I’ll pause briefly to marvel at the coincidence.
While working toward the end of Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2, I kept thinking about/combining/connecting the initialed characters/locations (A., B., C., U., etc.) to the various implementations (A through Helen). When I was trying to wrap my mind around why Powers was selectively leaving certain details out—giving only an abbreviation for names of people and places while using full names for others—I was reminded of John Barth’s short story “Lost in the Funhouse”.
In Barth’s story, the narrative of a family vacation is interrupted by the commentary on writing fiction. In the opening, after naming characters and locations with a first initial with a long dash (the town of D—, Maryland, a character named Magda G— …sound somewhat familiar?), Barth comments on this naming convention. He writes that “initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means” (Barth 82). By calling out this move, Barth shows that it only appears to make the characters, places, or time described in a story seem any more real.
I don’t think Powers was withholding some of the full names because he wanted to take a 19th century shortcut to an illusion of reality, or to avoid litigation (although making the first person narrator novelist Richard Powers bears an implication of autobiographictionality). Instead of depersonalizing the characters, simplifying the story/making it less specific, the selective initial-ing of people, places, and versions of the ‘implementations’ made things a little more complicated within the novel. Sure it’s not too difficult to keep track of which capital letter is a person, which is a version of the machine, and which is a place, but you have to work a little to keep these letters organized. I think the one that sent me on what I’ll try to dismiss as just my crazy-person take on this novel, was the choice to have implementation H be the one that fictional Rick Powers works with.
In Barth’s story, the narrative of a family vacation is interrupted by the commentary on writing fiction. In the opening, after naming characters and locations with a first initial with a long dash (the town of D—, Maryland, a character named Magda G— …sound somewhat familiar?), Barth comments on this naming convention. He writes that “initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means” (Barth 82). By calling out this move, Barth shows that it only appears to make the characters, places, or time described in a story seem any more real.
I don’t think Powers was withholding some of the full names because he wanted to take a 19th century shortcut to an illusion of reality, or to avoid litigation (although making the first person narrator novelist Richard Powers bears an implication of autobiographictionality). Instead of depersonalizing the characters, simplifying the story/making it less specific, the selective initial-ing of people, places, and versions of the ‘implementations’ made things a little more complicated within the novel. Sure it’s not too difficult to keep track of which capital letter is a person, which is a version of the machine, and which is a place, but you have to work a little to keep these letters organized. I think the one that sent me on what I’ll try to dismiss as just my crazy-person take on this novel, was the choice to have implementation H be the one that fictional Rick Powers works with.
Before imp. H acquires a name, the line “H was a revision of the trainer” (171) appears to scream implications for the nature of the experiment. I wasn’t really thrown by the quasi-twist—the machine is really training the narrator!?—but the re-framing of the experiment as “it was about teaching a human to tell” (318) was pretty interesting. Lentz asks “Well, powers. How far were we, again? Imp H? You realize what we have to call the next one, don’t you?” Lentz’s question only confirmed the first-person pronoun suspicions I had after H was introduced. We’d already met with implementation I on the first page, and had been listening to them the whole way through.
I do remember reading that story in Shaver's Fiction Writing class -- do you have to read that again? -- and I also remember taking about anonymity in Nester's non-fiction last year, and I guess that's why I didn't question the initializing of names and places because I thought it was a writer's tool to make fiction appear non-fiction. Because the book was published in 1995 and so much of what's happening inside of it is occurring in 2011, I thought the "non-fiction" approach was to convey some sort of message regarding carefully considering what we do with our technology and questioning if we do want to create a race of A.I. Or that could be the paranoid sci-fi geek in me.
ReplyDeleteI really love the connections you make to Barth here, and I think you also begin to bring out an interesting point in your analysis of Powers' use of the initials as compared to Barth's analysis. Perhaps his use of initials is supposed to trigger the "gamer" or "author" mindset within the reader. By using the initials to create the illusion of reality, Powers asks the reader to take a more prominent role in the text, to participate in the organization and interpretation instead of simply reading. I also like your final point about Powers having been Imp. I all along. Perhaps this is also a nod to the reader, who is organizing all this information and learning to read with Powers and his distant, dehumanized tone. Perhaps the reader supposed to parallel Helen in this way; perhaps Powers want us to keep track of how we read the story and how we make sense of Helen.
ReplyDeleteThank you for looking more closely at this... Although this naming technique is certainly deliberate, I originally dismissed it as Powers trying to distance himself from his "fictional-self". With some research (although I've lost my source - sorry), I noticed that many of the abbreviations were conversant with Powers’ (the author’s) life. What I also learned was that Powers the author is a very reclusive individual, so slipping in some nakedly autobiographical details was a type of stepping out while remaining in... At any rate, it's worth noting that in an article entitled "My Fair Software" it's revealed that Powers references actual reviews of previous works in Galatea 2.2 . My conclusion, however simple, is that he wants us to look more deeply into this issue and its layers...
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