450
TONY TANNER
world," she says and, rightly in my oplruon, she sees no limit to the
Humber of different modes of encountering the world we can enjoy
and be nourished by: "as the human will is capable of an indefinite
number of stances, there are an indefinite number of possible styles for
works of art." All this is admirably said, and is in the tradition of that
great panegyrist of consciousness, William James: "We see that the
mind is at every stage a theater of simultaneous possibilities. Conscious–
ness consists in the comparison of these with each other, the selection
of some, and the suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and in–
hibiting agency of attention. . . . The IIlind, in short, works on the data
it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. . ..
Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other
worlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos
[The Prin–
ciples
0/
Psychology]."
To appreciate some of those "other worlds"
which artists give us, is
to
expedite the exfoliation and energizing of
our own consciousness. But Mis? Sontag--also says: "the work 6f art
itself is also a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us
to the world in some way more open and enriched." Again, I 'agree.
But I couldn't find the "magic" in her novel. Let 'me give one example
of what I think is part of the problem.
If
a novel is to have magic it
has got to be in the words (or between them). Now in
Death Kit
there
is evident a S'ort of revulsion against language itself. Words and talk in
the book are variously described as "sticky as taffy or tough like over–
chewed bubble gum"; "like cold greasy coffee"; "as physical and in–
expressive as the mashed potatoes on Thursday night or the oatmeal
for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday breakfasts"; words start to
"thick–
en"; there is a "sticky strip of words," a "tray of words" and a general
feeling for their unnourishing nastiness. This feeling is scarcely checked
by the blank assertion - "Language is S'acred." Sacred, perhaps, until
people start to use it or speak it, when it becomes so much slop in the
mouth. Now, it is entirely possible that Miss Sontag intended this effect
very deliberately. Diddy's sense of the nasty taste of words may be a
translation into the tenns of fantasy of the brute fact that he is vomit–
ing from, as it were, page 6 to page 312. This would be a rather cl(!ver
effect (like Pincher Martin turning his aching tooth into a rock), but
somehow this nausea of communication seems to infect the whole book,
and the language as whole is not really very "vibrant, magical" - or
enrithing. It
states,
rather than creates.
What I found most interesting and impressive about this book
is its pursuit of some of the ultimate implications of that cultivation of
"inner spaciousness" celebrated so splendidly by many of the great
American writers. Make your mind like the dome of St. Peter's, says
