Three Days Before the Shooting ... (99 page)

“Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma” presents the most significant editorial challenge in all the computer sequences. Ellison revised all but five of the files in the 1990s—twenty in the late summer and early fall of 1992 alone—but does not seem to have revised three Georgia files (“Sister.wil,” “Janey 3,” and “Janey. alz,” the first three of the seven Georgia files) and two Oklahoma files (“Movie” and “Costumes,” the sixteenth and seventeenth of the eighteen Oklahoma files) during those periods. The last dates for these are in October and December of 1988, around the time that Ellison had all his files transferred to a new computer (thus erasing the original dates), meaning that these files may well be even older than their listed dates. Regardless of their provenance, they were certainly composed in an earlier period than the rest of the sequence, all of which was last saved in the 1990s.

The sequence is further complicated by the discovery of Ellison’s edited printouts. The Library of Congress archive includes numerous drafts marked in Ellison’s (and sometimes Fanny Ellison’s) hand, but most of them appear to be early files later updated on the computer. However, three hard copies appear to be revisions of the latest files from the computer disks. We have chosen to include Ellison’s handwritten edits to “Janey. Alz,” the third file in the sequence. We have also included the changes found in a sequentially numbered printout that comprises the first six Oklahoma files: “Bus-trip,” “Visit,” “Blurring,” “Smoking,” “BlurTwo,” and “Lovecourt.” A more challenging decision was presented by a similar paginated draft of five files from the latter part of the Oklahoma sequence: “Cave,” “Egypt,” “Wind-cave,” “Words,” and “Station.” While the printed and edited “Egypt” and “Windcave” correspond to the latest computer files, “Cave,” “Words,” and “Station” do not. Some of the changes in the latter files—consisting almost entirely of spelling and punctuation corrections—are already reflected in the latest computer files, though some are not. Rather than picking and choosing the pertinent edits and ignoring the others, we have chosen to respect the editorial principle of using the latest established text. Since these three files do not correspond exactly with the latest identifiable files from the computer, we have no way of ascertaining with certainty whether they predate or postdate the files from the established sequence.

This is not the only complication presented in editing “Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma.” One of the most notable textual anomalies in the sequence concerns the transition between “Janey. Alz” and “Sippy.1.”

“Janey. Alz” consists mainly of Hickman’s musings after reading Janey’s letter. In the last two pages, however, Ellison makes the transition to the Millsap report: “An undated confidential report, he recalled that he had received some thirty years earlier from Walker Millsap …” Both the computer file “Janey. Alz” and the printed and amended version found in the Library of Congress include a false start where Ellison introduces the report with the above sentence, has Hickman begin reading it, only to break off and restart from the same point. The next file, “Sippy.1,” begins at the same transition point with a similar sentence: “He had received the report, undated and stamped Confidential, during the early twenties from Walker Millsap….”

Instead of including this needless repetition, we have chosen to cut directly to the “Sippy.1” version of the report rather than going to the end of “Janey. Alz” only to have to cut out the first pages of “Sippy.1.” This report also presents a puzzling question of chronology. In the first version of the sentence, Ellison has Hickman date the report from “some thirty years earlier.” In the other version, he states it is from the early 1920s. Together, these correspond to the putative setting of the early 1950s. However, in the report itself Millsap states that Hickman’s “young man”—Bliss—“must be well into his fifties.” Relying on these dates, Sunraider should be in his early eighties and Hickman well over a hundred. This clearly cannot be the case. So either it is simply an error of chronology on Ellison’s part, or he intends the report to be more recent—which is difficult to fathom given that every indication in the text suggests that he is reading from the report’s “faded typescript.” These moments of imperfection remind us of just how much work still remained for Ellison to do to complete the novel.

Another transitional textual anomaly comes in the paragraph connecting “Blur. Two” and “Lovecourt.” The last sentence of “Blur. Two” and the first sentence of “Lovecourt” are variants of one another. A similar example comes in the transition between “Station” and “Movie;” “Movie” includes a variant on the exchange that ends “Station.”

The essential plot elements of the Georgia material are the thirty-year-old report by Walker Millsap, an associate from Hickman’s jazz days, and a letter from Janey Glover, a sweetheart of Hickman’s youth, warning ominously of lethal trouble facing Bliss/Sunraider. In an undated note (139/5), Ellison writes that “Hickman has Janey’s letter with him [in D.C.?].” “It is the envelope of the plot, the seed of the catastrophe.” The letter would take Hickman from Georgia to Oklahoma, and from Oklahoma to Washington, unwittingly leading Sunraider’s assassin to his target. With so much significance resting on a single plot device, it is no wonder that Ellison puzzled over where to place it.

Ellison briefly considered opening the novel with Janey’s letter. He writes the following in an undated note:

Start with Janey’s letter, but conceal the important information. Cut wherever possible, then to Washington. The letter should hint at motive for a quest, but not reveal it directly. And yet it should provide Hickman enough propulsion to involve the reader. Later there can be flashbacks in which needed information can be revealed. The point is to build up momem thrust. (140/1)

The letter’s most effective location may have been its earliest, in the typescript fragment known as “Bliss’ Birth” in which Hickman, deep in reverie at the Senator’s bedside, recalls Janey’s brief letter in the immediacy of dramatic action. In the computer files, the version of the letter reads instead like an appendage, a transparent plot device.

By strict chronology, then, “Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma” should begin the novel. Not only does the action come before the D.C. sequence (in fact, providing the impetus for Hickman to go to D.C.), the D.C. files make reference to particulars one could only know having previously read “Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma.” This presents the most obvious of many editorial challenges to sequencing. It was a problem Ellison had never completely resolved, though he seemed most compelled to present the Georgia and Oklahoma files in flashback, with “Arrival” opening the novel. The Georgia files offer nothing that might properly be considered the beginning of a novel. To the contrary, they open quite perfunctorily with Hickman at his desk going through mail.

The Oklahoma files comprise Hickman’s return to Oklahoma City. His purpose is to visit Janey and ask her to clarify the meaning of her letter. This section includes, in addition to the Janey visit, a protracted exchange with Love New, and a performance by a teller of tall tales and toasts, Cliofus. Ellison’s narrative method consists of discursive summary rather than immediate creation or re-creation of action. Particularly with Love New, a story leads to another story, circles within circles, relevant to the novel’s theme of fathers and sons and the spiritual knowledge and atonement needed for true identity, but weighted down by sheer textual volume.

This sequence includes one of the most puzzling textual quirks in all the computer files. One file in the sequence, “Blurring,” ends mid-sentence with “Which was.” The file that follows, “Smoking,” completes the sentence with “the truth.” From this point, however, the next seven pages of “Smoking” simply recapitulate (often to the word) the last pages of “Blurring.” Likely this was an accident in formatting, a hazard of digital composition. It nonetheless presents a challenge to an editor wishing to present Ellison in his own words, even if those words are the likely product of accident or oversight. An earlier printed draft from the computer found among Ellison’s papers, and marked in his hand, reveals the same anomaly, suggesting that at
the very least he had been aware of the replication. However, in the printout, he made no correction. This is only a particularly striking example of something that occurs several times throughout the computer files.

“McIntyre at Jessie Rockmore’s” is the shortest of the three sequences, consisting of only five files. Consequently, it also has the fewest number of variants. However, it appears that it was the last portion of the novel to receive Ellison’s attention. “Rockmore,” the second file in the sequence, was last saved on December 30, 1993, the most recently dated file from Ellison’s computer. Although it initially seems curious that Ellison would devote his final days of revision to what might appear to be a digression from the dominant Hickman narrative, it fits well within his overall conception of the novel.

The unity of the novel’s two perspectives, the third-person Hickman narrative and the first-person McIntyre, is best achieved in Book I, where Ellison begins with Hickman and his parishioners’ arriving at Washington’s National Airport and jumps to McIntyre narrating the shooting on the Senate floor. No such unity exists in the computer files. Instead, Ellison has composed two separate but related Hickman sequences and a wholly distinct McIntyre sequence, a revision of Chapter 12 from Book I that relates an episode also rendered, as discussed above, in the Hickman computer files.

It seems likely that Ellison wrote “McIntyre at Jessie Rockmore’s” with Chapter 12, and perhaps even Hickman’s Rockmore scene from Book II, in front of him. Not only are the incidents nearly identical, but a number of the passages are rendered verbatim. In some cases, the differences are a matter of embellishment—for instance, the addition of a Native American lithograph and a photo of Klansmen in Rockmore’s memorabilia-crammed rooms. Often a mere substitution of detail or phrase distinguishes the drafts. For example, in the computer materials Mister Jessie asks for “a redhead or some kind of blond,” while in Book I he asks for “a raving blond.”

Like the other two sequences, “McIntyre at Jessie Rockmore’s” contains a handful of textual anomalies. The most revealing of these comes in the final file of the sequence, “Dance,” where Ellison interrupts the narrative with the following note: “N.B. See later version of Bootleg.” The “later version” to which he refers could be either one of two files labeled “Bootleg,” both of which are versions of “Dance.” All three files are substantially the same save for a small but significant addition: In “Dance” Ellison has the police sergeant mention that “two colored fellows” are waiting outside. This is undoubtedly a reference to Hickman and Wilhite, which suggests that Ellison was looking for ways to fuse the McIntyre and Hickman narratives through this scene.

The Rockmore scene is the only episode rendered in typescript as well as
in both Hickman and McIntyre computer files. Yet its relation to the central plot elements is never fully developed. There is McMillen’s recollection of a mysterious white man, likely Sunraider, who barges in and claims the coffin, shocking the aged Rockmore to death. And there is the fact that the scene offers a nexus between the McIntyre and Hickman narratives, a connection only provisionally utilized. In many ways this episode’s multiple variants represent both the promise and the limitation of Ellison’s novel-in-progress. It holds out the titillating possibility of unity, not simply for this section, but for the novel as a whole—a place where Ellison might have gathered together the disparate strands of narrative—while ultimately underscoring the dogged diversity and disconnection among Ellison’s many visions of his second novel.

What Ellison composed on the computer between the early eighties and his death in 1994 reimagines yet again his long-awaited second novel. He achieves its transformation not by changing plot or character, but by reorienting point of view and episodic importance. What were once central concerns, the political assassination and the relationship between Hickman and Bliss/Sunraider, become tertiary or even nonexistent. In their place Ellison has elevated the incidental (the comings and goings of Hickman and his congregation in D.C., the visit to Oklahoma, and Hickman’s excavation of the past—both his and others’—and his complex relation to the place) to a role of elemental importance.

Ellison’s multiple drafts, prospective sequences, and multifarious connections might best be understood as producing a kind of living text, amoebic in its fluidity, integral in its essence. His improvisational relation to his material afforded him the freedom to compose and create synthesis later, or to experiment simultaneously with multiple narrative sequences. How did he plan to integrate the third-person Hickman narrative with the first-person McIntyre? How would he fuse the disparate fragments into a whole? The writing itself offers no clear answers. Instead, Ellison’s computer sequences challenge his readers to imagine potentialities of order and expression in the manuscript he left unrealized.

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Ellison’s financial records show that he purchased an Osborne I on January 8, 1982 (in addition to another for his wife, Fanny, on September 30 of that year); an Osborne Executive on October 11, 1983; and an IBM computer on January 7, 1988. The Osborne I, introduced in April 1981, was the first truly portable personal computer commercially available in the United States. After strong initial sales, Osborne ran into financial difficulties, filing for bankruptcy in September 1983.

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Ellison used an early word-processing program called WordStar, which required its user to employ a series of keystrokes rather than a drop-down menu as in Microsoft Word to perform simple operations. For someone proficient in its method, it enabled the user to keep his or her fingers in the touch-typing position at all times, potentially facilitating the flow of expression. The program also employed a feature called “merge print,” which allowed the user to string a series of files together to be printed through a typed command. There is evidence of Ellison’s use (and occasional misuse) of this function.