Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 23:29:43 -0500
Subject: MB: The Writer and Place


Reg,

What you call gravitational force I call the encounter with the text.
That is, when one comes face to face with the text, a text which has eyes
and a voice and a being. I do mean being because anything that can speak,
is. But I think we are meaning the same thing. Of course there is space
in literature (now I've done it ...I've mentioned Blanchot's book ...now
I'm in trouble) within the text. So perhaps what I'm wondering is what is
the nature of space inside the text with regards to the "geography" of
the writer, or does the writer exist only within the text (in so far as
he is a writer)? Again I don't expect there to be straight answers to
these questions and indeed maybe there shouldn't be. 

Another thing I was wondering about (which is not unrelated) is
spaciality in Literature. It seems to me that modern writers (here I must
first point out that I am in NO way an expert on this issue so feel free
to correct me) seem to use spatio-temporality in ways that Joyce and
Woolf use straight stream of consciousness. Take for example "Slaughter
House Five" by vonnegut or just him in general. He does amazing things
with time in his work and I think it is important. In what way are
writer's confined to Spacetime? Of course in an important sense they are
confined to it because it is the world we live in but I mean in what ways
are they concerned with Spacetime as a way of getting into the
consciousness of a character? Of course Proust is a good example here. 

-Samuel