The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  Mmmm. That’s, very interesting. There are some good ideas there Doreen. The – er – levels of discourse are a bit mixed up though, aren’t they? What do you think, er, Eliza?

  What I mean is, there are several voices in Doreen’s essay, and maybe some of them jarr a bit. Now which, do you think, and why?

  Come along now, this is a free discussion. We’ll leave the facts aside for the moment, but what is it that gives a sort of wrong tone here, not, shall we say, very scholarly or objective?

  Well she don’ pay no tension to the black people cep for the everlastin white lip-servus.

  Right. But then she wasn’t supposed to deal with that was she? She mentioned it at the beginning as a parallel, like the workers, but this is on Women’s Lib. That’s not what I meant.

  At all, that is not it at all. Who speaks? Isabel perhaps or Claire who teaches the Inscription of Protest. For the significance of any message is synonymous with its information within a system of probability as opposed to entropy and disorder. But information depends on its emitter so that a message however predictable such as condolence would increase its level of information to an extraordinary degree if it came from the president of the counsel of ministers of the USSR or the Emperor of China, information being related to improbability, which is why modern novels can be so disorientating despite the fact that through this chaotic freedom in the network of possibilities we fill the air with noises, twiddle along the timetable from left to right and back, from one disembodied voice to another on this or that wave-length listening in to this or that disc-jockey and always the same disc-horse, a yea-yea and a neigh inserted into the circuit of signifiers, each discourse penetrating the non-disjunctive functioning of another. And we do not find that concert disconcerting. The greater the noise the greater the redundancy has to be. Go forth and multiply the voices until you reach the undeicidable even in some psychoasthmatic amateur castrate who cannot therefore sing the part.

  Ah. A self-evident defence-mechanism against threat of extermination. Why this flight into delirious discourse?

  But now it is quite clear who speaks: the man from Porlock. He has been speaking for some time.

  He comes, in fact, from Timbuctoo in Mali, half way between the Niger and Lake Faguibin longitude 03 West latitude 17 North. He is slight and mighty, mat brown and dazzling–a chance occurrence yet clearly also generated by anticipation at the flick of a timetable, so that makes everything all right despite the interruption–and the lines of his hands like the skin between the fingers are deadly greyish white because, he says when rudely asked by way of tacitactic diversion, he has been cleaning something with a strong detergent. He is cultrate and cultivated, ebullient and bullying, censorious and sensitive, tactless and tactile (tu me le paieras ce maudit portrait) from which several facts you will have gathered that he is a writer.

  Do white writers then get black lines on their hands when they clean things up?

  Of course, look.

  That’s ink, too much.

  Et pourquoi haïssez-vous les portraits?

  C’est qu’ils ressemblent si peu, que, si par hasard on vient à rencontrer les originaux

  Don’t tell me you belong to the critical school that ferrets around seeking Dorothea’s husband and the model for the Wife of Bath?

  Who’s Bath? Do you mean Barthes?

  The bell rings. The pen is put down in mid-sentence

  which one?

  Guess. The eye is put to the judas-eye

  you mean the trait-or master of the moment I mean the markster of the comment who dreams things up?

  and there he is, curiously foreshortened by the lens, carrying five books, including one of yours foolishly loaned on a pressing request

  do you mean one of yours or one of mine?

  I didn’t know you’d written any I mean one of yours I speak in the second person

  which means one of yours why don’t you say so

  I do if you will allow me to proceed

  proceed

  The moment of hesitation passes, the door opens

  on its own?

  in some languages things do themselves

  aha! l’amor si fa?

  that is not what I meant at all may I for Chrissake bring this person in who is as I have said, a man.

  Well if you put it that way get on with it, there can be no breaking in before the breaking of the lock no wonder you call him the man from Porlock.

  There are times, Jacques, when the recipient should be shot right out of the message he makes so much noise.

  Ah but where would the message be without him that’s why redundancy was invented come to think of it it’s easier for the emitter to disappear if things do themselves.

  So far there is neither emitter nor recipient within the message, only without, thanks to you.

  All right silence pax proceed hands across the sea

  Hello.

  I want to talk to you.

  Fine beginning I must say

  I wither him with a look.

  I’m writing.

  I know.

  I’m seeing no-one, I don’t answer the door.

  The door hasn’t said anything, and you have answered.

  Well because I knew you knew I was here and I didn’t want to offend you.

  She who explains herself is lost. May I come in?

  She?

  Yes, you gave me an idea.

  Ah.

  Well, yes of course, what er can I do for you? Would you like a drink? Have a cigarette. Or some coffee or

  No no sit down. Give me your hand.

  Why?

  I want to talk to you

  Can’t you talk without touching? What about?

  Well of course about your book which I have touched handled read look I have taken all these notes.

  But I only gave it to you a couple of hours ago you can’t have read it.

  Ah the vanity of authors. I am an author.

  So I hear, and very successful.

  Oh that, I don’t care. Give me your hand.

  Look, I only met you this morning

  You mean there is a timetable in white society for hand-holding?

  Well yes. I didn’t even properly catch your name.

  Armel.

  What?

  Armel.

  Oh.

  And yours?

  It’s on the book and on my door.

  Ah but it might be a pseudonym. Larissa. That’s nice. Larissa Toren. It almost sounds African.

  Please, I’m in the middle of a sentence

  which one?

  I’ve already forgotten it thanks to you. Tell me what you want to say.

  A great deal. It will take a long time. Come and have a kous-kous with me.

  I’m sorry I’ve already eaten and I’m working.

  Not now you are not.

  Please say it now then.

  Why this flight?

  What flight?

  That’s what I asked myself all the time while reading your book look I have made notes. The publisher says it’s very funny. He’s mad.

  That’s not part of the book don’t you know what a blurb is? The publisher says that to sell it and you’re quite right, he fails. It has nothing to do with the text.

  Ah. In my countries publishers tell the truth.

  I didn’t know you had publishers there aren’t you published in America?

  We don’t, that’s why they don’t have to lie.

  Hmm. So you don’t think it funny?

  Ah that hurt did I? Of course it’s not funny you are weeping all the time it is one long cry of anguish.

  Oh?

  This woman for instance she says page 143, no, it’s somewhere else, well never mind what I mean is there are moments when you touch on the very essence of things and then brrt! you escape, you run away into language. You are merely amusing yourself and I want to know why.

  You mean that when I touch on the essence of things, in that text, it’s not by m
eans of language? What is it then?

  There you go again, playing with words. Why this flight?

  Into logic? Look, this is ridiculous, charming but ridiculous. Aren’t you playing with words too, doesn’t everyone?

  Not me. Give me your hand.

  No. So. I’m weeping all the time and yet I’m merely amusing myself. But isn’t the only thing to do with a long cry of anguish to amuse oneself? In my country we never separate the two. I take it as a compliment. But you seem to utter these phrases as reproaches.

  No, no, please do not take offence. Ah writers are so sensitive, I know, I am sensitive and now you are treating me as a person of no sensibility.

  Oh come, we’re both above exchanging hurt sensibilities.

  That’s better. Come, give me your hand.

  No. Why do your hands have white lines?

  Don’t yours? Show me.

  No.

  Yes they have. See?

  They’re not white, they’re beige, same as the hands, a bit darker if anything. Whereas yours

  I have been cleaning something with a strong detergent. This is my natural colour, here, look.

  What do you do when you write?

  I use language, yes, I admit. But directly.

  That’s an old illusion. But I didn’t mean that, I meant, do you cut yourself off?

  Cut myself! Oh you mean, oh yes, completely, I rip out the telephone and see no one.

  Well then can’t you understand

  But I want to understand that’s why I came. Here you give me this book

  because you happened to be at my neighbour’s whom I happened to see on the stairs and who happened to ask me in and happened to introduce me to you and happened to insist that you should read one of my books

  that’s a lot of happening it must mean something

  on the contrary it’s a string of chance improbabilities. A terminal string.

  and I happened to come up and want to discuss it with you so that you will perhaps happen not to take this flight any more

  which is likely to have the opposite effect. Listen, you’re very nice but I wrote this book ages ago it’s dead and gone for me. I know everything that’s wrong with any book I write by the time it comes out. I am now in the middle of another and to hear anything at all, for or against, about an earlier one is simply imp–non-pertinent, irrelevant I mean. But the interruption isn’t, it could block me for days.

  Ah, you see, you do care.

  As you care about success.

  That’s a completely different level.

  It isn’t what you say it’s the fact of interruption. A friend from Morocco turned up the other day

  my country is near Morocco. There is only the whole of Algeria in between.

  and I couldn’t not see him. It was delightful. It took two hours. I lost three days.

  Because that was real. It takes a lot of trouble and concentration to construct your escapist edifice.

  Look, er, Armel, you’re very perceptive, but you’re not the only one to say these things you know, I’ve heard them before, many times.

  You see. I’m in the majority then.

  The majority doesn’t make the truth.

  A reactionary into the bargain.

  Don’t be silly. You think you know me from quickly leafing through a book.

  I have read it all from cover to cover. And taken notes.

  The majority also prefers platitudes. And I’m sick and tired of this one about language as an escape from reality. Language is all we have to apprehend reality, if we must use that term. And I notice that when people talk of reality they usually mean sex, with them.

  Now Larissa Toren author, that is naughty, you are jumping to conclusions, I was referring uniquely to the communication you had with your Moroccan friend. But here you are putting delicious ideas into my innocent head.

  And if they don’t mean sex they mean communication. As if communication wasn’t language.

  Yes yes my dear but what language? I brought these other books to show you: here is a best-seller and sometimes you write like it. Sometimes however you write like this one, here, which is, look, I took all these notes.

  All discourse is the return of a discourse by the Other, without whom I am not, but to whom I am more attached than to myself, I say I but I mean everyone, all of us, nor can I proceed to the identification of that I except through the medium of language.

  There you go again.

  Why do you suppose patients talk, and write? Why did the silent movies have captions? Why does teaching continue through books and dialogues and not simply by means of gestures and diagrams and experiments in glass bottles?

  Well they do seem to use more and more diagrams but that’s precisely

  Why for that matter did you come up to talk if it wasn’t to use language about language?

  To go beyond your book.

  to undermine it with other language, and that’s fine, you have every right, everyone has a right to subvert any text with any other but now

  and to hold your hand

  well and so you have. And now truly I must put you out and get on with my work.

  You are escaping again. All right you are the host I must submit. You know there is an ancient Peruvian subsitute for writing by knotting threads. It is called Quipu.

  Sauve qui peut then.

  Ah Larissa Toren author come give me a kiss.

  No.

  Larissakissammmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  That’s enough. Now please be a good boy and go.

  And when can I see you again? Will you come and have a kous-kous with me?

  Bang–bang?

  Excuse me?

  I’m sorry but I don’t like kous-kous.

  You don’t like kous-kous!

  Well it’s too greasy for me I don’t digest it.

  I’ll have something else for you then. What do you like? When will you come?

  Next winter.

  You are mad. I shall not be here next winter.

  Too bad.

  I mean now please Larissa Toren author surely you have to eat sometimes?

  I’m sorry. In any case I’m expecting my husband any day, tonight perhaps.

  You have a husband! Ah well, now I understand everything.

  Good. You might have found that out from my neighbour. Goodbye. Thanks for calling.

  Which could be called society as a subversion of the text, if it were not itself textual.

  You see even the hands were unnecessary in the portrait.

  Jacques my friend you must help me. Certain problems have arisen.

  Yes master?

  Well, first,

  Oh no master, not that firstly fourthly on the one hand small a small b stuff I can’t take it in. All right at faculty meetings but not when I have to participate.

  Okay scrub it then one equals zero.

  Please master what is the problem?

  I’m just telling you. To begin with, I mean, sorry scrub that. Thanks to the man from Timbuctoo it is clear that Larissa is producing a text. But which text? It looks mightily as if she were producing this one and not, as previously appeared, Armel, or Armel disguised as narrator or the narrator I disguised as Armel. That’s not very clear.

  No it isn’t.

  Of course she may be producing a different text.

  She may indeed, master.

  That’s not very clear either.

  Perhaps not.

  But you see what follows from that?

  Not quite yet master.

  It means that the narrator I transformed into Larissa am no longer your master but your mistress.

  Master! I find that most offensive. I know that we quarrelled at the inn, but I made you agree afterwards that all our quarrels were due to our not accepting the fact that although you were pleased to call yourself and I was pleased to call you the master, I am in fact yours. And when you asked me where I had learnt such things I replied in the great book, which seemed to settle the matter. But
no great book could justify, in our long relationship (which I may remind you includes the story of my loves, much interrupted but otherwise normal and healthy) no great book as I say could justify the imputation you have just made. I beg leave therefore, although it breaks my heart, to part company once and for all with one who

  Jacques, Jacques, stop that. I didn’t mean it literally.

  Literally is I hope precisely how you did mean it master.

  Jacques! You are a genius. Of course it was literal. A question of textuality.

  There you go again.

  Heterotextuality of course.

  Eh?

  It was a manner of speaking.

  And a very strange manner if I may say so.

  Well let’s forget it there are more important problems than my change of, I mean thirdly, no I mean, to get back to the subject of discourse, this woman Larissa has not only usurped my place as narrator, which apart from putting our relationship in danger

  you said to forget it

  I placed it in a parenthesis–poses other problems. On the one hand, I mean for one thing her mental diagrams may be a good deal more complex than mine, but that’s my problem, and on the other she has also acquired a sudden husband as a last minute escape.

  He could be a polite lie.

  Yes but he could be vero, no?

  A husband is always, from a woman’s point of view, ben trovato.

  You are speaking like an eighteenth century man-servant.

  Yes I am. And you are an eighteenth century gentilhomme.

  But in the late twentieth century, Jacques, women have been liberated, as you heard, and it is therefore only a man’s archaic viewpoint that his name and person are the greatest boons he can confer upon a woman.