Reading Itself Myself
BY RHOLAD MOBOL
The Canonical Review, Issue LXIV, Winter 1982

FORWARD

Many of you have asked me what I make of Silas Flannery, perhaps the most troubling character to have appeared in liteary circles in recent memory. This essay studies that author, necessarily with a certain incredulity, since I seek to isolate the qualities that make Flannery’s lifework idolotrous, that is, deliberate imitation of the canon. "Mimesis" is sometimes regarded as a suggestion of Plato’s rather than an actuality, but that has not been my experience during a lifetime of reading. Here I have tried to confront idolatry directly: to ask what makes Flannery and his works apocryphal, and to demonstrate with a series of examples how his "original" aesthetic can be traced to various self-imposed schemata and other restraints.

My thesis is ugly by nature, but the alternative is not a pretty one: To quote Gorgeous Bliser on this matter, when defending the canon the critic must either chase after windmills or break wind.

SECTION ONE

Silas Flannery’s first published work didn’t come until the age of fifty-seven. If he lives to be one hundred fifty-seven, still the world will not remember him, and literature will be no different. Flannery began writing Avalilian fables when he was eighteen, aspiring to become the bard of modern folklore. But he came to understand that he was not to be the English-language Avalili, a role unapologetically filled by Bert O. O. Cume. Instead he took to writing Oulipian essay-parables, and from there gave rise to meta-aestheticism as the raison d’être of literarture.

In the late seventies Flannery’s endeavors took a turn for the worse. Doubting the surety of his place in the Western Canon should he compete with his belletristic ancestors, he decided to compose the history of literature anew: "I shall reach the heights; I was born for dazzling glory. It may be long in coming, but I shall have a glory greater than that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon. This glory will reflect on all my works without exception; it will cast itself on all the events of my life" (Writing Itself Myself, Sinai Quarterly, 1978). Flannery’s statement of intent (facially a direct citation of Raymond Roussel) approximates the artful naivety which allowed him to approach, circumvent, and subsume the objects of his admiration. In the end would be the Word, and the Word would be Silas Flannery. The unfortunate consequence was an intolerable translation of Kafka’s "The Truth About Sancho Panza," published by a small press in Dublin on New Year’s Day, 1980:

As it so happened, the road exposed the myth of Roland Barthes before he could expose the myth of the road. The semiotician looked on in what must have been fascination as a dry cleaning delivery van made as if to swerve; the eyes of Don Quixote were fixed on the road, Sancho Panza had dropped his gaze to the steering wheel. A tentative hand turned the wheel clockwise; another hand thrust counter. And while no one can be certain which man redirected the swerve to end Barthes’ life — the dying semiotician had a hunch.

The quasi-translation is anathema to Kafka’s extraordinary parable, in which Sancho devours all the romances of chivalry until his imagined demon, personified as the Don, departs upon his adventures with Sancho Panza tagging along. The Flannery allusion is rather to Barthes, whose Chambre claire: Note sur la photographie surfaced in France around the same time as the Kafka translation. Perhaps Flannery was making the Kafka piece into a brief and rather bitter semiotic joke? That may be more faithful to the parable than reading it through Cervantes as unalloyed gaiety, but does little to relieve our sense that Flannery, if not some kind of prophet, is at the very least a metaphysic: On February 25, 1980, at the intersection of Rue des Ecoles and Rue Saint-Jacques, Roland Barthes was struck dead by a dry cleaning delivery van.

 

SECTION TWO

Flannery’s Irish reputation as a novelist began with The Bookshop (1982); in 1983 a paperback edition of the same name was published in the United States and achieved international acclaim. A ninety-year old Dutch mathematician was the first to deduce, based on his reading of a number of book reviews, that in effect three separate American editions of The Bookshop had been published, each with the same set of characters, each plot motivated by the same driving force, but each set in a slightly altered realm, employing a slightly deviant vocabulary. An example of the variance follows:

A Bookshop, opening paragraph, first variation:

From his bookshop Pauncho corresponds with all the world. The Italians deliver crates of olives in exchange for stacks of Dante’s Inferno. The Swiss send chocolates that melt in ripples, lathering the taste buds one by one. Fresh-pressed wines come from the French countryside, where bibliophiles collect books similar to the manner in which they take lovers: discretely, less often than they boast, and always by purchasing used. The Saudis send jewels and the Persians deliver camels. The Egyptians bottle sand from the most precious of ancient ruins, competing with their Arab neighbors for the most recently discovered divine scriptures, scrolls, and prophetic narratives. Spices and abbacies, gun powder and the finest silks arrive from the Far East. These patrons only ask that Pauncho send various samples of paper, binding, and ink. It’s rumored the Chinese use these samples to manufacture apocrophyl first-editions, while the Japanese reconstruct a national canon that mirrors the literary history of the West so precisely that only characters distinguish the two.

A Bookshop, opening paragraph, second variation:

From his bookshop Pauncho corresponds with all the world. The Italians deliver bottles of virgin olive oil in exchange for stacks of novels by any author whose name doesn’t end in a vowel. The Swiss send watches that tell time in ripples, a nanosecond hand lathering the timepiece with evenly spaced ticks, one by one. Krautrock records come from Germany, where manicured heterosexuals hope for copies of everything Kunderian. The Saudis send harem women and the Palestinians deliver Israelis. The Egyptians bottle purified water from the freshest ancient springs, competing with their Arab neighbors for the most recently discovered Kahlil Gibran poetry, Dead Sea scrolls, and Salman Rushdie novels. In lieu of requesting particular titles, the Far East nations ask that Pauncho send various New York Times book reviews, press clippings, and laudatory quotes. It’s rumored that the Chinese use these samples to manufacture underground best sellers, while the Japanese reconstruct a national canon that mirrors the literary history of the West so obtusely that only literary scholars confuse the two.

A Bookshop, opening paragraph, third variation:

From his laundromat Pauncho corresponds with all the world. Formalists send their jackets and slacks for pressing. Second-wave feminists drop off blouses and skirts to be wrinkled. Marxists send entire wardrobes, hoping Pauncho can remove the stains. Structuralists send socks in pairs whereas post-structuralists tend to send only one sock at a time. Colonialists have their errand boys deliver wine-stained tuxedoes. Postcolonialists deliver tattered shirts of all the finest materials, requesting synthetic facsimiles in return. Postmodernists drop off empty hangers with clothespins on the hooks.

[. . .]

Copyright 1997, Zachary L Hammerman
This work may not be reproduced without express permission of the author.