126
NORMAN MARTIEN
Gunslinger with all the devotion of a tenderfoot. We learn of a strange
mission, which requires that Gunslinger pursue an "inscrutable" Texan
named Howard Hughes, and in Book I this takes them abruptly to the
saloon in Mesilla. The action is mostly talk, between characters who
share the various tasks and questions of exploring American distances:
the proprietress Lil, possibly Enigmatic and Beautiful, chattering in the
present but part of "Slinger's" mysterious past; a Horse, high on cigars
and grass, who takes charge of mapping their route; a Drifter/Poet,
who plays upon an Absolute Guitar. In Book II, on the way to Universe
City, they pick up a wayfaring acidhead, Cool Everything. Cool is a
man of media, delighted at a new machine called a Literate Projector.
One puts into it a 35mm film of any subject, and it projects on the
screen a script of the event: "It will invent a whole new literachure /
which was already there."
Dorn's narrative is zany and delightful. Its incoherence troubles
the characters far more than the reader.
To See
is their desire
as they wander estranged
through the lanes of the Tenders
of Objects
who implore this existence
for a plan and dance wideyed
provided with a schedule
along the selvedge of time.
While the Horse knows the way, it is mostly The Gunslinger who sees
design. We don't know what the design might be; we can't be sure he
knows; and we learn by watching the narrator that we don't even know
how
to
ask. Gunslinger is a careful construction of platitudes: the name–
less Westerner, from a mysterious past and with a vague mission ("I
am
the son of the sun," he says); he knows everything and speaks with
literal precision and understatement; he carefully explains the manner
of his actions, as if style is his mission, and motive and end are ir–
relevant; he is impossibly quick and accurate with his gun (he has
eliminated the draw); his Horse is not only intelligent but dogmatic
and garrulous. Opposite Gl,lllslinger is the narrator, named
"I."
He
is
the naive outsider, the "refugee" who uncomprehendingly tells of events
without apparent depth or meaning, in a landscape of stage props and
false fronts. He asks too many questions, tells too much about himself
("What's your name? / I, I answered"). In Book II he dies, apparently
of overdefinition ("it is dangerous to be named / and makes you
mortal") .
I
I
r
