First a word about terms. In the old days – that is, when I was a student – the talk was of influence and allusion. How did one writer influence another? How can we detect the influence of a writer on another writer? Obviously, we can detect similarities in theme, form, style, and plot/characters from writer to writer. For example, Cormac McCarthy, especially in an early work such as Outer Dark (1968), exhibits the influence of Faulkner to such a marked degree that we might mistake passages from MaCarthy’s novel for something written by Faulkner. Faulkner’s influence is so strong it nearly swallows McCarthy’s book. And of course we can see the influence of Faulkner all over American fiction from Toni Morrison to Paul Auster. When we read the big Victorian novels of Dickens or George Eliot, we can detect the influence of the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth. We used to do this sort of influence hunting as a way of tracing traditions and developments in literature. One facet of this work was the hunt for allusions. Can we find direct allusions to earlier writers in the writers we study? Allusions could be clear reference (such as a quotation or the inclusion of a title or a character’s name), and they announced to the reader (or at least the knowledgeable reader) that an allusion was in place. A second order allusion is more subtle, the echoing of a plot line or the assumption of a descriptive method or a stylistic flourish. However the allusion arrives, it announces that the work we are reading derives from earlier works. Literature does not consist of discrete works; it consists of works that are connected to each other in intricate ways. This kind of thinking leads to the idea that all literature works with the same material, that it is a closed and finite world. Hence Eliot’s notion of originality as that which is most deeply imbedded in tradition (see his The Waste Land and its notes for an example of a poem deeply imbedded in tradition). Northrop Frye argued that all literature derives from one myth: the quest myth. Frye argued that every plot relates to the story of a hero desiring to reach a goal, a destination. The reaching of this goal accomplishes a liberatory task. For Frye, all literature chronicles the human journey from a place of bondage to a place of liberation, although some stories may keep characters within the state of bondage (satire and irony; dystopian fiction; tragedy), and others may take characters to places of freedom (romances, comedies, fairy tales). However the work of literature unfolds, it will find its place somewhere on a map that traces a journey to freedom.
Okay. So allusion and influence are modernist notions. They suggest that discrete works of literature are also beautifully tied to tradition. And it is this word ‘tradition’ that is important. The notion of a developing world of words that is coherent and humanly directional is important here. The creation of literature is an important human activity because it manifests community and the individual in sharply positive ways. Just as the single work of art is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, it also participates in an ongoing struggle for human betterment. We are in the territory of liberal humanism.
So where does intertextuality come in? When we shift language and speak not of influence and allusion, but of intertextuality, we are shifting from the sense of literature as a body of discrete but connected works to a sense of literature as a web of connections. The individual work disappears into the web. Everything is up for grabs. Tradition depended on a canon of great works that illustrate and carry the tradition, but in the intertextual universe we have no tradition because everything is related to everything in a wild dance of free form. It is as if the id opens and everything pours out. We cannot choose but be intertexts. Whereas an earlier notion could conceive of a writer choosing not to allude to earlier works, the intertextual notion insists that a writer cannot help but allude to earlier writers. Every word, every image, every plot, every character, and so on has an existence beyond the specific writer. Writers do not so much create as they select already existing material. Indeed, writers disappear into the intertextual nexus that is cultural production. This is why Barthes can speak of the death of the author. Whereas modernists could conceive of the poem as an icon, sealed in its own inner beauty, postmodernists can only conceive of the poem as connected to all other poems and to human activity generally. Whereas modernists could align the author with his or her work, not in any intentional way, but rather as the source of creative energy, postmodernists see creative energy as emanating not from the author but from the author’s context, even from language, which is a living animal capable of reproduction. Just as we have an ecosystem, we also have a literary (or cultural) system. It is as if we have entered here the globalization of art and literature. Borders no longer exist or they exist only to cause disruption that reminds us of the connectedness of all things. We are all in this together, but we may not get along. In brief, intertextuality is an aspect of the postmodern notion of fluidity and plurality. Entities, whether people or works of literature, are not self-contained; they are inevitably constructed by everything that impinges on them. Each of us is not a self; we are selves. The poem is not a poem; it is all poems trying to find a moment of solidity and failing. I’m not sure if I am right, but modernist poetry connected most easily with painting, but postmodernist poetry connects most easily with music. The difference between painting and music is in the relative predictability of the one, and the unpredictability of the other. Postmodernity gives us a more dangerous world than modernity does.
And so Green Grass, Running Water. Yes, the novel is a tissue of intertextual references – consciously so. The references are inevitable. If King wishes to write a book about creation, then he cannot help but trace his story to creation stories. And so we have the obvious creation stories deriving from Christian culture and Native culture. But we also have the whole question of creativity incorporated into the book. What does it mean to create? Who creates? What do they create? And why do they create? We can begin to see that creation is the way of the world and that all the characters, not just the mythic ones such as Coyote or God, strive to create. Alberta strives to create a sense of history in her classroom and she tries to create life within herself in her desire to procreate. The Sun Dance is an occasion for creating or securing community and connecting this with history. Eli tries to create continuity, peace, understanding, stillness. Latisha tries to create a life for herself and her kids. Poor Lionel, my favourite, tries to create a sense of direction. Bill Bursum tries to create a map of his world, but maps are inadequate. The same reliance on maps is characteristic of Joseph Hovaugh, but his attempts at creation are more feeble than those of the woman he dismisses. Babo creates through vision; she sees what others do not see. Set against this struggle for human creation we have forces of contingency, happenstance, accident that always interrupt creation and lead to the necessity for “fixing” things (see the four old Indians). “Fixing” is just another word for recreation, starting over, rewriting, revision. Intertextuality pervades this book because intertextuality reminds us of the constant attempt to say things again, to rewrite, to start over, to re-vision, to create something new from something old; intertextuality reminds us of the intricate and inescapable connection of things past with things present, things familiar with things other. In the world of Green Grass, Running Water, creation stories interconnect. In fact, they are all we have.
