268
EDWARD MARCOTTE
guity arises. As the space of the mind is
no
space, mental images
lack pictorial substantiality, since there is nothing analogous to a
picture screen inside one's head. What can we mean, then, when
we say that we as readers enter into a "world" created by the
author of a fiction, or see "reality" from the protagonist's point of
view? What are the actual dimensions of our participation? They
must be fairly diminutive, it would seem. Yet how can we account
for the intensity of involvement, the sense of sharing in "real"
experiences, that a good novel affords us?
Certainly a great and mysterious power is exercised over us
whenever we "get into" a well-written novel. Here we will resort
to such generalizations as "it's all due to the power of words." But
then we stop. For beyond this point lie the domains of linguistics
and experimental psychology. Printed words, Merleau-Ponty sug–
gests, have the property of effacing themselves as we become in–
volved in their message, and this self-effacing feature of language,
its manner of becoming invisible, constitutes its perfection.
The further we pursue the question the more thoroughly
fiction reveals its utter spatial dispossession. By this very fact,
however, it seems to make known a silent claim upon the spatial
world. What is perhaps sought (by both author and reader) is to
attach fiction's meaning and schema onto the expanse of the real
world in a significant consolidation. This may be the underlying
reason why physical space can be so easily forfeited in a prose
fiction work: its plans are ulterior-- it seeks to incorporate itself
into the hard space of reality by a kind of metaphysical fusion.
The world, I would like to suggest, has for the novelist an
aspect of radical incompleteness. But for the kind of novelist
whose preoccupation is with setting, this incompleteness is sit–
uated within place and landscape itself. The world appears as
though set for some drama or realization that never seems to
effectively take place. It is not that this novelist simply wants to
capture and reproduce his enthrallment with the physiognomy of
things and places, for this, I believe, would not be a sufficient
impetus, especially in view of what is lost in the transposition, i.e.,
the very fullness of space. The world and its landscapes are indeed
a plenum, but this is perhaps just the problem--it is
all
landscape
and there seems to be no room to assimilate it all to the cognitive
