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Interview With Christine Brooke-Rose
Interview With Christine Brooke-Rose
Interview With Christine Brooke-Rose
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AN INTERVIEWWITH CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE*
BROOKE-ROSE I 3
say, weight consists of the attraction between two bodies. If you
transfer that into a sexual context it becomes a metaphor. Though
you are in fact using it literally, you see. And then I go on with
that in Thru, where the science in question becomes linguistics. So
the whole thing is much more self-reflexive, in that I will take a
law of linguistics and use it in exactly the same way as I use a law
of astrophysics in Such. But there is a whole game of mirrors going
on in Thru. The first sentence is "Through the driving mirror,"
with this idea of looking forward but actually looking back....
4 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
to accept any statement as being the preamble to another state-
ment of the same sort.
A. Yes, I'm playing with the reader's habit of trusting the reliable
narrator; in fact everything is unreliable in this text. At one point
it seems that students in a class of creative writing are writing this
text, and then other students come in and invade the class and all
that is destroyed. So I have all sorts of ways of destroying what I
have just created, and the whole thing disintegrates in the end,
with everybody mentioned in the novel, or merely alluded to-all
these people, the characters, however minor in the novel, just
maybe a first name or an allusion to Wallace Stevens or Derrida or
the Princesse de Cleves or Homer, or anyone. They are all listed in
alphabetical order and given (by the students) degrees of
presence-a very facile pun on the word "degree." You see what I
mean by untranslatable, this wouldn't go into French, you couldn't
have licence; one would have to do something else with it. Genette
talks about the degrees of presence of the narrator. So all these
people are awarded degrees of presence; they get gamma minuses
and beta pluses and so on which are totally arbitrary, though I
couldn't very well give someone like Derrida a delta minus. Every-
thing is really destroyed in the end. The text just disintegrates.
Originally it was called Thru because I wanted to go on with
what I was doing in Out, Such and Between. As it went along I
realized it was very different, and I wanted to mark this difference
so I called it Texttermination, which I loved. I thought it was a
wonderful title. It expressed exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately
after I handed it in, my publisher wrote to me and said, "Do you
know that William Burroughs has brought out," or "is bringing
out," I forget, "a novel called Textterminator."' So I couldn't use
that and I went back to Thru and in fact it works quite well,
because to go back to your point about the metaphor, it's true
that my titles are metaphorical, in that sense, although they're
prepositions, or just small link words. There is this idea in Between
of a simultaneous translator being between languages, between
ideas, between cities. She's never in one place, going from congress
to congress and so on. And the idea of Thru is also polysemic, as
the French would say. There are a lot of ideas in the "through":
of course "through the mirror," and "I'm through," or "the novel
is through." You can take it in all sorts of senses, which apply to
the text, so it still works. I would rather have called it Text-
lAn error since Burroughs' book is called Exterminator.
BROOKE-ROSE 1 5
termination, but in the end I am quite happy with Thru. It keeps
the series of monosyllabic titles.
Q. Well you have the example of the sign on the Greek truck, to
back you up; it is moving from thing to thing, or place to place.
A. Yes, precisely. When you see a Greek truck with the word
"metaphor," which of course means transport, and it strikes you in
one way, this, too, is the fusion of discourses. This is why I'm
obliged to use different languages-this is what I do in Between.
You see a word like lecheria in Spanish-I think that does actually
come in Between-it means "milkshop" in Spanish, but of course
you read it in English as "lechery." And Pound was onto this ages
ago, saying it can't be all in one language. This is why he puts
these languages into the Cantos because something would come off
in Italian, and not come off in English. He actually plays on this
sometimes.
Q.* I also wanted to ask a question about mixture of discourses,
because in Between I had the sense that the verisimilitude of this
mixture of discourses is accounted for by the consciousness of the
heroine. And that in a sense, because she is a simultaneous trans-
lator, you get this color of advertising, a color of philosophy, a
color of modern science, a color of conferences-because that's her
job. Is that job deceptive, really? Is it more the mixture of
discourses that's at the root of the generation of the text?
A. I think probably in Between it's all filtered through one
justifying consciousness, but in Thru I really tried to get away
from that. There is no consciousness that the reader is aware of.
There is no narrator except in the sense that someone is writing
the text, me, the implied author, or call it who you will. But I
BROOKE-ROSE 1 7
shift the whole time. It's never clear what consciousness this is
going through. At one point there is a conversation between
Jacques le Fataliste and his master, and it seems that it is the
master who is writing this novel. And the whole thing just goes
haywire all the time, so that there is no consciousness that these
various discourses are being filtered through.
Q. Well, frequently.
A. Always.
8 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Q. Shall we mention names?
BROOKE-ROSE I 9
Q.* And yet you never read Joyce till 1969.
A. I know, this is incredible. I resisted Joyce for years, I thought
he was a sacred cow. Perhaps I was frightened, perhaps I just
didn't want to be influenced by him. My great influences-if we
can talk of influences, because one absorbs so much-but let's say
the big influences for me have been Pound and Beckett.
10 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
point of view. So much of our criticism, until very recently, has
insisted upon precisely what the material is not, the signified. Here
you're doing a double thing, you're thinking like a critic and in a
sense writing out of that thought.
A. Yes, probably Thru is the first book where the two streams
come together, where the split personality-me as a writer, and me
as a critic and someone interested in linguistic analysis and so
on-do come together. But, since my attitude is also a humorous
one, in the novel I turn it upside down. In a way I poke fun at it,
though as a critic I take it seriously. You see the whole attitude is
very ambiguous.
Q.* I understand then what you mean when you say that its
origin is metonymic, but in the new context it's a metaphor.
Q. We spoke earlier of Joyce. You obviously could not have been
influenced by him, yet there is a curious sense in which you are
doing things which Joyce might have done or would have approved
of doing. Like, for example, the mixing of languages the way you
do, but of course Pound does that too. Sollers is excited because
Joyce is mixing languages, creating a kind of international idiom,
refusing boundaries, borders. And in a sense you're testifying to
the same, well, the polyglot's lust, perhaps, for the perfect
expression in many languages, or the perfect language for the many
expressions.
12 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
A. Well, nothing is new under the sun, and of course, I think it
was Butor who said we are all influenced by Joyce, even if we've
never read him. It wasn't till after I published Between in '68 that
I got around to reading Joyce. I went to Helene Cixous' courses in
Vincennes and got very excited and I read a lot about him,
including your book. I can't say that has been a direct influence at
all, but obviously I'm influenced, ideas float. You told me that
you have written an article "In the Wake of the Wake," and I
think it's true that after someone has done something to the
language, poets or writers can no longer write in the old way. This
is not a progressist view of literature. I'm against that idea.
Q. Darwinian....
A. Well, you know Auerbach does this in his book on mimesis.
He takes passages from Homer right up to Virginia Woolf, and it's
a fascinating book, but it is based on an idea that literature
progresses and gets better and better. Well, of course that's absurd.
That means we couldn't read the Chanson de Roland and we must
read Virginia Woolf and that would be rather a pity. So obviously
in a sense I was excited and also, let's say my vanity, that side of
the author, was sad to find that Joyce had gone way beyond what
I was trying to do in many ways, but you see one doesn't really
think in these terms. The pleasure is so great. And when I started
reading Finnegans Wake I could only just bow down in admiration.
And had I read Finnegans Wake or tried to read it at twenty, I just
would have made nothing out of it. But coming to him so much
later, I really understood because I had been doing, not the same
thing, but I had been working on the same problems. I don't think
I'm doing the same thing as Joyce, and when I'm compared to
Joyce, it always makes me annoyed because I don't feel it's
relevant. But I suppose there is influence, however indirect. I
wouldn't put him among my direct influences, because I just didn't
read him till after I had written my last published novel.
BROOKE-ROSE I 13
wrote a very naive thing called "La syntaxe et le symbolisme dans
la poesie de Hopkins," and compared what Hopkins was trying to
do to language with Mallarmein Un coup de des. I'm sure if I read
it today I would find it completely absurd, but I have from the
start been interested in this obsession the poet has with language.
14 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
of humor and who really also is a polyglot; he is deeply engaged
by language and by literary form, and perfectly aware of what he
is doing and very careful, a real craftsman, the way he goes to the
printer ....
A. Yes, it's interesting that you should mention him because
although I was very obviously influenced by the nouveau roman
when it came out, especially Robbe-Grillet and Sarraute, I don't
think they have influenced me really a lot. But when I discovered
Maurice Roche and I met him in Paris, it was an eblouissement.
And precisely what you don't get in these others, at least not so
startlingly, is this linguistic humor and this attitude toward
language as a material which is in itself not only pliable and
touchable, if you like, graphic, but funny. All the typographic
things he uses like signs from the Guide Michelin, and all the other
things he does, which he has no difficulty publishing in France.
And you get that in life, you see, all the time. You see two
objects next to each other or just something incongruous-say a
sailor on a bicycle or something-this strikes me as funny. Or once
when I was climbing a Pyrenee and I suddenly saw a Pekinese dog;
well obviously some people had come up by car and there was this
dog, but it just seemed out of place. And you get this all the time
in life, events so concrete in that sense, that you get these weird
juxtapositions. Or like when the Nixon pardon was announced on
television and I happened to be watching it, and it said CBS
special, you know, complete and free pardon, etc. and then, on the
local station, "this program is presented to you by X, the
deodorant that kills domestic odors." I just collapsed with
laughter. I don't know whether the publicity people are aware of
this power of language to do exactly the opposite from what it is
supposed to do. I'm sure the ad was preprogrammed. Maybe the
announcer thought it was funny, but these things happen, the
coincidences in life. So that rather than doing what language is
supposed to do, that bit of publicity, it does exactly the opposite.
You know, one whiff and it's clean, and of course with the Nixon
pardon this is exactly what happened.
Q. What was supposed to happen?
A. You see? The expectation again. Now this occurs all the time.
In conversations. In dreams. In everything you do. This is the way
I live, I live language like that. So that is what gets into my novels.
All right, people will say, "How do you expect your reader to
BROOKE-ROSE I 15
follow this?" But I'm surprised that readers find this difficult.
They all live like this.
16 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
so on. There is an element of narcissism in writing. In fact, it has
been called intellectual masturbation. Okay, fine, I accept all that,
but it's not as simple as that. It's not just solipsism, there is a
reader out there. I suppose it's what Lacan calls l'autre, but maybe
also l'Autre. It is a mirror thing. The whole thing about language is
a mirror.
BROOKE-ROSE I 17
linguistic or phonological languages somehow love each other as
well?
A. That's a difficult question. Yes, I suppose so. If natural
languages can-and that's my phrase, a metaphor after all-then by
definition any other language can-in semiotic terms: all systems of
communication, of which language is only one. The same will
apply to all of them. I can imagine, I suppose, the binary languages
of the computers making love to each other.
18 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
the room, no one brings mineral water. Would you comment on
that?
Q. So you have the act and you don't have it. You have the act
and you erase it.
Q.* Giving and taking away at the same time.
Q. Yes, which is a constant, a poetic ploy, of course. You have it
in all poetry.
A. In fact, now that you mention it, though I didn't realize that
it came into Between, I see that I must have unconsciously wanted
to pursue this in Thru because I'm finding every possible way that
language has of creating something in language, say a character,
which is just made up of the words on the page, and then
destroying that also with words on the page of something else.
You create another event which destroys the previous event. These
are statements, it's not just categorically denying. Sometimes, of
course, I will also categorically deny, but mostly I do this through
action and through sliding into something else and through puns
and metaphors and all the other ways that language has of destroy-
ing the expected. I don't think you are right in saying that the
other arts can't do this, but they have to do it in a different way.
Q. Another code?
A. Well it has to be syntagmatic anyway you see, so that a film,
which is syntagmatic, can still bring in an image which will at least
partly contradict a previous one. Now painting cannot do this,
except-and painters have long been trying to do this-by destroy-
ing the whole idea of representation. And painting is always way
ahead of literature. But language you see is extraordinary in the
sense that it has words for nonexistent things, such as "unicorn"
BROOKE-ROSE I 19
and so on. And philosophers have played around with this a lot,
you know, it has been kicking around a long time.
But words are so strange, unlike color or images and maybe
musical tones. They have a history. There is so much contained in
a word. You can play with etymology. For instance, this division
between form and content that the critics keep going on about,
along with the linguists. It's a long, long dispute. But if you take
any word describing a genre you will find that it reflects either the
"what is being told" or the "how it is being told"; it is either the
content or the form, and more often the form. Even the word
fable: you'd think this reflects the content, something untrue.
Actually it goes back to "fari," to speak. Epic, "epos" used to
mean word. Take any word like that, you will always find that
actually there are many, many more on the side of form. Poetry
means making. Tragedy was originally the goat song, the goat
sacrifice, the how, not the what. Then of course it slides into the
what. Elegy on the contrary was a what-word, a dirge, but it slides
into the how when you talk about the elegiac meter. It becomes a
particular meter. But practically all genre-words: tale goes back to
"talu," which is a number, the idea of exposing in detail, exposing
in the French sense, you know what I mean, telling one detail
after the other. You just take any word, even novel-roman means
these tales are told in the romance language. Novel is the new, the
what, and you get that reflected in say, newspaper which has both.
There is the news and there is the paper, the material, and now we
talk about a paper, "Have you read the paper today? The only
other word that refers to the material itself is film, which is simply
the "pellicule." It's the matter.
Q.* You have the picture itself and the motion in it.
A. Oh, yes, but picture comes from "pingere," like pigment, the
matter. In a text you do have a signified and signifier, I mean you
can't get away from that. But to go back to negation, I think
20 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
language is particularly suited for this negating function. You're
right, it's probably much more difficult to do in the visual arts,
and I would say perhaps almost impossible to do in music.
Q.* I think in the visual arts, it has only been done very
recently-I'd say since Robbe-Grillet in the movies. But Lessing
already talks about the negating function in poetry.
A. Yes, the only art that is really not syntagmatic is painting or
sculpture. It is paradigmatic but static and you can see it all at
once or you can see little bits at a time.
Q.* Although, if you say "the maid did not come into the room,"
you do have affirmation and denial at the same time, and it's simul-
taneous.
A. Yes, because you are stating "the maid" and you're stating
"come" and you're stating "the room" and you're stating "did."
In fact it's interesting that you should bring that up, because in
the structural analysis I did of Pound's "Usura Canto," I dis-
covered a fascinating play of negative and positive. There are two
different types of negative and positive and I had to mark them in
different ways in the analysis. One is the grammatical negative and
grammatical positive, or non-negative if you like, and the other is
the evaluative positive and negative, in other words, pejorative and
non-pejorative, or approving. But he plays with these four things in
such a way that very often the pejorative is expressed in positive
terms in grammar and the approval is expressed in negative terms
in grammar. For instance, that whole passage "Pietro Lombardo
came not by Usura" and all these artists who came not by Usura.
This is Pound approving. These are the historical exceptions, you
see. And it's a block in the middle and it's the only one that does
this, to mark the exceptions.
BROOKE-ROSE I 21
And then of course you get the approval expressed with the
grammatical positive, and the disapproval expressed with the
grammatical negative, "With Usura hath no man a house of good
stone," but within this very complex game you also get differences
in the positioning of the negative. "With Usura hath no man," it's
man who is being denied. In other words, Usura: no man. Manhood
is impossible with Usura. But elsewhere it will be the verb which is
denied. "Wool comes not to market." It's the coming which is
denied, and he plays with that all the time, where he puts his
negative, whether it's the adjective, or the verb, or the subject, or
the object which is being denied. It is apparently a static poem,
repetitive and rhetorical, a sort of litany. But underneath it is
absolutely dynamic, and this is what I was trying to say at the
beginning about subliminal structures. This is apparently a non-
metaphorical poem. There are very few metaphors in it; it's
apparently just a series of litany-like statements, like an exorcism,
if you like, an anti-litany. Alvarez has criticized it for being static.
There is no argument in it, he says. Pound is just repeating the
same thing. In fact, the subliminal structures are extremely
dynamic. There is this tension all the time between different types
of language and metaphoric statements being created in the deep
structure, as the transformational grammarians would say. The
deep structure is metaphoric, but the surface structure is not.
Q. And is this something which you feel that you are doing
yourself in say Between or Thru?
A. I think I am, but this is difficult to say because I am so split
down the middle as a critic and a writer. I wouldn't be conscious
of this as a writer. You see, when I'm writing I go away; I can
only write in the summer, and I just forget all this theory. I teach
theory. Fine. I can take a poem or novel and show how it
functions and what the structures are. But if I'm writing I don't
think of this. It becomes a game. On the contrary, I poke fun at
it.
22 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Q.* I noticed in your description of the Pound poem that, besides
litany, there's a lot of catalogue in it. Whether you were conscious
of it or not when you were writing Between, I also notice a lot of
catalogue in it. Somehow the two, the negating statements and the
cataloguing, I'm not exactly sure how, but somehow they seem
connected. Is that possible?
A. Yes, perhaps. Let's say that this passion for language that I
tried to talk about earlier, is probably the nearest I get to religion,
to religious feeling, the feeling of the sacred. And the sacred will in
fact catalogue reality and give names or even non-names to God
and so on. Maybe it sounds blasphemous, but I don't think it is,
because after all, you know, God is the Logos and so on. God is
and is not. If I have any religion it is that; I mean, this is the
material of life.
Q. You are fulfilling Mallarme's prophecy [that art will take the
place of religion].
A. I wouldn't dare.
BROOKE-ROSE I 23