Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 11:29:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Karen L Houle <khoule-AT-uoguelph.ca>
Subject: Re: moral wholes?



-how- these disparate, filmed first and "separate" stories come to be 
"thrown together in a certain way"  makes a big difference to me. I hear 
Jay talking about Altman or taxidrivercomeeditor -making- a film by 
organizing the stories TO interact or TO link up, narratively or 
causally, or morally or whatever.  And then Jay asks, I think 
appropriately given that he is not underwriting Altman's role, how 
successful 
this "arranging" is; what sort of a positive project all this effort 
amounts to.  On the other hand, Malgosia is interested in the cumulative 
effect or the excess beyond these tinkerings, sometimes, it appears, at 
the expense of deliberately not noticing these tinkerings. 

If you will tolerate a diversion, what malgosia's description 
of her experience of "short cuts" reminds me of, at the level of -my- 
experience, is reading a collection of short stories by the same author 
which are not in any overt way codified to be extensions of the same 
narrative - a chance thread or a wave of affect or whatever. A collection 
of short windows which give different snapshots of different characters 
in different scenarios, joined possibly by locale (as in alice munroe) or 
possibly not "joined" at all except by virtue of their being lined up in 
a short story collection. barbara gowdy does this version well. but when 
you put down the book there is, i would agree here heartily, a release of 
some cumulative excess "beyond" any one thing notified by any one story 
or incident. 

But my experience of short cuts wasn't like that. I am at all points too 
aware of the directorial or editorial presence, even if it is nothing 
other than to exert, or heighten, by squeezing, the sense of local 
interaction/serendipity/wasted possibilities/"connectedness' that is 
present but not manifest because we are not, to our multiple scenarios, 
omniscient. So, I am left with not dismissing the "greater" possibilities of 
shortcuts...especially questions about the constitution of a moral 
universe (which really intrigues me) but being distracted from them being 
less "greater possibilities" than "altman's projects and technique.

karen




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