140
RAYMOND FEDERMAN
"Our lives are an appalling slapstick. On the other side of the TV screen
real blood flows."
Obviously, then,
OUT
makes a shamble of traditional fiction. It brings
fiction to the brink of playful disaster. As such,
OUT
is a remarkable
piece of fiction -- a tour de force -- because it fucks up all precon–
ceived notions of what fiction should be.
OUT
fu cks up the whole
conventional way of reading a story. And above all,
OUT
fucks up the
English language. No one, as far as I know, as yet so successfully, so
brilliantly, so deliberately messed up the English syntax.
OUT
is written
in
a most unpredictable syntax: half-finished sentences run into other
half-finished sentences to make new unfinished sentences: "the rumpus
room picture windows on both sides leather armchair card table foldup
ping pong table this is where we store the bicycles here's the bar that's
the galley the bridge is up ahead captain's quarters two TVs one here one
in the crew's quarters aft are you a veteran." The punctuation dances
among the words and the words bounce between the white space. It's
beautiful to look at. It moves all over the place. It's full of energy! Full
of surprises!
When ya gotta go this is the way to go!
And yet the novel is readable, very readable. And very funny too, but
unpredictable. That's for sure.
But for those who still read books (novels?) for the story, the plot, the
action, the so-called dramatic development, let us sum up.
OUT
is the
story of a consp iracy, a plot. And since everyone in the novel carries a
stick of dynamite, everyone therefore is part of the plot (and/or the
counterplot)_
OUT
is also the story of a trip. It's a trip! From East to
West -- from the big messy metropolis (New York, if you wish, or to be
exact, Brooklyn: the El, the BMT, Coney Island, etc.) to the "blue gold
orange sky" of decadent California -- by car, by van, on foot, hitchhik–
ing, bumming rides most of the way. Therefore, lots of vehicles in that
story: cars, vans, trucks, U-hauls, etc_It's a trip! Therefore, lots of grass too.
Lots of joints being passed around_ Lots of weirdies too ! And animals
-- cats, dogs, etc. Lots of screwing around, and lots of plain screwing
too! In the back of vans, usually. It's a trip -- an escape from the plot,
from the big city, from the present, from the burden of social life, from
the illusions of reality, but since everyone is involved in the plot (or the
counterplot, as you wish), there is no way OUT! No way OUT for the
Kids _(that's what the characters are called) who, like comic-strip figures,
struggle to find their way OUT of the frames into which they have been
drawn. All of them are interchangeable -- Carl becomes Nick who
