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yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 01:08 pm: | 
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CH and Thumper:
here are my inchoate remarks...i posted this yesterday, but wasn't sure if you would find it, so i created anotha thread. Sorry, for being repetitive....
Hmmmm...what can i say about Wideman's love letter?
As usual, Wideman's language is so lyrical and confrontationally masculine. The narrative, if one can call it that, seems to be a reflection, as the stories suggests, during silence, which functions as communicator, catalystizing memories of love, pain, and other emotions.
Monk's silence with his colleague KC and the butcher, if i recall correctly, and finally to wideman's "invisible man" is authoritative and patient, and at the same time, his music reflects the emotions, ie sound track, of a moment or the moment that Silence, not necessarily Monk's silence, brings forth. Monk's silence and Silence, therefore, reinforce eachother; both illuminating the "invisible man."
The story reads, i think, like a bout, as the opening paragraph introduces, between lovers: the protagonist and the women(the poets as lovers in a bout) and the protagonist and Monk's music/Monk(who i think i representative a LOVE as teach, albeit of pain or joy).
These are my immediate remarks.....
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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 01:33 pm: |
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Yukio:
Yeah for me it shows Wideman's mastery of the stream of consciousness technique--the story is not about Verlaine and Rimbaud and Thelonious Monk but about how they are called up by the writer's memories of the unnamed "you" of the story. It really is amazing how he can get so much in there and touch so widely on so many things--basketball playing, Scotty Pippen, James Brown, Monk being silent and buying food and at sessions and appearing at his own funeral, New York, etc.
I have read the story many times, and enjoyed it as much or more each time the mark of real literature. |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 02:26 pm: |
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CH:
I agree with you, for the most part. V and R were used as metaphors for his love affair and memories with "you." I disagree, however, with your contention that the story wasn't about Monk.
I would argue that it is about many things, though the story in the form of a stream of consciousness is to the unnamed "you." It is, i believe, as much about the unnameed "you" as it is about Monk, whose not only organizes the narrative as "sound track," but also through the silence in both his communication interpersonally and through his music, where the pauses and silences he makes are as much part of the music and the "tellin" as playin on the keys...these silences is where Monk would often get up and dance, anotha form of communication, or he would dance in his seat caught in his own internal trance.
This communication that Wideman is picking up from Monk is his attempt to generally talk about the african american style and aethestics, ie playing basketball and music, ie Pippen and Brown, and specifically Monk's music's emotive power. This is WIdeman as storyteller on the one hand, and cultural artist on the other hand, so that his use of stream of consciousness is transformed by an african ameircan idiom, rather than a Joycean stream of consciousness. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 03:02 pm: |
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Yukio:
Wideman has many times cited his debt to James Joyce and cited him and TS Eliot's "The Wasteland" as major influences on his work. Perhaps some African Americans used the technique in their work before that, perhaps we can site some African American or African use of it in the oral tradition--I can point to no specific examples--True he has introduced African American elements to the vamp and in my opinion he is the best writer writing today that uses them--but what about injecting Verlaine and Rimbaud into the stream.
I would argue that this is Wideman's acknowlegement of Universality.
The story is not about Monk. It is about how Monk is relevant to the time he was away from the unnamed "you"--how his missing the "you" was occasioned by hearing Monk in Paris--this is another of Wideman's techniques, how he talks about one thing to talk about something else, shows the interrelatedness of all things another of his themes--the way he spends half of "All Stories Are True" talking about his mother to explain what the visit to his brother means.
I finally found your other post--what did you think of my comments on that one? |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 03:33 pm: |
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CH:
I'm not sure if africans created the literary technique streams of consciousness either. My point, however, was that WIdeman uses the technique and imbricates it with the african american idiom. Indeed, as you say, it is Wideman embracing a Universalism, showing both his respect for the European literary tradition, and illustrating its fusion with the African Diasporic, specifically African AMerican, idiom.
I don't see Monk as just being used to talk about something else; I see both, MOnk and the un-named "you," as the "subject" of the story, which shows, as you suggest an inter-relatedness, and the simultaneity of experience, the main ingredient of stream of consciousness.
I don't know about the silence theme.....but your remarks sound valid. I didn't read the essay before the thelonius monk piece, but as i consider the monk piece and the work that he had done during these breaks...using alot of think and reading, then i would say like MOnk's silence, he is still doing something, as in performance.....
The spaces in MOnk's piano playing are not really silent, according to wideman.....the silence is also performance...in its own way it is contributing to the entire sound....it is mimetic, so that it is reflecting or continues to reflect the emotions of the player, MOnk, and the listener/reader, audience/you and me. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 12:45 pm: |
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Yukio:
That issue of Callaloo is so phat. Did you read the interview of Wideman by Jacqueline Bernen-Masi? How about the piece, "Weight"?
That interview gives a key to his writing methods and philosophy as well as discusses a few of the novels. |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 02:17 pm: |
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i read the issue long ago....i'm a fan of wideman, but lately i haven'thad much time to get into his literature. Also, i'm trying to read other black lit. writers...
i'll check "weight," soon, however and provide comments. |
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