One month ago today, I married the girl of my dreams.

Despite a little bit of rain, the weekend came off spectacularly. None of the preparations went awry at the last minute (at least, none that didn’t fall under the heading “Acts of god”). Favors were made. Vows were written (and rewritten). Tables were assigned (and reassigned). The Van Dyck proved, as we hoped it would, to be a lovely space for an indoor-or-outdoor wedding. Rabbi Matt Cutler of Congregation Gates of Heaven said many beautiful things, and truly made the ceremony a spectacular event. Tears were shed. We served delicious food, what we’re told was the best wedding cake people had ever had (Bravo, Villa Italia!), and everyone seemed to have a delightful afternoon. By the end of the day, we were married. All told, a very successful wedding.

But, in the charming words of my beloved wife, all of this “wow” would have been merely “w–” without the extraordinary talent and dedication of Mr. Collin Morgan, who graciously agreed to do all of the design work we required for our book-themed wedding, and inventively realized most of our design ideas beyond anything we imagined. We were also fortunate enough to be blessed with the creations of an assortment of other artists, whose works are also included in this post. All the artifacts pictured below are entirely of Collin’s design, except where otherwise noted. All photos are hosted in high-resolution on Flickr. All rights to the photos belong to the photographer as noted in the photo description; all rights to stationery designs belong to Collin Morgan.

Save the Dates

The idea for our save-the-dates —one of few design ideas that was not book-themed— was L’s. The photo was taken by her brother A with a Nikon D60, and subsequently edited by Collin. Trust us, our hands do not look this lovely.

Invitations

Our invitations came in five parts. The invitation itself is an old-school book slip. Guest’s names were hand-written under “Borrower.” The date of the wedding —June 6 2010— was listed as the call number to avoid any confusion about response card due dates.

Response Cards

The response card was, of course, a library card application. The “Clayman Matthews Library” logo in the upper left hand corner makes several other appearances throughout this collection of wedding paraphernalia. Each guest was assigned a unique number in the patron ID field, just in case any cards were sent back nameless. Several couples/families objected to the “I”, and obligingly crossed it out and wrote “We” instead.

Information cards

To remind people of the existence of our wedding web site, we included an information card in the form of a card-catalog entry with some important information. We manually punched a hole in each of these for authenticity. Note the finely-realized water stains in the background!

Barbecue invitations

Finally, we asked Collin to create an invitation to the barbecue we held the day before our wedding. Our specifications included only light text on a dark blue background for a 5×7 card. Hours later, it became clear what was taking so long, for this is what Collin delivered. And this is why we love him. We were delighted that this invitation to a casual barbecue was far fancier and more elegant than the invitation to the wedding itself. We reused this design for our guest book, below.

Central Park maps

L, intrepid mapmaker that she is, drew this map to help people find the pavilion in Schenectady’s Central Park, where the barbecue was held. Note that this map is decidedly not to scale.

Escort Cards

Once it was revealed that L’s mother had an old card catalog drawer tucked away somewhere (to store her old cassette tapes), and her father revealed his portable typewriter, this was an obvious choice. Turns out it’s pretty hard to find anyone who can do typewriter repairs these days, but we managed to find a place not far from Providence. We picked up the repaired typewriter on our way to Schenectady, and L finished typing these up less than 24 hours before the ceremony, with help from her brother’s girlfriends. What you can’t see is that each card is typed up individually with the guest’s name and table assignment.

Guest Book

A guest book is, of course, already a book. But a book about books seemed fitting. Among the awards garnered, one finds “Best Book of the Millennium”, “Best wedding ever!”, “Pulitzer Prize”, “Nobel Prize”, and “Academy Award”, not to mention first edition copies of books such as Yaaaa buddy!!! and Observations of Permanent Human Mating.

Not wanting to impose on Collin’s good graces any more than we already had, we reused the barbecue invitation design to invite people to sign.

Card Drop Box

L’s mother contributed this idea. These hollowed-out books were a fortuitous find; our work was limited to carving a card-sized hole in the top, and finding the “A” and “Z” bookends to hold them up. We put our pens inside mugs labeled “K” and “L,” not pictured here.

Program

The length of this program speaks, I think, for itself. L and I put a tremendous amount of work into writing and formatting the text. The book jacket design is based on an early invitation design mock-up Collin had done for us. This seemed like the perfect manner to put his valuable work to good use. The text of the jacket (and any typos) were supplied by us. Collin realized this design in about 4 days, and we managed to finish affixing the book jackets to the programs the day before the wedding.

Rings

We always planned for the rings to be delivered in a hollowed-out book. Initially, we considered using The Princess Bride or Through the Looking Glass and carving the pages out ourselves. L’s mother’s hollowed-out books worked even better. L superglued ribbon inside to secure the rings, though not before supergluing the ribbon to her fingers first. Luckily, this was our only wedding-related injury.

Favors

Easily the most frequently brought up wedding-related conversation, and most frequently changed wedding-related idea. Of course we ultimately decided on books. The notebooks are from Moleskin, and the names stamped on by hand. The first page of each booklet is embossed with the official seal of the Clayman Matthews Library.

Ketubah

This beautiful ketubah —the Jewish marriage license— was painted for us by L’s aunt Claire. It features two intertwining trees as pictured in all four seasons. It is both gorgeous and meaningful, and L and I couldn’t be more excited about how it turned out! The text in the center, in Hebrew and English, contains legal (i.e. halachic) information about the marriage, as well as some of our promises to each other.

Huppah

Our huppah was created in part by each and every member of our immediate families. Each family member received a square and instructions to decorate it however they pleased. L’s mother and grandmother quilted the squares together to create the canopy. Like the ketubah, we are absolutely thrilled to hang such a beautiful, tangible work of art and reminder of our wedding in the new home we’re creating.

Beginning from the top left, the squares were created by my mother, my brother Scott, L’s brother Ben, L’s grandparents, L (in memory of her paternal grandparents), my grandmother, L’s father, L and me, L’s mother, my father and his wife, my brother Brian, my sister Morgan, L’s brother Andrew, my sister Shannon, and my maternal grandparents.

Thank You Cards

To be revealed once we actually send these out!

In conclusion…

Many many thanks to Collin, Claire, and our families for their endless patience, and the tremendous work they did for us. We owe them cookies, beer, and eternal gratitude.

If you’ve happened on this post and are in the midst of planning your own wedding, we wish only to leave you with these words: Remember that the details make it special, because they’re yours, but the most important thing is that they be a source of fun, not stress. If any of these images or designs spark your creativity, we are delighted to have helped. If you wish to use any of the images pictured here wholesale, please do, but remember to give credit where credit is due (i.e., mostly to Collin; a note on Flickr and short line in a wedding program will suffice).

More wedding photos will be arriving soon on Flickr! Check back soon! Did you take pictures at our wedding that you would like included on Flickr? Drop me a line!

(And a final parenthetical about Diana and Scott: We jest, of course, and mean no disrespect. In fact, we adore what they did, and were quite inspired by some of their design ideas and decisions, as you can plainly see if you glance at their images.)

Edit (20 May 2010): updates to book and book chapter/excerpt formats to allow for e-books.

Edit (31 May 2010): “Interview” format updated to properly format published and unpublished interviews from books and/or journals, within reason.

Edit (28 June 2010): “Print Magazine” format created to properly format print magazines. Note: The “Newspaper” format can also be used to format magazines, so long as you don’t include any extraneous information, such as “Section,” etc. MLA doesn’t want much from magazines, so the format is pretty sparse.

I’ve spent a long time over the last couple of years tweaking the implementation of MLA in Bookends, and decided to take the last few days to clean them up, standardize (to the extent possible) the fields where each bit of information goes for different reference types, and make them publicly available. Feel free to grab the formats, but also be aware that using them requires some user intervention, and that they are not perfect.

It’s been years since I’ve had a clean installation of Bookends, but I don’t think I’ve mucked up any too many of the default settings. That is, if you need to switch back and forth between MLA and some other system, you should still be able to do so. If you do discover evidence to the contrary, please let me know and I will try to fix it. The reference types for which I’ve noted “Same as built-in MLA” indicates that I haven’t modified anything. Often this is because I’ve never cited anything of that type, and so have never checked whether Bookends implements it correctly or not.

The implementation of the MLA 7th edition relies heavily on the use of metatypes. Most of the functionality metatypes allow can be adapted to single references, but using metatypes keeps the information neater and more organized. If you are averse to metatypes, I offer the following (old) formats “as is,” without any guarantees that they work as they should:

• Multivolume work, 1 volume: a. t. $Ed++. $e. u2$ ed.$ $Trans. $u3*. l: u, d. $Vol. $v ~of ~f`.` $Ed. $u8*. u13~ vols.~|$ $u12`.` where u2 is the edition, u3 is the translator, u8 is the editor of the complete set, u13 is the total number of volumes, and u12 is the years over which the complete set was printed. Most of these can be omitted.
• Anthology excerpt or reprint: a. "t." $Trans. $u3*~.~ v. $Ed. and trans. $u4*~. ~ $Comp. $j~. ~ $Ed++. $e. u2$ ed.$ l:~ ~u, d. p-. u18. $Rpt. in $u14 $Excerpt from $u15 where u3 is the translator, u4 is the editor and translator, j is the compiler, u2 is the edition, u18 is the medium, and u14 is the volume in which it is reprinted, and u15 is the volume from which it was excerpted. Most of these can be omitted.

Finally, I welcome any format modifications or simplifications. I am fairly certain that all these formats work as MLA wants them to, even in most cases allowing unnecessary information to be omitted. I do not, however, pretend that they are elegantly expressed.

Setup

Here follows a list of all reference types included in this implementation of MLA 7th edition, as well as the Field Labels, in order. You can create these reference types and edit their corresponding field labels in the “Refs” tab of the Preferences.

I will only note where reference types depart from the following basic set of field labels. Bold text indicates that the field must be filled to generate a proper bibliographic entry. Italicised text indicates that the field is optional, but will appear in the bibliographic entry if filled.

• Author
• Title
• Editor
• [Unused]
• Volume (i.e. volume number of a multivolume work)
• Pages
• Year
• Publisher
• City
• URL
• Short Title
• Series (NB: Include series title and volume number, as desired)
• Edition (NB: 1st, 2nd, etc. Not series volume number)
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Notes
• Translator
• Ed/trans (i.e. editor & translator)
• Call Num
• ISBN/ISSN
• Language
• Orig lang (i.e. original language)
• Trans author (i.e. original spelling of author’s name)
• Trans title (i.e. title in original language)
• Orig pub (i.e. original date of publication)
• User12-User16
• DOI
• Medium (print, web, etc.)

1. Artwork: Same as built-in MLA
2. Audiovisual material: Same as built-in MLA
3. Book:
   • Pages → Total pages
   • User12 → Database
   • User13 → Access Date
   • Sample output: Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Ed. Frederick Jameson. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Print.
   • Sample output (no author): Popul Vuh. Ed. and trans. Adrián Recinos. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008. Print.
4. Book chapter/excerpt:
   • [Unused] → Book Title
   • User12 → Anth pages (i.e. pages in anthology in which excerpt appears if this reference is an excerpt from an anthology
   • User13 → Database
   • User14 → Access Date
   • Sample output: Barnes, Jonathan. “Metaphysics.” The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 66-108. Print.
5. Conference proceedings:
   • [Unused] → Conf Name (i.e. conference name)
   • Year used for year of publication of the proceedings
   • User12 → Conf Date (i.e. Conference date)
   • Sample output: Belmar Marchante, María Angeles. “La tensión de la dicotomía del personje actor, como acción amorosa y del autor-narrador como ocultamiento: Ardanlier, Arnalte, Leriano.” Medievo y literatura. 9-12 December 1992. Vol. 1. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993. 311-20. Print.
6. Dissertation:
   • [Unused] → Dept (i.e. department)
   • Volume → Degree (i.e. degree earned)
   • Pages → Total pages
   • Publisher → University
   • Series → Database
   • Edition → Access date
   • Translator → Thesis type
   • Ed/trans → Access’n #
   • Sample output: Last name, First Name. “Dissertation title.” Diss. University of Somewhere, 2007. Electronic Theses and Dissertations Database. Web. 23 November 2009.
7. Edited Book:
   • Author → [Unused]
   • Sample output: Nina Grabe, Sabine Lang, and Klaus Meyer-Minnemann, ed. La narración paradójica: ‘Normas narrativas’ y el principio de la ‘transgresión’. Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2006. Print.
8. Editorial: Same as built-in MLA
9. In press: Same as built-in MLA
10. Journal Article:
    • Editor → [Unused]
    • [Unused] → Journal
    • Volume → Vol (Issue)
    • Year → Date
    • City → Address
    • Series → Database
    • Edition → Access Date
    • Ed/trans → User4
    • User15 → PMID
    • User16 → PMCID
    • Sample output (print): Hutman, Norma Louise. “Universality and Unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 76.5 (1961-12): 469-73. Print.
    • Sample output (web): Aguirre Romero, Joaquín María, and Yolanda Delgado Batista. “Jorge Volpi: Las verdades absolutas siempre son mentiras.” Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios 11 (1999): n. pag. Web. 22 Dec 2009.
11. Letter: Same as built-in MLA
12. Map: Same as built-in MLA
13. Newspaper article:
    • [Unused] → Newspaper
    • Volume → Section
    • Year → Date
    • Series → User1
    • “Edition” is used for Early ed., Late ed., etc.
    • Ed/trans → Access date
    • User12 → Article type
    • Sample output (print): Kundera, Milan. “Die Weltliteratur: How we read one another.” The New Yorker 8 Jan. 2007, Reflections sec.: 28-35. Print.
    • Sample output (web): Damiani, Marcelo. “Las utopías según Jorge Volpi.” La Nación [Buenos Aires] 1 Oct. 2006, Cultura sec.: 3. Web. 23 Dec. 2009.
14. Patent: Same as built-in MLA
15. Personal communication:: Same as built-in MLA
16. Book Review:
    • Author → Rev author (i.e. review author)
    • Title → Book title
    • Editor → Book author
    • [Unused] → Journal
    • Sample output: Klinkowitz, Jerome. Rev. of The Usable Past: The Imagination of History in Recent Fiction of the Americas, by Lois Parkinson Zamora. The Yearbook of English Studies 31 (2001): 315-16.
17. Internet:
    • Editor → Site editor
    • [Unused] → Contributor (i.e. names of other contributors to the specific web page, e.g. editor, performer, compiler, narrator. Name will be output in the form that it is entered.)
    • Year → Pub Date
    • “Publisher” is publisher or sponsoring organization. If none, enter “N.p.”
    • City → Cont type (i.e. contributor type, the type of contributor named in the “Contributor” field, in any)
    • Seried → Access date
    • Call number → Genre label (i.e. for untitled works, e.g. “Home page”)
    • User12 → Version (i.e. version number of the work cited, e.g. “1.2”)
    • User13 → By (e.g. composer if a performance, author if a narrated work)
    • User14 → Last update
    • Sample output: Matthews, Kyle James. “MLA 7th edition formats for Bookends.” Synecdoche. N.p. 12 May 2010. Weblog. 19 May 2010.
    • Sample output: <Last Name, First Name>. <Contributor>, <Cont type>. “<Title>.” <Genre label>. By <By>. <Web site>. Ed. <Site editor>. <Edition> ed. Vers. <Version>. <Publisher>, <Pub date>. <Medium>. <Access date>.
18. Multivolume work:
    • [Unused] → Title
    • Volume → Total vols
    • Pages
    • Date range (i.e. years when publication began and ended)
    • Sample output: Alas, Leopoldo. La Regenta. Ed. Gonzalo Sobejano. 5ª ed. 2 vols. Madrid: Castalia, 1981-1989. Print.
19. Interview:
    • Author → Interviewee
    • Title → Int title (i.e. Interview Title)
    • [Unused] → Work Title (i.e., if part of a larger work)
    • Year → Pub Date (i.e. of larger work)
    • City → Address
    • User12 → Date (i.e. of interview)
    • User13 → Interviewer
20. Frontmatter (i.e. Introdiction, Preface, Prologue, etc.) — this is a largely redundant reference type that I will probably convert to a metatype in the near future:
    • [Unused] → Intro title
    • Sample output: Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández. Introduction. Natural History of the West Indies. By Sterling Stoudemire. Ed. Sterling Stoudemire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Print.
21. Print Magazine (Use “Internet” for an internet magazine):
    • [Unused] → Magazine
    • Volume → Section
    • Year → Pub Date
22. Lecture, Speech, etc.: Same as built-in MLA
23. Anthology:
    • Author → Compiler
    • Title → Anthology
    • Pages → Total pages
    • Series → Comp/trans (i.e. Compiler & translator)
    • Sample output: The Routledge language and cultural theory reader. Eds. Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.

Here follows a list of metatypes to add after the built-in set, followed by descriptions of their uses. Metatypes must be added in the “Links” tab of the Preferences. The first six types are used for different types of sources within anthologies. See section 5.5.6 of the MLA Handbook 7th edition for more information. To learn how to link references together, see the Bookends User Guide.

1. Reprinted in : Original (book) — combines “Antholgy” with “Book chapter/excerpt”
   • Sample output: Derrida, Jacques. “Semiology and Grammatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva.” Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Althone Press, 1987. 17-29. Print. Rpt. in The Routledge language and cultural theory reader. Eds. Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. 241-246. Print.
2. Reprinted in : Original (journal) — combines “Anthology” with “Journal Article”
   • Sample output: DeMan, Paul. “Semiology and Rhetoric.” Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 3.3 (1976): 42-70. Print. Rpt. in The Norton anthology of theory and criticism. Ed. Vincent B Leitch. 1st ed. New York: Norton, 2001.
3. Reprint of : Original (book) — combines “Anthology” with “Book chapter/excerpt” when title of chapter changes
   • Sample output: Last name, First name. “New Title.” Anthology Title. Eds. Person 1, Person 2. City: Publisher, 2000. Pages. Medium. Rpt. of "Original title." Original Source Title. Ed. and trans. Person 3. City: Publisher, 2000. Pages. Medium.
4. Reprint of : Original (journal) — combines “Anthology” with “Journal Article” when title of article changes
   • Sample output: same as above with journal info and formatting
5. Excerpt from : Original (book) — combines “Anthology” with “Book chapter/excerpt”
   • Sample output: Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today.” The Routledge language and cultural theory reader. Eds. Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. 410-415. Print. Excerpt from Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. London: Jonathan Cape, 1972. 109-24. Print.
6. Excerpt from : Original (journal) — combines “Anthology” with “Journal Article”
   • Sample output: same as above with journal info and formatting
7. Multivolume work : Single Volume — combines “Multivolume work” with “Book”
   • Sample output: Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. 1st American ed. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Print. Vol. 11 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. 11 vols. 1988-1998.
8. Multivolume work : Excerpt — combines “Multivolume work” with ”Book chapter/excerpt”
   • Sample output: Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Case of Schreber; Papers on Technique; and Other Works. London: Hogarth Press, 1973. 237-60. Print. Vol. 12 of The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Eds. Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb and James Strachey. Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. 1973.

Known issues:

1. In cases where the editor and translator of a book are the same person, they will always be listed Ed. and trans. <name> regardless of the order they are listed in the book. See section 5.5.4. I see no way around this other than requiring the user to manually enter Ed. and trans. or Trans. and ed. into each entry.
2. Editors and translators will always be listed in the following order: editors & translators, then editors, then translators. Switching the order would be pretty trivial, though. If anyone sees any reason to do so, let me know. MLA almost certainly prefers that contributors be listed in the order they appear in the book, but as far as I know that is impossible to accomplish. This also extends to anthologies, which can have compilers, editors, and translators, all of which can be performed by one or more potentially overlapping people. Since compilers and editors seem to be mutually exclusive, and I’ve yet to run into a compiler who also translates, I believe the options I’ve included —comp., ed(s)., trans., ed and trans.— should be sufficient.
3. As far as I know, there is no way to elegantly list multiple publishers from multiple cities, e.g. New York: Random House; London: Associated University Presses, <date>.
4. Edited books whose editors are also translators will not sort properly in the reference library if “Ed/trans” is used. I’m not sure what to do about that. They will sort properly in generated bibliographies, however.

Download the format

Download the MLA 7th edition format. Unzip the file, and install it in the ~/Library/Application Support/Bookends/Custom Formats folder.

Does society need a mandatory time-out? We have weekends and vacations, sure, but even those are increasingly bent toward structured pursuits. Our leisure is often as scheduled and hectic as our work—and is, consequently, just as stressful. Sabbath, with its myriad proscriptions, offers what might be the only authentic form of leisure: the act and fulfillment of doing absolutely nothing productive. If that sounds like modern-day blasphemy, it’s because it is.

—Menachem Kaiser, The Case for the Sabbath, Even if You’re Not Religious”

I am drawn to this notion for a number of reasons, not just thanks to my recent conversion to Judaism. To be sure, Sabbath observance, lax though it may be in our household (thanks in part to an imminent wedding), is also a mainstay of our observance. Gathering together to light candles, drink wine, and eat challah was the first tradition we incorporated into our weekly lives even before I began the official process of conversion. It has become not just a regularly-occuring period to put work aside and let the brain relax, work through, and return with renewed vigor, but a ready-made reason to spend time together, to be casually (if ceremonially) among friends we respect, and to dedicate quality time to extracurricular projects that are important to us.

I am inclined to agree with Rachel, who told me once that she located religion’s importance in the way it structures life, makes it cyclical, provides spaces and rituals to manage certain inevitabilities. I get the sense that she was speaking of yearly cycles as well as life cycles. Religions help people understand and deal with “blessings” and “catastrophes,” mainly the latter: death, loss, bereavement. Sabbath observance, taking time out for its own sake, seems much less consequential, but is potentially a great deal more gratifying, and not just thanks to its frequency or its spiritual foundation. Indeed, most of the rituals religions provide can be made meaningful regardless of the observer’s belief in a god or gods; the question of the connection between meaning and belief at the heart of The Atlantic‘s article is, I think, quite subordinate to the importance of structuring in unstructured time.

I will note in conclusion and in passing how curious I find it that Sabbath observance, at least in modern American culture, has come to refer specifically to Jewish observance of Shabbat. The article I quoted above was written by a reformed Orthodox Jew, and is ostensibly a review of two books by a secular Jewish author. No one asks Christian politicians —or atheist politicians, as though there were such a thing!— if Sabbath prohibitions will affect their capacity to respond to catastrophes on Sundays, but the first question on everyone’s lips when Joe Lieberman became a vice-presidential candidate was whether he would be able to work on Saturdays.¹ And I suspect that the loss of widespread Sunday Christian Sabbath observance (now largely spatially and temporally confined to church services expected to end by noon) and its status as a de facto secular Sabbath, is at least part of the reason for publishing an article like this one.

Footnotes

1. The irony is of course that Judaism provides numerous built-in contingencies for which it is acceptable to break Sabbath laws, particularly in cases where human lives are involved. ↩

Today, some top editors got together to review the 2005 policy and decided to no longer use “pro-choice” or “pro-life.”

On the air, we should use “abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)” and “abortion rights opponent(s)” or derivations thereof (for example: “advocates of abortion rights”). It is acceptable to use the phrase “anti-abortion”, but do not use the term “pro-abortion rights”.

—“NPR Changes Abortion Language”

This is terrific news. I have long believed that the patently false opposition between “choice” and “life” to be misleading at best, particularly considering the calculated insidiousness with which the latter option is capable of poisoning the debate over abortion rights. While I have always advocated for pro- and anti-choice, NPR’s focus on abortion rights, rather than the act itself, is certainly more objective, appropriate and, one hopes, acceptable to both sides. Let’s hope that this marks a sea change in the terms we use to prosecute this debate, and lends some deserved legitimacy to the notion that the debate is between allowing people to make a choice, or making that choice for them.

Cope attracted praise from musicians and computer scientists, but his creation raised troubling questions: If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart? And was there really any soul behind the great works, or were Beethoven and his ilk just clever mathematical manipulators of notes?

Cope’s answers — not much, and yes — made some people very angry.

—“Triumph of the Cyborg Composer”

This comes from a very interesting article, but I take issue with the former of these questions and answers. As a student in an introductory counterpoint class, I wrote chorales, canons, and fugues in the style of Bach, of Beethoven, and of Brahms. Any second- or third-rate composer can write “in the style of” a great composer. What is “so special about Mozart” is that no one wrote like him until him. That someone, even a computer, can write like him after-the-fact is only as impressive as someone today painting in the style of Michelangelo.

The old authority and truth pretend to be absolute, to have an extratemporal importance. Therefore, their representatives (the agelasts) are gloomily serious. They cannot and do not wish to laugh; they strut majestically, consider their foes the enemies of eternal truth, and threaten them with eternal punishment. They do not see themselves in the mirror of time, do not perceive their own origin, limitations and end. They do not recognize their own ridiculous faces or the comic nature of their pretensions to eternity and immutability. And thus these personages have come to the end of their role still serious, although their spectators have been laughing for a long time. They continue to talk with the majestic tone of kings and heralds announcing eternal truths, unaware that time has turned their speeches into ridicule. Time has transformed old truth and authority into a Mardi Gras dummy, a comic monster that the laugh crowd rends to pieces in the marketplace.

Rabelais and His World¹

Footnotes

1. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. ↩

The gestation of this post revolves around the realization that in a few weeks I am going to have to turn in a respectably well thought out, cogent paper applying Jacques Derrida’s not-method¹ of deconstruction to a literary text of my choosing. Until recently I have been consumed by something approaching intellectual panic regarding both the choice of text, and something more fundamental: the purpose of deconstructing a literary text, given Derrida’s own thinking surrounding différance and deconstruction, namely the concurrent lack of origin and endpoint. If deconstruction can never arrive at a conclusion, why begin?

Derrida seems to provide the glimmer of an answer in his own work. His abundant performances of deconstruction on the philosophical writings of his predecessors (principal among them Rousseau², Saussure³, Heidegger⁴, Freud⁵, Nietzsche⁶) are essential to the elaboration of his philosophical project, and do not shy away from a tremendous amount of self-reflection, from which we can devise a number of problems to be overcome. The first is what I have mentioned above: deconstruction does not entail a teleology and, as such, is in an essential way unable to entail an analytical endpoint. How do we overcome this obstacle within a field that demands the closure of questions raised? The answer Derrida seems to provide, never explicitly, is unsurprisingly problematic. In order to write deconstruction, he proposes, we must take recourse in writing (“in the narrow sense”); in order to escape metaphysics and metaphysical oppositions, we must take recourse inside metaphysics by provisionally reinscribing our performance in the very oppositions we hope to question, and naïvely (provisionally) forget that we have done so (à la Nietzsche⁷). Thus we are able to forget, as well, the mise-en-abyme that is deconstruction and propose for ourselves, inside this framework, a provisionally acceptable endpoint. Upon reaching our goal, we must remember that it depends on the same metaphysical concepts we proposed to escape, we must re-place ourselves with our conclusion in the abyme and realize that it therefore must also be deconstructed.

In Derrida’s terms, every text is necessarily constructed on a metaphysical foundation, for metaphysics is all we have. Constructed on a metaphysical foundation, ergo deconstructible. Wherein lies the problem?

My trouble finding a direction for this paper seemed to be a perception I can’t overcome —but which makes me profoundly uncomfortable— of a fundamental difference between the philosophical texts Derrida deconstructs and the type of literature I work with. I have asked the question above why one might deconstruct a literary text in the first place, knowing that there is no satisfying conclusion to be reached. We know that there is, in fact, no satisfying endpoint to the practice of deconstruction at all, and that it is not a means to an end but a means to another means, “a chain of signifiers” with no ultimate signified. Still, Derrida seems eminently capable of “willfully forgetting” this analytical “problem” (and thus of not being tormented by the question I am raising here) because he confronts texts that make at least an implicit truth claim, or seek a concrete answer to a question. Derrida can then question, counter and unravel these conclusions and their authors in a deconstructive performance revealing the inadequacy of their ultimately metaphysical foundations⁸. The unraveling of a truth claim is an obvious, if provisional, “satisfying conclusion” for the analytical process, even if we are forced to realize that the signified he derives is “always already” just another signifier to be deconstructed.

The texts that interest me, though, tend not to make truth claims or seek concrete answers, but rather to explicitly deny the possibility of the truth claim, or to raise questions without providing answers. In many ways one might say their authors openly posit the possibility (even the necessity) of their own deconstruction. It is difficult, then, for me to formulate what a “provisionally satisfying conclusion” might look like with regard to these texts, if only because I would not be confronting an author/text who claims to have encountered something stable; rather, I would be more or less in collusion with a text that is frank about the “reality” of its own instability and the necessity of its own deconstruction.

The only way I see out of this conundrum, at the moment, is to recognize in the negation of a truth claim an implicit (perhaps hidden) truth claim (e.g. the truth that there is no truth, or perhaps the hidden assertion of a truth disguised by the negation of truth) —or to recognize in the raising of a question a disingenuous attempt at defining its terms too narrowly— that might provide a starting point for a deconstructive reading. This seems like an exciting possibility for the kind of against-the-grain readings one strives for, but I still have not worked out intellectually just how to perform the reading, or much less to attempt to perform it on a specific text to see if it indeed yields results. I continue to feel that, to a certain extent, these points of departure don’t point toward (provisional) conclusions as (provisionally) satisfying as the ones Derrida proposes for himself.

On the other hand, and to synthesize a little what I’ve written here, I’ve been thinking about a few 19th-century Latin American positivist texts I’ve read and written about, and it’s quite clear how one might approach them and their nation-building projects deconstructively to great effect, because their stake in metaphysical oppositions is both explicit and profound. My intellectual problem is not with literature, then, but specifically with modernism’s self-conscious approach to its own instability. Unfortunately, taking recourse in positivist literature for this final paper would feel like a negation of the utility of this course and the analytical approach it espouses, a negation I would have immense trouble committing to.

NB: The question is not how?, but why? And I’ve not yet answered it. More recently —in the last few hours, while composing this note— I have had an epiphany (courtesy of Jorge Luis Borges) regarding this and all of the above. More on this later.

Footnotes

1. For if deconstruction is based on différance, itself “neither a word nor a concept” (”Différance.” Margins of Philosophy, 3), deconstruction cannot possibly be a “method” or a “style” (even if Derrida himself at times provisionally accepts that they are), both of which imply the possibility of applying something that is not. Deconstruction is, at best, a performance, albeit one that erases itself. ↩
2. Of Grammatalogy. ↩
3. Ibid. ↩
4. “The Ends of Man”, Margins of Philosophy. ↩
5. “Freud and the Scene of Writing”, Writing and Difference. ↩
6. Approximately everywhere. ↩
7. “Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, and elsewhere. ↩
8. It is curious, and potentially productive, to note that Derrida at times seems to deconstruct texts that are quite aware of their problematic inscription in a metaphysical tradition. His treatment of Freud (previously cited), and Saussure and Levi-Strauss (in Of Grammatalogy) are prominent examples. ↩

The bits hit the virtual fan yesterday when the omgwtf-machine was whipped into a frenzy over the announcement, straight (no pun intended) from the mouth of our dear and glorious leader J.K. Rowling, that Dumbledore, beloved imaginary wizard of the Harry Potter-verse, was, to the author's mind, gay:

My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. […] If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!

(In a decidedly besides-the-point way, at least in the context of this post, I think this is brilliant. It adds an entirely unexpected layer to the Dumbledore–Grindelwald relationship, and provides at least a provisional and verisimilar answer to why the former waited as long as he did to challenge the latter. Layers make better stories. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that Rowling was less than explicit. Her choice of words— “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay” —is far from dogmatic.)

But my more immediate reason for writing— indeed for resurrecting this formerly moribund weblog altogether —were the following quotes from an article headlined Conservatives Attack Gay Dumbledore; Claim Vindication For Jerry Falwell’s Homophobia:

Psycheout at Blogs 4 Brownback called it “revolting”, saying “Dumbledore is a gay homosexual who doesn’t deserve to live on G-d’s green earth.”
At Redstate, dvdmsr says the revelation means that “Dumbledore was more flawed than I thought.”

The latter article continues thus:

I guess this revelation was all part of, what she called her “prolonged argument for tolerance.”

Tolerance? Really? For who? Muggles? How, by wiping their memories clean, by denying them “magical” solutions to their problems, with the “Statute of Secrecy”?

It's difficult to know where to begin. I can scarcely hold these comments in my brain long enough to consider them objectively without having to take a little sanity break, so let's be transparent about a number of important things. I do not frequently credit the type of conservative mind that would find the need to criticize the homosexuality of a fictional character with the kind of capacity for intellectual thought that bears serious attention. Less so if the criticism is situated in dogmatic religious discourse. In this instance, I cannot help it. The anti-gay religious right has become anti-gay to such an extent as to exclude the mere possibility of rational, logical thought. This is the point where discourse— and with it the very possibility of communication —fails.

Still, these quotes merit consideration, if only because they bear repeating as often as possible, for hilarity’s sake, and still more because they bring to bear on the utter impossibility of cogent public discourse in my country’s present society. Let us proceed in reverse, thereby saving my favorite for last.

Flawed Dumbledore and flawed logic

If the initial quotation from Redstate can be commended for anything, it is merely for being less absurd than the quote that precedes it. While it is most unfortunate that the revelation of one's homosexuality— and, lest we forget, this is that of a dead, fictional wizard— is cause to consider him “flawed”, the post's author doesn't depart from the accepted discourse regarding homosexuality as recently as thirty years ago, insofar as it was considered a pathology or a disease: a flaw. Nevertheless, the author, who admits his reading of Harry Potter reveals “a children's book with a predominantly Christian message”, goes on to consider, tangentially, tolerance. The less-than-rhetorical question “Tolerance? Really? For who? Muggles?” reveals not only a misreading of the fantasy genre, whose terms are nearly always veiled references to more traditional society, but a remarkably invested reading of the Harry Potter series specifically. Let us consider a few other choice quotations:

How free and tolerant is a secret society that punishes children and adults [?] for expressing their natural abilities simply because they don't want others to share the benefit of these abilities? [?]

What if it was a story about the wealthy who sought to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, and what if they justified invading the privacy of their rich members, or wiping the minds clean of the poor who stumbled upon their riches, or prosecuting others for revealing their riches, all because they feared the poor people of the world would pester them for money solutions to their problems. There lies the hypocrisy of Rowling's prolonged argument for tolerance.

I wonder where [Rowling's] tolerance was for those readers who have beliefs different from hers. Where was the respect for them?

There are many problems and inaccuracies to consider in these quotations, but most interesting is the conclusion drawn from them: “[Rowling's] argument for tolerance is selective at best.” In Rowling's world, Muggles are, to the Redstate author's mind, considered second-class citizens (though this a debatable premise), and he, presumably a Muggle himself, will not stand for it. Just as the rich have no right to hide their wealth (?), the argument seems to go, wizards have no right to hide the powers that can be used to help the world. (Of course, money and magic aren't by any means analogical equivalents. The suggestion, left unquoted, that we replace the term “magical abilities” with “homosexual tendencies”, has no analogical value whatsoever) One wonders where precisely the author intends to take this quizzical argument, which seems to avoid altogether the valuable parallel that might reasonably and be drawn between the stratified fictional society (Muggles and wizards) and a the stratified society in which we live (most pertinently, in this case, homo– and heterosexuals). Which, it bears mentioning, reverses the analogical relationship between Muggles and wizards, positing the former as the proponents of intolerance, a view explicitly personified in the Dursley family. The author's line of reasoning is abandoned, though, if not before making unfounded conclusions, in favor of an assault on Rowling herself. The suggestion that Rowling's revelation of Dumbledore's sexuality implies a fascistic, Machiavellian lack of respect for the reader, or was in some way a strategic attack on the morals of impressionable children, is quite absurd and unrelated to what precedes is, as is the suggestion that she is somehow morally forbidden from alienating readers who disagree with her.

The author's fundamental problem in this particular section of his argument lies in a common misreading of fantasy literature, which attempts to discover an analogical equivalent for every textual gesture. But in Harry Potter, I think it is arguable that, except on certain specific occasions (e.g. the Dursley's), Muggles are little more than context. The Wizarding World's treatment of Muggles is more probably a literary conceit— made in order to be able to set the novelistic stage in a specific way —than a revelatory gesture belying Rowling's underlying “selective tolerance”, or her supposed fascist ideology. So if Rowling is not talking about tolerance for Muggles by wizards, what is she talking about? Perhaps the message is more general: tolerance for, you know, everyone. For differences. For weaknesses and strengths. Mutual recognition that there are no second-class citizens. And, evidently, of homosexuality, which clearly doesn't fit into the author's agenda of tolerance. Not to mention the question of tolerance with respect to birthright, thinly metaphorized in the prolonged pureblood, halfblood, mudblood argument (thanks, Collin). With the exception of the latter, whose case is easily argued, these are the time-honored themes of nearly all great fantasy literature.

The article at RedState is, on the whole, an exercise in non sequitur. The question of homosexuality is, indeed, all but abandoned after the extraordinarily ignorant and intolerant first paragraph, which would have it that homosexuals act primarily to fulfill sexual desires, even to the detriment of the whole world:

Turns out [Dumbledore] was ready, willing, and planning to persecute and enslave Muggles NOT for the "Greater Good" after all, but rather because he simply wanted to win over the boy he fancied (Grindelwald), and wanted to snog like mad (or possibly shag). Oh the power of unrequited Love.

The possibility that Dumbledore's love— not sexual attraction, even in Rowling's words, but love— for Grindelwald may have colored the attractiveness to the latter's plans for non-wizards is explicitly negated. Homosexuality here is represented as an enslavement to sensual desire, irrational and overwhelming. It is unclear why Dumbledore's homosexuality, given this, should not exculpate his blind obedience to Grindelwald's designs entirely. I believe the author of the article would disagree that is should, but on what grounds? Certainly none presented in the article itself. Nevertheless, the irony of this intolerance is, apparently, lost on its author. The remainder of the essay is, equally ironically, a concerted attack on Rowling's own interpretation of her work as an “argument for tolerance.” Imperfect tolerance, perhaps, but far more successful that this would-be detractor's.

Gay homosexuals and fictional homosexuals

It's almost too good to be true when the fundamentalist Christians of any stature reveal their absolute intolerance by questioning someone else's (much broader) notion of tolerance (and I still believe tolerance is practiced by the quiet majority of fundamentalists). It's like candy. It is difficult to contain one's glee. The quote by Blogs 4 Brownback (which, in the comments, states it has a “zero tolerance policy for sin”¹), then, is like a party for one’s sense of moral satire. So much so that I think it bears copying again:

Dumbledore is a gay homosexual who doesn’t deserve to live on G-d’s green earth.

Again, it is difficult to choose between nearly as many starting points as there are clauses in the sentence. “Dumbledore is a gay homosexual…” Unlike all those gay heterosexuals? Or perhaps you were referring to the straight homosexual population. “…who doesn't deserve to live on God's green earth.”

And here we have arrived at the crux of our problem. You see, Dumbledore, being, as previously stated, a fictionally dead, fictionally fictional wizard, does not love and has never lived at all, much less on “God's green earth.” HE IS NOT REAL. The problem of “Christian intolerance,” powerfully exemplified here, and the question of why God would create homosexuals if he meant not to permit them on his green earth, aside, rational discourse depends on something approximating a verisimilitude that this population has evidently done away with entirely. And once you have done away with verisimilitude, anything can be proposed, and anything defended. The concept of truth and lie is obliterated (even more radically than someone like Derrida might suggest) and supplanted with vague notions of belief, defensible only by the selfsame belief that constitutes them. Logic cannot contend with such blatant question begging. And even should it find a way, would it matter? These beliefs are not to be questioned at all. When one's peers find it necessary to satisfy their moral outrage railing against the purported sexual orientation of a fictional wizard, is rational discourse even possible anymore?

Footnotes

1. Just like Jesus! ↩

Sometimes Plato reads like a Classical version of a “Casual Encounters” ad on Craigslist. From the Phaedrus.

Phaedrus: (quoting Lysias) Hello little boy, let’s get it on and then be good friends! I don’t love you, but that’s okay, because if I did it would be worse for everyone! It’s really better to just be friends and have sex. Have I convinced you yet? No? Okay, well, if you only want sex with people you’re in love with, there are, like, so few of them! And people who are in love are so lame and emotionally, intellectually and psychologically crippled! And it makes them fight with their families! Let us speak of them no more! If you are convinced by my argument, I promise to love you long time¹ without EVER thinking of my own pleasure! Seriously! Unrelatedly, isn’t it interesting that friendship can exist between family members in the absence of erotic love? Anyway, I think it’s best to do —I mean, “share your goods” with— only people who can “hit you back on the flippity-flop,” so to speak, don’t you? But that doesn’t mean you should just go losing your stickiness² with everyone you come across. No way. A lover would never let you have other lovers, so I’m totally justified in wanting some exclusivity here, and don’t even try to play me like that. So…wanna go back to my place and have intercourse?

Socrates: My heart is all aflutter!

Phaedrus: Are you making fun of me?

Socrates: Yes.

Phaedrus: I’d like to see you do better, chump! If you can, I’ll build a gold statue of both of us here by the riverbank! I know how you like the bling bling.

Socrates: Can I wear a bag over my head?

Phaedrus: Okay.

Socrates: All right then.

Footnotes

1. Actually a quote from Plato! ↩
2. Simply irresistible: “The gift of sex is like a piece of sticky tape on the arm […]. When pulled off for the first time it’s strong. Each time this is done, part of each person remains with the tape. Soon it is easy to remove because the residue from the various arms interferes with the tape’s ability to stick. The same is true in relationships, where previous sexual experiences interfere with the ability to bond.” So saith Dr Eric Keroack, Chief of Family Planning Programs at the US Department of Health and Human Services. (Thanks, Laura) ↩

The first time I attempted to read Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela¹, some years ago and for pleasure, I gave up a little over halfway through. My difficulty was not predicated on that fact that it was a difficult text–it is–, but rather on the fact that I was convinced that it had no literary value whatsoever. The book was a disaster, a bricolage of tenuously related scenes involving a set of bohemian characters living in France but rejecting outright everything traditionally characterized as French, living off the fumes of defunct or stillborn philosophies, alcohol, jazz records, and false erudition. While the premise is tantalizing, the novel itself was plotless, disconnected, stagnant. A year ago, feeling reticent about dismissing so emphatically one of the premier modernist novels to be come out of Latin America, I reluctantly took it with me on an extended trip to Mexico, where I read it twice in a week and a half². It has since become one of my favorite novels.

Rayuela is in fact very intricately constructed, almost obsessively disparate, full of disjunct and loosely connected events and literary paraphernalia that describe, among other things, the mistrust and destabilization of the very language used to write it. This fundamental paradox is brought to bear in a structure that is deeply auto-referential in such a way that its auto-referentiality becomes a self-generative mise-en-abyme, in which the frame story (the auto-referential text) actually generates itself (it is a novel that is on many levels about writing a novel) while at the same time degenerating–denigrating–the language of which it is comprised. Only extremes are possible within these bounds in which everything is simultaneously its opposite (the rallying call of modernism): the novel writes its own unwriting; every foundation is an unfounding; every beginning is its own ending.

But the novel is not permitted to end. The characters in Rayuela are deeply distrustful of anything final and finished. Words have lost their meaning; conventions, those rites that provide a consistent definition of social reality, are toppled and replaced by nothing; the very value of literature and literariness are called into question. Morelli, the cult author obsession of Oliveira and his companions, is “repelled by literary language” (fragment 112). La Maga attempts early on to explain her philosophy to Oliveira but words are insufficient, too simplistic, and her attempt becomes amusingly convoluted and caricaturesque:

Vos sos como un testigo, sos el que va al museo y mira los cuadros. Quiero decir que los cuadros están ahí y vos en el museo, cerca y lejos al mismo tiempo. Yo soy un cuadro. […] Esta pieza es un cuadro. Vos creés que estás en esta pieza pero no estás. Vos estás mirando la pieza, no estás en la pieza³.

—Fragment 3

Later, she coldly recounts the story of her rape with words utterly detached from any emotional history. Oliveira begins to systematically add the letter “h” (silent in Spanish) to the beginning of any word that begins with a vowel, as if attempting to renovate (etymologically “to make new again”) a language that is no longer sufficient to explain anything, but is the only option at his disposal short of complete hermetization (”Heste Holiveira siempre con sus hejemplos⁴“, Fragment 84). In fragment 34, as Oliveira reads a novel by Galdós, we find his thoughts alternating, line by line, with the text of the novel. Glíglico⁵ and hispamerikano undo the very foundations of language, divorcing the sign from the signifier and the word from its spelling.

At the same time, the creative power of language is profoundly reaffirmed, perhaps most famously thus:

Toco tu boca, con un dedo toco el borde de tu boca, voy dibujándola como si saliera de mi mano, como si por primera vez se entreabriera, y me basta cerrar los ojos para deshacerlo todo y recomenzar, hago nacer cada vez la boca que deseo […] y que por un azar que no busco comprender coincide exactamente con tu boca que sonríe por debajo de la que mi mano te dibuja⁶.

—Fragment 7

It is through the power of language, of story-telling, the physical act of language, that Oliveira will recover his lost lover la Maga. It is through the destabilization of that language that every ending will be a beginning, an eternal “begin anew” (recomenzar). The premise is revolutionary: How do you approach a novel that seeks to destabilize, even to negate, not only its value as literature, but the very force that drives its composition?

Rayuela seems to find a equally radical solution: it never begins. The entire novel–what I once (mis)read as a stagnant plot–is a constant beginning that never is quite consummated, for once it began it would perforce have to end. There is no middle ground, and every act is pregnant with its opposite. The novel can degrade and renew language in the same gesture (the two acts are, indeed, inseparable⁷). The loss of la Maga is the real end of this novel, and “coincides exactly”, and quite literally, with the beginning, with the postulation of her recuperation through the amazing generative power of language. ¿Encontraría a la Maga?⁸ is as much admission of loss as it is a vow to remember, to recuperate, to recreate through an act of language. To begin anew is, ultimately, to lose again; to lose again is, ultimately, to begin anew.

In a way, Rayuela is the perfect novel with which to re-inaugurate the new Digital Overtone.

Footnotes

1. Rayuela translates literally to “Hopscotch” in English. ↩
2. In Rayuela Julio Cortázar actually proposes two different strategies for reading the novel, while implicitly rejecting the reader’s option to read in both ways. The novel is divided into three sections: El lado de allá (That Side), set in Paris; El lado de acá (This Side), set in Argentina, and Capítulos prescindibles (Expendable Chapters), a collection of fragments ranging from scenes involving the central characters to philosophical writings by a cult author to newspaper clippings. The first method for reading involves reading fragments 1-56–which comprise El lado de allá and El lado de acá and stopping without reading any of the later fragments. The second method was to begin with fragment 73 and figuratively playing hopscotch, jumping from one fragment to another following a table provided by the author. I cheated and read both ways (the second reading was far superior). ↩
3. “You are like a witness, you’re the one who goes to the museum and looks at the pictures. What I mean to say is that the paintings are there and you’re in the museum, near and far at the same time. I am a painting. […] This flat is a painting. You think you’re in this flat, but you’re not. You’re looking at the flat, you’re not in the flat.” (Fragment 3) ↩
4. “That Holiveira and his examples“. Also, in Fragment 90, hasunto (subject), hencrucijada (crossroads), hunidad (unity), hego (ego) and hotro (other), all highly charged words. ↩
5. “Apenas él le amalaba el noema, a ella se le agolpaba el clésimo y caían en hidromurias, en salvajes ambonios, en sustalos exasperantes” (fragment 68). Oliveira and la Maga make love with an invented language, in which words mean nothing more than what they sound like. This entire fragment is frankly untranslatable. ↩
6. “I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as though it sprang forth from my hand, as if your mouth opened slightly for the first time, and it is enough to close my eyes to undo it all and begin anew, each time I make the mouth that I desire […] and that by some chance I don’t seek to understand coincides exactly with the mouth that smiles beneath the one my hand draws on you.” (Fragment 7) ↩
7. Bakhtin would agree, I think. More on him later. ↩
8. The famous first line of the novel translates alternately as “Would I find la Maga” or “Did I find la Maga“, in the sense of “I wonder if I found la Maga“. I would live in perpetual dread of this sentence if I were a translator. ↩