{"id":306616,"date":"2017-07-10T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2017\/07\/10\/structure-time-memory-and-the-sadness-of-a-disillusioned-writer-the-invented-part\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:06:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:06:39","slug":"structure-time-memory-and-the-sadness-of-a-disillusioned-writer-the-invented-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2017\/07\/10\/structure-time-memory-and-the-sadness-of-a-disillusioned-writer-the-invented-part\/","title":{"rendered":"Structure, Time, Memory, and the Sadness of a Disillusioned Writer [The Invented Part]"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this week’s Two Month Review podcast,<\/a> we’ll be discussing the fifth part of The Invented Part<\/em><\/a> (“Life After People, or Notes for a Brief History of Progressive Rock and Science Fiction,” pages 361-404). As a bit of preparation, below you’ll find some initial thoughts, observations, and quotes.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can also download this post<\/a> as a PDF<\/span> document.<\/em> <\/p>\n

As always, you can get<\/em> The Invented Part<\/a>
\n for 20% off from our website by using the code 2MONTH. It’s also available at better bookstores everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

And be sure to join the Goodreads group<\/a> and subscribe to the Two Month Review Podcast<\/a> on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

As has been noted on a few occasions, The Invented Part<\/em> is made up of seven clear sections (one of which has three chapters), which are grouped into three different parts. So far, we\u2019ve read five of them:<\/p>\n

Part I<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Real Character\u201d: The Writer as The Boy nearly drowning at the beach.<\/p>\n

Part II<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Place Where the Sea Ends So the Forest Can Begin\u201d: Young Man and Young Woman are working on the movie about the absent Writer.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Few Things You Happen to Think Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ When All You Want Is to Think Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ Nothing\u201d: In which The Writer feels his own encroaching mortality and wants more time to write all the stories that flood his brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany F\u00eates, or Study for a Group Portrait with Broken Decalogues\u201d: Notes about a book The Writer wants to write (which seems to be The Invented Part<\/em>) and his various inspirations.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife After People, or Notes for a Brief History of Progressive Rock and Science Fiction\u201d: Features Tom, a childhood friend of The Writer\u2019s, who gets a call from The Writer right after The Writer breaks into CERN<\/span> and does what he does to end up \u201cfloating through time and space, happily multidimensional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before listing the two sections we haven\u2019t read, I want to take a second to point out a structural pattern that I\u2019m only noticing now, on this re-read. Namely, that this is a symmetrical book with sections 1-7, 2-6, 3-5 reflecting each other, with section 4 being a sort of fulcrum around which the rest balance. <\/p>\n

For example, in section 3 we\u2019re in the mind of The Writer, approaching a false death (remember\u2014he thinks it\u2019s the end times, but tests prove that his chest pain was nothing serious at all) while constantly constructing ideas. <\/p>\n

In section 5, The Writer has gone beyond, and we\u2019re in the mind of a friend of his\u2014who receives an incredibly powerful story from The Transcended Writer. First approaching death, now on the other side of it. Initially making stories to maybe write, now dropping a story into someone\u2019s mind. <\/p>\n

If I\u2019m right about this sort of overarching, almost mathematical, structure, then section 6 (\u201cMeanwhile, Once Again, Beside the Museum Stairway, Under a Big Sky\u201d) should be about the Young Man and Young Woman from section 2, and the last section\u2014the only one of Part III\u2014\u201cThe Imaginary Person,\u201d should end back with The Writer, fully grown, no longer The Boy from section 1.<\/p>\n

Just something to keep in mind (maybe!) as you contemplate the book as a whole. Fres\u00e1n may have written all seven sections at the same time, but he\u2019s a genius, and the connections and underlying structures are far from random. Again: genius.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

Speaking of structure\u2014and this came up at the very end of the podcast you\u2019ll hear on Thursday\u2014this particular chapter is really interesting in terms of how much time actually elapses during the course of these pages. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the opening:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDun dun dun da-DAdun, da-DAdun . . .\u201d He realizes that he\u2019s in big trouble when, hearing a strange sound in his house and not being able to locate its source, he finally discovers that the sound is springing (springing, ah, such a sonic verb) from his own mouth. Through clenched teeth. And that it\u2019s nothing but his own voice singing low, deep, martial, the ominous and instantly catchy and unforgettable musical theme that marks the entrances and exits of the dark and asthmatic and uniformed and reconstructed Darth Vader in the movies of the Star Wars saga.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

So that\u2019s what he\u2019s doing, advancing through a house that\u2019s too big for him now. And he moves through its hallways and bedrooms with the sneaking suspicion that, behind and beneath them, are more hallways and more rooms. [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cWhat year is it?\u201d he wonders.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cDoes it matter?\u201d he answers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

For a couple months now\u2014since his wife left him, taking their little son with her\u2014he\u2019s been living in the near-suspended animation of the minute-to-minute. It\u2019s harder\u2014but it hurts less.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I never noticed how many references to time are embedded in this opening page until copying this out. References to what he\u2019s doing \u201cnow,\u201d questions about the year (and it not mattering), the couple of months since his wife left, living in the \u201cnear-suspended animation of the minute-to-minute.\u201d Given the ending twist to this chapter\u2014The Writer living beyond it all, having merged with the god particle or whatever\u2014this focus on time passing feels not at all coincidental. <\/p>\n

After a digression about the ex-wife and his relationship with his son, we get a minor meditation on the past:<\/p>\n

\n

The past is a telephone that rings like those old telephones never rang, the ones that, in the beginning of their history, only rang to inform you of something decisive, historic. And, yes, with time there will be many people (though not as many as, for example, those who fixed in their memory the precise and private context that surrounded the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy or the death of John Lennon; those moments in History, with a capital H, that turn into something almost palpable, something that\u2019s almost breathed and enters the lungs and heart and brain) who\u2019ll remember with millimetric precision exactly what they were doing when they found out about the disintegration of that writer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

And then amid those reflections we get the most direct statement about what happens to The Writer and a statement from The Transcended Writer himself, which really drives home this \u201ctime\u201d theme:<\/p>\n

\n

But yes<\/em> Tom was wide awake and with fifty years draped over him like a very heavy blanket when the writer, who\u2019d once been his best childhood and adolescent friend, evaporated in a storm of particles and quantum physics and dark matter. And, yes, Tom remembers precisely what he was doing then. Not only when he learned of the \u201caccident\u201d\u2014better and more in-depth, on the news that night\u2014but in the exact instant that it took place. Because he\u2019d just finished not talking to the writer but listening to him * (\u201cI\u2019m calling you after so long because you have to know where I am and what I\u2019m about to do, what I\u2019m doing, what I did; because now all times are one for me. Now I no longer have time, I\u2019m atemporal,\u201d his friend had said from so far away) talk on the telephone; because Tom didn\u2019t dare interrupt him, didn\u2019t dare say a word. Tom just listened to his sharp and clear voice for a long time on the answering machine recording, after his son came to find him in the bathroom and said: \u201cPapi<\/em>, the phone is making a weird noise.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now, I could be wrong\u2014and probably am\u2014but I think this moment of Tom\u2019s son telling him about the phone ringing is the only real \u201cnow\u201d of this chapter. The rest of it\u2014memories of meeting The Writer and Penelope, of Tom\u2019s relationship with his son Fin, the bits about Life After People, Pink Floyd, 2001: A Space Odyssey, even the words of The Writer, which are seemingly implanted into Tom\u2019s mind along with Penelope\u2019s story\u2014are all memories filling in around this moment. <\/p>\n

(The one exception is the final bit of this chapter which begins, \u201cIt\u2019s night now. The dead of night.\u201d A bit of a coda after the storm in which Tom remembers Penelope\u2019s story, forever seared into his mind\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s late now, now it\u2019s too late to forget\u2014now he\u2019ll never forget it\u2014what Penelope did or stopped doing with her little son.\u201d\u2014and has the most touching of moments with Fin.)<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

Similar to the William Burroughs part in Penelope\u2019s Mount Karma section, Fres\u00e1n incorporates a lot of factual, real-life events and artworks here. Specifically, this is the \u201cPink Floyd section,\u201d telling of Syd Barrett\u2019s mental breakdown, his random appearance at the recording studio where Pink Floyd II was recording Wish You Were Here<\/em>, along with descriptions and accounts of a few other Pink Floyd albums.<\/p>\n

Similar to how Fitzgerald transformed the real life of the Murphys into Tender Is the Night<\/em>, Fres\u00e1n is transforming real-life stories about art into new art. Transforming information about creators into a creation about a creator. <\/p>\n

All of these stories are told within Tom\u2019s mind though, which adds an interesting wrinkle or two. It\u2019s a bit of a clich\u00e9 to say that you are what you read (or watch, or listen to), but like Brian mentions on the podcast, major works of art oftentimes serve as sort of touchstones to determine and shape friendships. (Anyone I meet who mentions The Crying of Lot 49<\/em> and Twin Peaks<\/em> and Dan Deacon will become an insta-friend.) <\/p>\n

Interpretation does play a role though, as does one\u2019s memory. The mind isn\u2019t a flawless recording device, but something more mysterious and active, in which things shift and morph and become something else. <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

For example, there is this:<\/p>\n

\n

And his friends are left there to cry. And to record. And, with time, Waters and Gilmour think that that might have been the moment, after wrapping up Wish You Were Here<\/em> (that in the beginning didn\u2019t entirely win over the critics, that reaches number one in sales on both sides of the Atlantic when it\u2019s released, and that time and perspective and distance elevate as their unanimous and indisputable crowning achievement), the exact and perfect time for the band to break up. The precise instant\u2014from which there was no going back\u2014to conclude their life cycle, with that ode to the omnipresent absent friend. And that way avoid the imminent ex-friendships resulting from the convulsive and revulsive recordings of Animals<\/em> and The Wall<\/em> and The Final Cut.<\/em> To go, to let go, with those airs bottled in the fullest of emptinesses, the absolute and joyously sad emptiness of their lyrics and music. With that magic moment\u2014at the end of \u201cWelcome to the Machine\u201d and the beginning of \u201cWish You Were Here\u201d\u2014when someone seemed to be trying to tune in a radio, the one in David Gilmour\u2019s car. And you heard voices and a few bars of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Symphony No. 4. And suddenly all the sound drops, like a candle blown out for the birthday of an era. A pause that it took Tom many listens (staring intently at the needle above the grooves, trying to see what was happening) to grasp wasn\u2019t a potential defect in his parents\u2019 stereo equipment reacting to some secret frequency so that then, after the entrance of that vintage acoustic guitar solo, everything would climb again, like the highest of rising of tides.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What\u2019s interesting about this is the bridge between the story about Pink Floyd breaking up to Tom\u2019s personal story about internalizing that specific moment in which Tom remembers the album incorrectly.<\/em> As Rodrigo mentioned to me in an email, \u201cWish You Were Here\u201d doesn\u2019t come at the end of \u201cWelcome to the Machine,\u201d but at the end of \u201cHave a Cigar.\u201d We are in Tom\u2019s memory here now . . . And, as a tease, I\u2019ll just mention that Rodrigo said that this will be explained in The Remembered Part . . .<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

Finally, I have a few quick notes about parents and their children. This is something I\u2019ve been honing in on throughout my re-read. From the opening section about The Boy and his parents (who lead a crazy<\/em> life!) to the proliferation of stories about fathers and sons that The Writer comes up with while at the hospital to Penelope\u2019s story to Tom and his son. Still not 100% sure of what to make of all this, but there\u2019s a theme of disappointment and failure that runs throughout. Along with fears of death and violence. <\/p>\n

That really comes home in this episode, in which The Writer \u201cgifts\u201d Tom the full story of Penelope and her son, which isn\u2019t fully explained, but which Tom can\u2019t get out of his mind (\u201cnow he\u2019ll never forget it\u2014what Penelope did or stopped doing with her little son\u201d) and leads him to go to Fin\u2019s room and the final, pretty emotional sentence of this section: \u201cSitting on the edge of the bed, he holds his son to keep from falling.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

One last quote: <\/p>\n

\n

Major Tom: until a few minutes ago I was a disillusioned writer. And there\u2019s nothing sadder than a disillusioned writer, Major Tom. A disillusioned writer has that sadness that makes no one sad but himself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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