Many Subtle Channels (Daniel Levin Becker)

My German course has been great in that I am being forced to practice German for a certain amount of time every day. It has also succeeded in regularizing my schedule here: now I have somewhere to be from noon to 3, and it takes about 30 minutes to get there. So, I wake up at the same time every day and don't dillydally. Rather than reading until I feel like eating breakfast, I eat, get dressed, and sometimes have to finish my homework before doing anything else. I get home about an hour before Eileen gets out of work, so I have time to do dishes or practice my flute or read on my own before we get dinner or do something else.

The downside is, I have far less time. Suddenly, four hours a day are just for the class and commute, then an additional hour for homework. My blog writing has suffered, and I haven't been doing as much writing in general. But I have been reading (in the subway, in breaks from class, etc.) but haven't been writing about it here. So, one of the books I finished was called Many Subtle Channels by a young, American member of the OuLiPo named Daniel Levin Becker.

It is a charming book that serves mostly as a general introduction to the group, its history, and the way it operates. Rather than write a "review" (like I seem to have done for the other books), I'm going to put in a few quotes I found interesting for my own work and elaborate on them. I've been reading predominately on my Kindle, so one of the perks is that it keeps all of my notes in one place for me without forcing me to write in the pages of one of my actual, physical books.

1) "Potential literature is both the things that literature could be and the things that could be literature. Potential literature is language; potential literature is life. Nobody's ever been entirely, definitively clear on what potential literature is, and this is to everyone's advantage. When you don't know what you're looking for, as they say, your chances of finding it are excellent." (9)

I've been toying with a metaphor for potential literature lately, and I think I've found one with a bit of potential (pun definitely intended): fractals. A fractal, in case you don't know, is a mathematical set/natural phenomenon of a repeated pattern at every scale. A good example is a cauliflower: look at the whole thing and there is clearly a pattern; look at just a part and it is the same pattern as the whole, but smaller. I feel that potential literature can be understood like that. A constraint has the potential to produce an unlimited body of texts, all of which will continue to speak about the constraint on every level. The self-reflexivity could conceivably extend in all directions forever. For instance, writing a book without a letter (like Perec does with La disparition, foregoing the letter E) is called a lipogram. That specific constraint, however, could produce tons of different books. Then, one could choose another letter. And another, and another. The potential for the lipogram is a subsection of the potential of language itself, and each text written without use of a letter will share certain properties. The language of the lipogram—or the potential language of a lipogram—is like a fractal.

2) "Bens's minutes frame this as an exciting time, not least due to the more or less concurrent development of big efficient calculating machines called computers. Certain tasks with conceivable if outlandish literary merit were becoming possible, as means or as ends unto themselves: compiling concordances, isolating the borders of poems, scanning for metrical qualities, writing poems in programming languages. At one point Braffort mentions a research center in Bensançon that has all the tragedies of Racine and Corneille on perforated cards; in Queneau's subsequent questions about whether a computer could classify sonnets by end-rhymes or scan a piece of prose for twelve-syllable units—i.e., involuntary alexandrines—the possibility for mischief nearly jumps off the page." (135)

Look out for more on computers, as I'm currently working on writing an article about algorithmic literature. I'm also considering putting an entire chapter on computers and algorithms into my dissertation. A new academic trend seems to be "Digital Humanities," which isn't very well-defined yet. Hopefully I can work it into my own work and also help to contribute to figuring out what exactly it is. From what I can tell so far, Digital Humanities is an experimental subsection of the humanities that seems to want to serve the role that the OuLiPo defines within literature. They seek to examine the potential of new technology in humanistic studies. We'll see what's there.

3) "'If 'pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions,' Paul Braffort wrote in 2002, 'the Oulipo could be the search for real solutions to imaginary problems.'" (150)

'Pataphysics is a strange organization that still exists to day. It is of interest to me (and to anyone who studies the OuLiPo) because the OuLiPo began as a subsection of the group. This quote, for me, is a very apt description of the fundamental difference between the two projects, and why they are no longer truly affiliated. Look out for more later, as I'll be writing on a book I'm currently reading on 'Pataphysics.

4) "Roubaud also proposes an analogous relationship between the groups' [OuLiPo and Bourbaki] methods—'a structure in Bourbaki's conception of mathematics is capable of producing an infinity of theorems, by deductions from its axioms. A constraint is the oulipian equivalent of a bourbakist structure'—and between the goals behind them, namely a fastening of the practice of mathematics and literature, respectively, to 'a sound and rigorous basis' that could be derived over and over again from first principles. This ultimately comes across as a little too neat a comparison, but that's fifty years' hindsight talking. For Queneau and Le Lionnais, both of whom were supremely interested in the work Bourbaki was doing, this model was more than just a constructive counterpoint to that of the Surrealists." (152)

This is essentially a summary of part of the presentation I gave for my dissertation prospectus defense. I'm hoping to begin my dissertation with a close examination of the oulipian appropriation of Bourbaki's axiomatic set theory and how they propose to apply it to literature.

5) "'The meaning of the Oulipo is to give empty structures, to propose empty structures,'" [Queneau] said. 'Well then, I'll ask this,' said Charbonnier: 'Is that possible?' 'Probably,' Queneau murmured, after a pause." (288)

I think this quote speaks for itself!

6) "The Oulipo's generosity, then, is something like a conceptual generosity: it lies more in suggesting that literature might have a cookbook than in furnishing any actual recipes, more in framing an idea as the center of a labyrinth, and the finished work as the outside, than in offering any tips on how to navigate out." (290)

Like mathematics itself, this sort of idea implies that what the OuLiPo does exists in the fabric of literature itself and it is actually for everyone to find.

7) "...creative reading is no less noble, no less rewarding, no less potentially spectacular, than creative writing. To do either one well is simply to leave things more interesting than you found them." (300)

This quote is fundamental to understanding what the addition of mathematics to literature does to reading.

8) "Language is just as artificial as literature, probably more so—a diffuse and shape-shifting and ideally unstable system we invented a long time ago—but then the same can be said of most of the means we routinely and unthinkingly use to describe and deal with our surroundings...Potential literature is what we might call language in the hands of a crafty reader, the way potential music is sound to a crafty listener. Reading, no matter what you're reading, presupposes a belief in the potential of the text—to speak to you, enlighten you, stir your imagination or temporarily distract you—just as living, if it is to have any sense, presupposes a belief in the potential of your life." (316-7)

An important point, which I will undoubtedly return to later.