Intertextuality and Thomas King

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.

The Cognitive Processes of Children: Ramona Quimby, Age 8

1. My title commits me to speaking of this book's handling of a child's mental processes, and I will attempt to do this. First, however, I want to expand, and suggest that Cleary's interest is in the dynamics of interaction. No person's cognitive processes work in isolation; everyone acts and reacts to social situations. Cleary never tires in her desire to illustrate the politics of human interaction. Her characters, especially her child characters, are constantly aware of the other people around them, people who must be accommodated, controlled, impressed, manipulated, placated. Children, more than adults, are in the unenviable situation of having to think constantly about their positions in the world. Their lives are filled with apprehension, fear that they will be abandoned, faulted, held responsible, fear that they will fail, fear that they do not measure up, fear that others may laugh at them, and so on. Perhaps such fears never depart, but the adult has more immediate concerns to occupy mental space: concerns that have to do with food and shelter, with providing for the children whose lives are so concerned with the fear and worry that these same parents might leave them or misunderstand them or simply ignore them.

2. I speak of children and not infants. The infant has little of the conscious sense of self that sets the child's anxieties working overtime. The transitional figure in Cleary's book is Willa Jean who is so intensely (engagingly, if you are an adult; irritatingly, if you are a child) self absorbed. Willa Jane has discovered herself, and the image she sees is of necessity beautiful and grownup. Cleary has captured precisely the child who has yet to learn others exist besides herself. She is in the Mirror Stage. She quite simply assumes--no presumes--she is all that matters. I love the way she orders and directs the other kids, even Ramona who is twice her age. And, of course, I ought to mention the reinforcement Willa Jean receives from her grandmother. We might say that Willa Jean exhibits none of the anxieties I have mentioned above, but I think to say this would be incorrect. The very self absorption of Willa Jean is a reflection of an anxiety to be considered special, to be considered a person with an identity commensurate with the sense of self her family and culture have told her is worthwhile: a rich lady with a dog or Miss Mousie courted by Mr. Frog.

3. By the time a child is Ramona's age, the sense of self projected so forcefully by Willa Jean cannot maintain itself easily. In fact, Ramona struggles all the time with the anxiety of inferiority. The main focus of this in the book is her impression that Mrs. Whaley thinks she is a nuisance. But worry is evident in the book's first sentence: "Ramona Quimby hoped her parents would forget to give her a little talking to." Whatever this "little talking to" might be about, it is clear that Ramona does not want to hear it. Her sense of self, her sense of well being, her sense of importance (she is going to ride the school bus by herself) need reinforcement. Her sister Beezus needs similar reinforcement. The result is competition for security, and Beezus by virtue of her age always one-ups her sister. This time, however, Ramona finds solace in the fact that Beezus speaks imprecisely when she mentions High School and that Beezus has to walk to school.

4. Beezus too has anxieties, but being a teen she manifests these in ways different from the ways Ramona or Willa Jean do. Whereas Willa Jean selfishly exerts her will on others and whereas Ramona worries in silence what others will think of her, Beezus exhibits signs of rebellion against the authority of her parents. She states flatly that she does not like tongue for dinner (Ramona takes heart from her sister's boldness and agrees), and she tells her mother outright that she thinks she is "mean" in the matter of sleeping over at Mary Jane's. Beezus is moving closer to independence than either Ramona or Willa Jane.

5. Independence comes with maturity, and with maturity comes responsibility. The responsibility Ramona has to play nicely with Willa Jean creates its own frustrations, but these are of a different order than the frustrations and worries of Mr. and Mrs. Quimby. Whereas Ramona is constantly concerned about how she is perceived by others, her mother and father are preoccupied with making ends meet. In a curious way, they are more wrapped up in their world than Ramona. What I am trying to say is that they are, in a way, closer to Willa Jean than they are to Ramona in that they often are oblivious to anything outside of their immediate concern, whether that be their car, their job, or their studying. Take for example this exchange between Ramona and her mother after Ramona has taken sick at school and Mrs. Quimby has taken her home in a taxi.

Mrs. Quimby looked concerned. "What happened?"

"I threw up on the floor in front of the whole class," sobbed Ramona.

Her mother was reassuring. "Everybody knows you didn't throw up on purpose, and you certainly aren't the first child to do so." She thought a moment and said, "But you should have told Mrs. Whaley you didn't feel good."

Ramona could not bring herself to admit her teacher thought she was a nuisance. She let out a long, quavery sob.

Mrs. Quimby patted Ramona again and turned out the light.

"Now go to sleep," she said, "and you'll feel better in the morning."

This may not be an obvious example, but what catches my attention here is Mrs. Quimby's failure to hear her child. True, she does "reassure" Ramona, but then she "thinks" and offers a mild reprimand: "But you should have told Mrs. Whaley you didn't feel good." I think the word "thought" carries an irony here because if Mrs. Quimby had truly thought, then perhaps she would have realized that the last thing Ramona needed at this time was a reprimand, however mild. After this, Ramona understandably hesitates to tell her mother that her teacher thinks she is a nuisance. I say "hesitates" because Ramona does, to my mind, tell her mother that something more needs to be said. She does this not in words, but through her long quavery sob. The sob is a call for understanding, sympathy, more talk. But Mrs. Quimby responds by turning out the light. In a book resolutely spare of "literary effects" this turning out of the light seems to me loaded with significance. Here is an opportunity lost.

6. I find a similar ripple in the connection between Ramona in her illness and the Quimby's car in its illness. The chapter in which Ramona takes ill begins with car trouble for the Quimby's. The car won't go into reverse; the transmission needs repair. Ramona herself notices her father's preoccupation with the car: "Ramona could see that he was more concerned with the car than with her." The stroke is nice, then, when Ramona is in the school sick room whispering information about her parents, she speaks lowly for fear that "speaking aloud might send her stomach into reverse again." The rest of the chapter contains several references connecting Ramona and the car, most notably in references made by Ramona's father. Mr. Quimby makes the connection jokingly, but for me the message squeaks out that at times parents do treat their children the way they treat their automobiles. Children and automobiles are not the same, and their illneses require different kinds of treatment. The chapter ends with Ramona's concern that her father does not show sufficient concern for her: "Anyone would think he loved the car more."

7. So what does this book say about a child's cognitive processes? Frankly, this is a subject that is a mystery to me. The book is sensitive to a child's fears and a child's need for security. Cleary knows that much goes on in a child's mind that remains closed to an adult: the desire that parents remain the same without aging or greying, the delight in shows of affection between parents, the worry that a parent will die or that no one will be there to take care of the child in sickness. She has observed how children mimic their elders or what they see on T.V. She knows that children like to keep things from their parents the way Beezus and Ramona do when they prepare dinner. She knows that children desire to feel grownup. And she knows how fiercely children feel things. She uses the image of the volcano and the earthquake early in the book to remind us of children's intensity of feeling. She knows about a child's sense of justice and fairplay. But finally, she also knows that she cannot know what mysteries the human mind holds. Ramona is indignant when she learns that her father is studying how a child's mind works. "Some things should be private, and how children thought was one of them." This sentence comes to us from the narrator of the book, but it also communicates Ramona's feelings. Ramona and her creator agree on this: we can only go so far in understanding and knowing how and what a child thinks. What is more important than knowing how a child thinks is respecting the thinking of a child. Ramona, like any child or indeed any person, needs her privacy, her secret thoughts, but she also needs acceptance.

8. I said earlier that this book contained few literary effects. By literary effects I meant rhetorical figures such as metaphors or similes, archetypal images, symbols, structural patterns, complex descriptions. It is spare and disarming. The final chapter, however, does contain (and self-consciously so) a literary effect: the deus ex machina. The lonely old man who pays for the Quimby's meal at the Whopperburger clearly derives from literature. He is, as Beezus says, "A mysterious stranger just like in a book." The force of this stranger is to emphasise the need of all persons for acceptance. This stranger pays for the Quimby's meal because he perceives that they are a "nice family." Indeed, they are. "Nice" indicates how precisely they are drawn. They are the perfect family; that is, their imperfections are what make them perfect. As far as the stranger is concerned, they are a worthy family, worthy of being admired and worthy of being allowed their privacy. He has accepted the Quimby's without question, without expectations. The point is well taken.