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ties. It (the book) takes this risk ,because it wants to avoid becoming
"hard," "flat" ("Nazis are flat. Hells Angels are flat. ... Death is flat"),
"Aztec" ("Aztec equals monolith. Maya equals rise and fall rise and fall
rise and falL")
It
is a book which wants to be young and gentle, and to
go out to play and love without causing pain. But it is not a book
which just goofs off and there is obviously a very accomplished writer
at play-work here.
In one of its main concerns it can be said to express a feeling or
need which is quite widespread in America today, albeit it does so in its
own particular manner. There's nothing new about feeling trapped in
language, and writers like William Burroughs have long been trying to
blow up the word-lines. What Sukenick is after is some kind of
impossible other language, or a language hidden within the existing
language to be used for communicating in a new way. "This language
is called Bjorsq. While Bjorsq is obviously inconvenient for many
purposes it has one great advantage-when two Lunks meet and speak
in Bjors they understand one another perfectli ... Of course Bjorsq
isn't very exact you couldn't write a textbook in it it expresses nothing
with any definition but that's the price you pay. It defines little but it
says everything. That's why you pay the price. " This is itself a form of
play and would fit in with Sukenick's ideas about "Bossa Nova" fiction
as outlined in a PR article some time ago. It is part of a more serious
desire to find the way into some "secret language, " which will open up
old magics and new possibilities not currently inscribed in our texts.
Such a language would help to establish the State of Israel, which, in
this book, is not so much a political entity as a state of the imagination.
"Without the State of Israel life would become inconceivable it would
lose a necessary dimension it would become flat we would all become
Nazis. Yet the trouble is that the State of Israel is itself almost
inconceivable. First of all they speak Hebrew there a language most of
us don 't understand ... " and h e goes on to show that in such a secret
language "wisdom is dangerously close to nonsense" -indeed in a
completely secret language it would necessarily be indistinguishable
from it. But the arcane Hebrew spoken in this particular State of Israel
I take to be Sukenick's metaphor for a language which might enable us
to
"dream other dreams, and better, " in Mark Twain's words. Bjorsq is
hardly a solution to the "condition of language" problem, as Sukenick
very well knows (I hope); but, as his own novel demonstrates, in this as
in various other matters, raising the question is part of the answer.
TONY TANNER
