*
Slowly, very slowly, for the longest time, I read and reread the text, which seems to have been written, I don’t know, maybe, let’s say 25 years ago. Perhaps someone from those days gave it to me, someone I have long since forgotten. I’m no longer sure of anything since I came here, to this abandoned schoolhouse, to be incarcerated until I finish the novel I’ve promised. I have enough paper and provisions and drink. I have a dictionary, only one, a Fowler’s. I’ve just read the text again. Believe me, none of it is true. Sure, we had dictation, that much is accurate. But it wasn’t as painful as it seemed at the time. There was even something enjoyable about applying oneself to such a trivial task, trying to reproduce exactly those little gems of writing, those morsels of classic texts that our ancient teachers considered exemplary. Sure it was old-fashioned, but that was the way things were done. And I learnt a lot: such as how to act as if I had no body. And how to play the innocent when everyone knew I had stolen the teacher’s book and memorized the passage so I could recite it under my breath, a few words ahead of the examiner. Obviously, I was punished. First, for pulling a face, then, when that had been thoroughly corrected, for my style. I used to infuriate the teacher by writing between the lines of the venerable old text we were taking down, inserting fragments that had nothing to do with the serious, cerebral things we were meant to be learning. I was insinuating myself. I loved parody. Gratuitous parody. But my secret urges were not all that strong. Under the covers, sure, things happened: pamphlets were exchanged, quick caresses, nibbles, misspelt words, long recitations. And dark plans, too, sometimes for novels, but more often, in fact almost every day, plans for escape, from the endless rehearsal, the indecent spectacle of being called to order. My thoughts ran to fantasies more than family epics. You must understand: I was young, I was wild, I was theoretically behind, and I already knew too much about death. New paragraph.
*
Obviously, obviously, decalcomania, decalcomania, doesn’t alway accomplish, accomplish, what it is meant to. At times, we could be severe in our judgment of others. We called them philistines, phil-i-stines, eunuchs, pariahs, and worst of all, worst of all, il-lit-er-ates. What could be worse, what could be more crippling, than not knowing how to write? You have no idea what pleasure it can give, and what it can bring—ease, charm, confidence, and power, pow-er, period, iod. We grew proud and irreproachable, faultless, aultless in our use of language and in our fanciful family tales; we luxuriated in our inner world to the full, to the full. The dichotomy, dichotomy of public and private was laid bare for all to see. It was imperative that we document the break, the break with our teachers who, let’s face it, didn’t exactly shine in the art of deconstruction, struction, plots, readings, mythes, my-thes, and ideologies, ologies period. The very nature of literature, ature, demanded that we be the vanguard of a new direction in the collective imagination, a direction still unknown and undeveloped. It was our, it was our duty to tear out our most deeply rooted preconceptions about realism and the unconscious. We would be unreadable or we would not be, it was as simple as that. And we succeeded. In the most beautiful sense, that is, the heroic, oic. We endured vilification and jeers, disdain and derision. Nevertheless, we are still here and we are composing, osing, ever more astonishing, onishing, texts; we have not finished moving you, have not finished insinuating, little by little, incrementally, like a hand into a glove, fragments of text and dialogue that you will never be able to scorn, to scorn. True, we’ve grown old, undeniably, but we still don’t want power; we ask only for one small opportunity, though a truly historic one—the chance to demolish your foundations, your authority, your righteousness, and the grandiose artifice of your language. Paragraph, agraph.
*
I see it now: it was death, death alone, that was lurking in those beautiful texts, those bombastic dictations hurled at a class so blank-faced you’d think you’d walked into a sanitarium by mistake. There was far too much submissiveness in the room, despite all my sermonizing about the necessity of resisting authority. Yes, I was old. Yes, I see it now. I was vigilant, I was determined to catch every sign, the slightest indication, especially the slightest indication. I wanted to correct, down to the most insignificant comma, anything that was said about conjugal relations, the use of pronouns, the family and its babel of tongues. I craved style, and not just any style, but a style that was precise, microscopic, if you will. It was a time of tracing, of scrutinizing, of investigating. Be vigilant, be on the lookout! It was a time of reflection on the self, the first step in the great renewal of language and morals. Words, life; so many words, all kinds of them! Ah, the pleasure of progress. Now, as you see, I find it almost impossible to write even a semblance of character and voice. I dream of finished sentences, brilliant stories, fictions that reveal the highest truths. I’m not talking about my journal, my life story. I’m talking about the possible death of all those other things, the end, the final period, and the amorphousness thereafter. Sifting through my old papers, I saw it all again: my dictations, my little insinuations, my sometimes sarcastic references to theories and grammar rules. Essentially, it was a time of correction, of rendering precise our impulses and our scatterbrained ideas; a time of doubting, of transgressing against the accepted uses of words while pretending that nothing had happened. Like so many others, I was committed to delinquent syntax. The future would be word-to-word combat, body-to-body. I truly believe that all of us, at that moment, had truth on the tip of our tongues. Parentheses.
*
Pay attention and you’ll have no problem. Perhaps you aren’t used to taking down words, things of substance, while someone stands provocatively at the front of the room, never smiling, watching you continuously with a bewildered look. Maybe you feel spied upon. Don’t waste time thinking about it. Write, write. Don’t put down your pen, don’t let the pages slip off the desk. Use your other hand to hide the words that slip free. Apply yourself, and who knows, perhaps something strange will happen. Perhaps the words, the structures, perhaps the structures, the words will no longer hold. Do you feel a slight vertigo? If you’re new to this obsession, be prepared to dream about dictionaries and strange definitions. The obsession may become pathological, mild at first, but malignant. At first you won’t suspect a thing, nothing at all. You may even say to yourself, in parentheses (good, good, yes, I’m writing; or, it’s being dictated to me, dictated—and other things like that). The next day, if, and only if, when the voice at the front repeats the passage that you’ve written down, you start changing it, I’ll bet anything that a little smile will appear at the corner of your mouth. You’ll develop a taste for parody. It won’t start out as scandalous or daring, you won’t be storming the linguistic ramparts. Not right away. But you’ll see how seductive it is. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll throw yourself into it, you’ll take your place at the table. I don’t know. You’ll find out. Anyway, tomorrow I want you to hand in your clean copies, no mistakes. I’ll correct you. I have the teacher’s book right here; it’s beautiful, isn’t it? . . . no? Fine, anyway, you will hand that in to me, finished, of course. I know, not everyone’s used to doing dictation, but that’s no reason to sabotage it, if you get my drift. OK, let’s tidy up. Don’t forget to put a nice, thick red line at the bottom of your text. And of course, you can underline any words or passages that you don’t understand. Understood? Period.
*
Before you go, I don’t want to keep you too long, I’d just like to add a little something. Earlier, I spoke to you about my dreams and my youthful misdemeanors, about, you know, this syntax, about the body, and all these banalities, you know, about this metaphor and so on. Well, before you go, I’d like to tell you, it won’t take long, I don’t want to keep you too long, and I don’t want to repeat myself, because, you see, right now, I’m not dictating anything, I mean at this precise moment, you understand? I said I’d like, but how many of you, really, how many of you noticed that, formerly, in days of yore, in times gone by, it was never easy for me to tell you this: that reality, you have to see it to believe in it; and this, too: that fiction is always is always brimming over with, what’s the word, always brimming over with, with . . . I’m sorry, I forget. I’m nervous. I’m not used to extemporizing in front of you. I’m hopeless without a text to read from, and besides, I’m getting old, really I am. So, fiction substitutes, substitutes. That’s it, now I remember what I was trying to say: fiction substitutes and reality, you must believe in it. Please, believe me. Don’t yell. I’ve just given you the precious fruit of my humble experience, which is just as valuable as any other platitude you’re likely to encounter. Well. Well, in that case, since you’re still here, I’m tempted, quite perversely I admit, to give you one last teensy-weensy dictation, something so ridiculously easy that it will no doubt ignite howls of laughter in those of you who are childish enough to mock my theories. So, let us begin, one last time, before you go, because afterwards, you see, I have a novel to write and my food supplies are starting to run low, not to mention my beer, and my years, and my paper, in a word everything, all the ordinary things that are essential to the daily routines of writers, and especially, need we say it, writers of their times. Period.
*
So, so that, if you do decide, write legibly, my eyes are very tired, decide that you want at this point comma, to try experiencing this lunacy, nacy, to experience trying insanity . . . sorry, I’ll start over: if you decide at this point that you want to try to write comma, you must realize that it won’t always be just a matter of the pathological personality, ality—sorry, my eyes are playing tricks on me—I repeat: it won’t always be just a matter of you and you alone, if it’s not comma at times the sense of a collective crisis in which said pathological personality precedes the accomplishment of your very first sentence period. Next comma, once you have laid out in front of you all of the words necessary for the full flowering of your examination of reality, ality comma, you must understand that you are on the threshold of touching, ouching the depths of very little indeed period. If you do decide to dig deeper, deeper comma you will see that language proceeds in ways that are very similar, imilar to those of excessiveness, essiveness, and insanity, anity period. Finally comma you will see that there is the truth, finally that there is the truth, there, the truth because after better to stop, better to stop, to put away one’s writing things, than to pursue pursue imaginary worlds that are no longer of any concern concern to us full stop. I’ll give you the correct version tomorrow, tomorrow, if that doesn’t keep you too long, if it makes absolutely no difference to you, absolutely none at all.
