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PARTISAN REVIEW
Snow White.
Snow White and her seven friends Dan, Clem, Henry,
Hubert, Edward, Kevin, and Bill live inside the revamped fairy tale of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To the question of why she lives in
this fable, Snow White answers frankly that it is due to a temporary
malfunction of the imagination and that she has not yet been able to
imagine a better story to live in. After a disquieting ending of the
communal dream (Paul has been poisoned and Bill hanged), the
remaining characters depart in search of yet another imaginary princi–
ple to live by.
Not that all dreams of alternative imaginary worlds stand on such
wobbly legs. Apparently some fantasies command a larger measure of
success insofar as they provide temporary shelter for their ingenious
inventors, facilitate their self-definition, or bend reality until it fits an
imaginary concept of themselves. Eben Cooke's fantasies of Maryland
(The Sot-Weed Factor)
are a case in point. "Dizzy with the beauty of the
possible," Ebenezer Cooke gropes for defining contour which he finds
in the fantasy of himself as the " Poet and Laureate" of Maryland born
to praise the history and achievements of this mythical land. Of course,
the real Maryland is altogether different from Eben's dream. And yet,
after almost 800 pages and many deviations the innocence of his dream
is shown triumphant over corrupt reality. In the end, Eben Cooke
is
the
Laureate of a Maryland which miraculously has adjusted to the main
outlines of his fantasy.
The Sot -Weed Factor
at the same time presents a
protagonist who epitomizes the new hero's program to create his own
form or rather multiple forms when he cannot find a naturally given
identity. Eben's tutor Burlingame can li ve in any role: throughout the
novel he is seen inventing and then slipping into a variety of a lterna–
tive stories which center upon reflections of the facets of his self.
Similarly, some of Richard Brautigan's characters, who spin
themselves into cocoons of mythical fantasies, are on their way to a
naive fulfillment. In his novels
Trout Fishing in America, A Confeder–
ate General from Big Sur,
and
The Abortion
we see the different
narrators, who are obviously
personae
of Brautigan himself, advance in
the direction of an Arcadian dream which finds its fullest expression in
the parable call ed
In Watermelon Sugar.
Here the mythical world of
watermelon sugar, at once a location and the substance of a fabulous
n ew universe, is shown triumphant over its rotten counterpart, the
Forgotten Works, which are as clearly a metaphor for today's rejected
world as the former is a metaphor for a surreal new Arcadia in which
salvation becomes possible.
The purpose of these examples is to bring into focus the difference
