The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (67 page)

 

which        

must go on 

e se non è vero? 

Meanwhile

quell the audience by changing the subjects which have to be reinvented continually or subverted in the dialectic of desire.

Who speaks?

Oliver Claire Hubert Olaf Gregory Chou Stanley Catherine the short plump demagogue and his lanky henchman or the pale young man carbuncular. They have been speaking a long time. I move that we move to item one on the agenda.

You don’t have the floor it’s Jeremy’s turn then Catherine Maurice Bob then you Simon. Jeremy?

Yes well very briefly I simply want to say that it seems to me quite evident that we must first decide on the viable modalities of action we should envisage before engaging in any kind of confrontation with the authorities on their decree of November 22. Firstly, on the one hand the chairs form bottom-shaped curves of white plastic and have liftable side-flaps that make a ledge for
right-handed
people only to write on point by point the finger at a pregnant plenitude like a pompous pilot that will not stay for an answering fear of piercing through to a catastrophic platitude full of the one that got away leaving a blue lacuna in the timetabled analysis of

 

e se non è vero you will find rectoverso the schematized split image of the sign that watches, helpless and in great pain, the engendering of its own projected trajectory struggling along ad

 

Or, on the other, to describe the proceedings in a letter to Larissa or perhaps the head of the head of the department, the short plump demagogue and his lanky henchman in smoked glasses who having carefully prepared the agenda for the manoeuvering of the meeting sit quietly clothed in democracy (but the emperor is naked!) as the tense young man carbuncular simply wants to say very briefly for at least fourteen more minutes while the middle-aged chairman of the hour exercises his fake authority with a motherless door-handle by way of gavel.

Secondly I don’t agree with Charles that for nine and a half minutes the tense young man has said nothing very carbuncular under firstly his facial muscles moving up and down towards a thirdly we seem to forget that in a radical university destruction precedes construction as the morning forms a large rectangular hole within a larger rectangular hole full of bottom-shaped curves in white plastic with liftable flaps for right-winged people to write on a point of information let him finish for heaven’s sake permit the disaffected elements to exercise such an inordinate influence in relation to their numbers. Not to mention extreme youth as they sit in the plastic shapes filling out the space with wide-based aureoles of self-importance basted in revolutionary spirit unless merely the intoxication of illusory power such extreme youth never had before this newly created institution of learning Language as Subversion of Society or the Inscription of Protest the Poetry of the Cry in a faculty that multiplies its base by youth zeal and inexperience so much easier for the short plump magician to handle. He is my dear Lara a typical demagogue but looks like Hemingway. In a sense they are all ready-made caricatures here, nothing to invent. Except the show within the show, the portrait within the portrait. But why bother since they create your psychic invisibility and don’t want to know your true or untrue knowledge of themselves unless we form a subcommission to examine the problem, thus finding a false solution to a pseudo-problem and so engendering another pseudo-problem thirdly, as to the problem of desegmentation I have noticed that they’re very fond of the word problem here I’ve just heard it four times and wish they could say blomper or promble just for variety because surely we are all agreed that the department should not be segmented piecemeal into more and more and smaller and smaller subsections that have no contact with the larger whole.

Catherine?

I haven’t finished. Fourthly.

On a point of order, desegmentation comes under Item 3 on the Agenda.

Fourthly and lastly, as a matter of fact, Lara my love, you know me well enough to guess that I was foolish enough to make that smug remark to one of the young teachers here, called Oliver, an amiable dandy and anarchist to boot who picks up female students rather too often and overtly for competence—professional I mean not linguistic (and no doubt his performance in class and elsewhere leaves nothing to be desired ((e se non è vero è ben trovato yes? no))) (sorry, the parenthetic fallacy is filling the hermeneutic gap) I said to him in a moment of exasperation after a meeting, they’re all ready-made caricatures here, and he got up from the floor where he was placing large blue rectangles on an outsize timetable and pointed to his most current girl-friend, a pale prim student with long black hair a mauve mouth and teeth like death saying what do you mean? I’m not, she’s not. My Larissa what went wrong? I miss you despite. You say the object is from the start an object of central loss yet surely our peripheral gains reached and almost filled that empty centre fifthly. And in your narrative grammar are not some subjects wholly intransitivised, walking through the action with indirect objects only or none? (yours are the poems i do not write). Talking of which (students as objects) I never of course on a point of order that’s not fair you said fourthly and lastly have affairs with students it’s not fair, too easy, banal, and apart from that and psychic invisibility one can’t work with them after they will go on as if (I know I’m doing it to you but we were a poem not a couple). It’s bad enough even when one doesn’t work with them. Even now I have a girl who’s fabulous in bed but mythologises me in her dreams and tells them at great length and talks about the indifference of man and how I don’t really want her like the fat magician she dreams of. Okay so I don’t. I once saw a poster somewhere which said Abstinence is Good for you. In Wales, must have been. But the show must go on.

Until they vote on whether to take a vote those for those against abstinence refusal of vote repeat performance to pass the motion before moving on to item two on the agenda. You’ll have to back into it. Leaning a little to the right to meet briefly the second pair of eyes, tarnished but useful despite psychic invisibility or because of a mere rectoversion of eyes juggled by the performing self left behind the time laid out in rectangles called The Semiology of Cultural Images maybe or merely Creative Writing into which you enter on Jove or Mars or Mercuryday saying we shall now consider the question of the narrator’s presence in his narrative.

Those for. Those against. Abstention. Refusal of Vote.

And repeat performance before passing on to item three on the agenda (desegmentation) as juggled by the manoeuvering magician clothed in invisible democracy while the stooge chairman of the several hours knocks his motherless door-handle shouting order order in the poetry of the cry that this is an utterly delirious discourse until the short plump magician whisks away his main prop his invisible silk squares holds up his ego busting out of tight sequence and quells the audience, producing out of a hat a white white point of information or is it a clear summary of an essentially simple problem some people have misunderstood, so that in all honesty one must be frank for twelve and a half minutes we must call things by their right names unless perhaps we must see things as they are. And changed upon the blue guitar. And to sum up very briefly I simply want to say that we must first decide on the viable modalities of action to be envisaged in the struggle before I can go to the authorities and persuade—for that is the operative word, we must not seem to be adopting a threatening attitude (boo!)–and persuade them to accede to our demands.

Larissa my love. This is going to be a disconnected letter as I am writing it during a faculty meeting. The man who runs it–the faculty I mean not the meeting which he attends clothed in democracy and a garish tie he changes for each occasion as he changes the chairman of the hour (and I hope it never devolves on me) is an oddball, who first wrote me as Armel, signed Oscar. They use first names from the start here. He is, my dear, a typical demagogue. Not that I intend to describe him, descriptions capture so little and people are becoming more and more stereotyped. I am becoming more and more stereotyped. You are becoming shall I conjugate? But no, you are the exception to all the stereotypes or are you? Have you not carefully invented the person you have become? Not of course a stereotype, rather a unique unrepeatable model with cropped hair and a blue guitar, superimposing many models like a dompna soisebuda but is it you? Naturally you will not stoop to retort who am I, and perhaps it was after all I who invented you though you would not admit this. Certainly you invented me and withdrew, indifferent, paring your fingernails. Well enough of that. In a way they are all ready-made caricatures here, nothing to invent. Except the show within the show, the portrait within the portrait. But why bother since they create your psychic invisibility as you did and don’t want to know your true or untrue knowledge of themselves. I have gotten a little tied up with my second person singular here but aren’t you used to that–who is my second person singular?

Eyes that do not exist and reflect nothing, nor do they look at their companions, exact black replicas less tarnished and more clearly outlined in their proper place on either side the nose. Only these lower eyes reflected from the felt eyes can see, presumably, the upper eyes blurred just below the dark hairline, looking at nothing upwards or inside the brow which some teller or Other thinks Beethovenish until you enter into the rectangle saying today we shall study the transformation of functions in the epistolary novel, unless perhaps initiation to the Generation of Narrative Complexes in Audiovisual Imperialism as Intentional Object of Exchange. Or merely, diachronically The Beginnings of Narrative, so that you have to take her out and start again.