper, who once allegedly asked his students during a lecture: “What do scientists do?”. When being answered ”They make observations.”, he replied: “Well then, observe.”. The slightly disoriented students inquired: “What shall we observe?”. This “what” was the focal point of Popper’s argument he wanted to clinch – we cannot get involved in any kind of scientific activity (e.g., assembling a device which is then applied to make our experiment work, developing the most efficient and the least time-consuming data gathering method, choosing the adequate mode of mathematical calculation for the corresponding phenomenon and its hidden, elusive essence we hope to eventually unveil one day, etc.), unless we, for lack of a better expression, ‘obey the rules’ of the theory, which we are struggling to prove with all our scientific actions and machinations. Avoiding further philosophical babble, Austrian-born thinker claims that the theory consisting of hypotheses comes first and it is only afterwards that it ‘tells’ us an approximate way of what we shall do to falsify and reject it or to corroborate and leave it be just for the next ‘cannonade’ of falsifying experiments. Cutting to the chase: cannot do anything without a theory.

But then again what would happen, were we to lay our hands on something, which would enable us to eat a cake and have it too? What would we do, if we crossed our paths with results of visual investigations performed regardless of each and every “what” of the theory, executed without any necessity to relate to the latter, yet somehow being totally dependent upon it? How would we react whether the effects of our heedful peeps, irrespective of their parallel existence alongside theoretical assumptions, dwindled our capacity to pin down which one precedes the other, let alone immobilized our ability to tell which is which? Should not some sort of user’s manual help us out of this stubborn, quite paradoxical cul-de-sac of questions? You bet it should. If only it weren’t the thing which corroborates our ‘ouliply’ astounding doubts…

Before we focus on the aforesaid notions, let me disentangle in a bit wikipedic fashion the enigmatically sounding adverb from the previous sentence. Oulipo or, if one prefers the alternate spelling, OuLiPo, which stands for a phrase that could be roughly translated as “A Workroom For Potential Literature”, was a group of French writers and mathematicians, who aimed at paving new ways for the development of literature by implementing a highly complex set of restrictions, based on advanced mathematics, logic, topology, game theory and some skillful wordplay (lipograms, palindromes, tautograms, and so on) as a regulatory groundwork and scaffolding for the ongoing writing process. Back in the 60’s, its founding fathers – Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais – wished to impose this intellectual bondage on letters in order to show that they (the letters, not them) had not had the last word yet on their already known tendency as well as genuinely trailblazing potency to express and impress, to provoke and evoke, to baffle, shuffle, scuffle, muffle, and so on. Georges Perec’s Life a User’s Manual, a marvelous specimen of the Oulipean style itself, is a work which not only confirms that the writing still has it, but also exemplifies the unquenchable thirst for the unknown to burst straight out of it like an ink geyser, spraying out new sentences, paragraphs and passages in the wildest specters of colors, forms and shapes yet to be recognized, named and wondered upon.

Scowling skeptically at Popper’s revelations myself, it would be very unwise of me to engage in giving you hinting winks exclusively about the theory which formed Perec’s novel. It would mean that I somehow neglect the remaining ‘dimensionality’, the observable space from under the ‘surface’ of the book. On the other hand, all I should write here, which would be sufficient enough to hold back the surplus words that beg to get penned, is just one quote, a very significant one though: “Look with all your eyes, look”. Unfortunately, this sentence sounds like neglecting the theoretical negligence above. And that would be like giving a slap in the face of mathematics: multiplying two negatives does not give a positive (I don’t mind smacking it here and there from time to time, but as far as Oulipean inclination for math is concerned, it would not do any good here). Frankly, the easiest way to cut this unforeseen Gordian knot is to imagine yourself being left on a frozen lake. All you have is a pair of ice skates. Suddenly, out of the blue, an opportunity arises. Ice diving. Not beneath the frozen surface of the lake (although you have to pierce right through it), but somewhere else. You don’t know squat about it, but you can already feel the chills of excitement down your spine… So pick your skates and come with me to drill some ‘ice holes’ we can dive into. Oh, and never mind the scuba gear and other indispensable equipment. I will bring some for you. And Georgie will fetch user’s manuals, of course…

Pages. Five hundred. Their quantity controlled. Their quality breathtakingly absorbing. The ‘narrative eye’ fades in. A townhouse in cross section appears. Chapter by chapter, we move along, watching. We slide up and down the revealed interior. We glance at rooms, halls, cellars and servants’ quarters. We glimpse at the staircase and inside the boiler room. We even snoop around the lift machinery and the service entrance. Our jumps are smooth; might there be a hidden pattern to recognize? It takes a while to spot it – an auxiliary sketch is in demand. Just a brief outline, a couple of shaky lines… oh, it is a knight! So here we go: left, left and up – the staircase, second floor on the right. A prepubescent grandson of a piano tuner is sitting in front of Madame de Beaumont’s apartment. He is reading a novel about a polymath who lived at the turn of the 19th century. Splash! – we are being immediately sunken by an adventurously oneiric short story of an exceptionally exquisite literary craftsmanship. A couple of dozen pages earlier: down, down and right – a crummy kitchen of an old man called Cinoc. The oldster, whose name has precisely 20 spelling and pronouncing variations, has been employed as a self-proclaimed “word-killer”. Down through another hole! – we are being entertained by 30 examples of terms and phrases which Cinoc has gotten rid of. Not to mention the long-forgotten historic figures, those marginally worthwhile utensils and absolutely worthless encyclopedias Cinoc must have rummaged through first! Among fits of laughter, we keep wondering whether this awkward potpourri ever existed or was it just fabricated by Perec’s prodigious coining prowess? One hundred fifty pages later: right, down and down – a grandiosely decorated drawing room of an individual named Bartlebooth is opening up before us.

In this instance, appearances are not deceiving – the Englishman, one of the two most memorable figures found in the novel, possesses an equally sophisticated character. After all, to sacrifice 50 years of one’s own life for the ultimately puzzling concept is not a feat which characterizes some mindless, unimaginative, straightforward fellas. The ‘cracked ice’ here crystallizes into a detailed account of Bartlebooth’s recent problems with an obstinate art critic and the tourist companies he has been affiliated with. Let’s move on to our next random stop, this time just one floor below: left, left and down – it is Altamonts’ apartment and another finely furnished drawing room. The sixteen-year- old daughter of the hosts – Véronique – is staring at a photograph of two ballet dancers amidst their barre routine conducted by a lanky, stereotypically looking instructor. One of the girls in the picture is Véronique’s mother, whose tragic mistake and its horrid aftermath shattered her promising career as a prima ballerina over twenty five years ago. The teen has a tendency to dig in the recent history of her closest family and this particular predilection leads us to another blowhole: a painfully touching letter of Cyrille Altamont. Who is that man to Véronique, what is his letter all about, and to whom is it addressed – these are the questions, to which you all should find answers on your own. Besides, my oxygen level is getting low and I have not uttered a single word yet about perplexing perspectives and prospective perceptivities we are exposed to in the astonishing conglomerate of Perec’s “obseory”.

That’s right, “obseory” is the term, a roaring hybrid of observations and theory, for when we are straining the overwhelming state of our minds reading Life a User’s Manual, we cannot help but notice that Perec’s vertical dissection of a townhouse at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier and our subsequent vivisection of all the flats, apartments and other rooms combined together form some kind of new floor or, even better, a groundbreaking ‘twin tower’ for our skyscraper-ish reality, where the reigning monarch is a hermaphrodite of two ‘sexes’: assumption and scrutiny. French author, with surgical precision, uses his scalpel of writing which resembles a multi-dimensional prop from an FX studio. Its blade, forged by one of the most talented blacksmiths that have ever graced this planet – Theo Constricteur [ 😉 ], has a thin, unnoticeable groove, through which the matrix (the matri[n]ks?) of observable letters is being squirted out and splashed around. Just like Winckler, the old craftsman who lived on the sixth floor, Perec operates his cutting tool to ‘sculpt’ something of such a frenetic intensity, let alone voluminous, overbearing momentum, that it somehow exceeds every question concerning possible and impossible spatiality and temporality of descriptions within and beyond the novel, as well as eludes our ability to distinguish chronology of certain ‘observable areas’ of the book itself, when we are snuggling ourselves inside its epic ‘premises’. It is precisely during those moments, that Perec refutes Popper’s assertions so effortlessly and mercilessly (provided we are not confining ourselves exclusively to the scientific plateau), that we almost feel bad for our poor old Karl. As we are being befuddled by the charming chunks of stories, bold boulders of histories and splendid slabs of accounts, which have been saturated with countless historical and imaginary facts, objects, things, extensions and other existentialities, we expose ourselves to the riddle that even the mentioned Winckler – as sly as a fox when it comes down to hiding a hoax inside a jigsaw puzzle – would not be ashamed of.

So what is this “obseory” after all? I have my own few suspicions, but I am not even sure which could be described as the least misbegotten one. Is it this almost hyper-realistic entity or, rather, ‘wholeness’ which gives us metaphysical butterflies when we are being completely absent from the ‘as-we-know-it-ness’, due to the blend of Perec’s incarcerated letters and our decompressed percepts? Or is it this odd hypothesis (this one is clearly not trying to precede anything, I assure you!) of our sense of sight sort of ‘coming out’ of our eyes as a stream of potentiality-to-see, fusing with all that have always been outside, in front of, next to, above, beneath, across, on, in, out, behind and between (not only in the spatial mode, but also in the temporal one too), assembling new ‘compound beings’, which could be referred to on an ad hoc basis as “block-visuals”? Or maybe it is the other side (what other side?) of the language itself? When we use it in a certain self-entangled or, shall I say, self-restrained combination, it may branch out into some pristine ‘places of descriptiveness/de-scriptiveness’, dragging along and merging with common phenomena, which we have grown accustomed to ages ago. Or maybe it still would be something much more different from what we can possibly imagine, even during these rare days of our genuine seer- like insightfulness?…

I have nearly emptied my scuba tank. I suppose I will have to resurface any second now. You remain ‘under’ with Georgie. Just remember to “look with all your eyes, look”! In the end, despite my previous objections, it may be the best quote to sum up one of our approaches to the shape of Oulipean and post-Oulipean letters to come as well as to those which have already come. Who knows what other puzzles the obseory prepared for us out there and what we would discover if we stared long enough through those still bewildering spectacles of o’s, which are hiding in the very center of the verb “look”? But I will not theorize and speculate anymore. You may not take it and pop(per) off…

Amonne Purity