He pushed the trunk lid closed with his elbow and started toward the side door. Was she charting his trips to the supermarket now? Estimating the contents of his freezer? She’d been curious about him, perhaps even, if truth be told, a little afraid of him ever since her grandson had disappeared. Little Aaron. Right out from under her nose. Without a trace. He’s not far Granny, he thought, stepping carefully around a patch of ice on the black asphalt. Right next door. He turned at the bottom of the steps and used the railing to reposition one bag and get a better grip on it. He didn’t need to look to see her out of the corner of his eye, still at the window watching him. She really was irritating. He had fantasized about what those vinyl curtains would do if touched with a flame. How the brown melt would eat into the sunflower pattern. Mrs. Meltzer smoked. Such a thing could well happen. She wore yellow-patterned dresses that looked like they were made of the same flammable material as her curtains. If touched with a flame, he thought, the old bird and her glasses would melt down just like the curtains.

He took the steps carefully, gingerly as they said, whatever that meant. Carefully meant with care, gingerly obviously meant with ginger. How in the world could non-native speakers be expected to learn a language riven with such insane expressions? He shifted the bags to attack the door. His back wasn’t what it used to be. Too many years of Santa lifting children, ha, ha. The fourth lumbar vertebra. That was where Krafft-Ebing located the ejaculation center. Oh, he’d pay for it in the morning. Five-thirty and the light was already fading. In California the Safeway store had been open all night. One could get up, as he regularly had, at three a.m., and be perfectly alone in frozen foods.

He remembered the days in Palo Alto when he had to take his laundry to a Laundromat, exposing his underclothing that way, having all those promiscuous gray metal vanes and porous, water-sucking surfaces pasting themselves to his intimate garments. What an outrage! How had he survived it? He pulled off a glove with his teeth and worked with rapidly numbing fingers at getting out his keys. He began fitting them into the double locks and deadbolts. Nippy, as they said. Nippy out. What a word. And how odd that only the weather could be nippy. That puppies, even though they had coined the phrase, so to speak, even though they were by far the nippiest creatures in the world, could not be referred to as “nippy.” As in, ‘Harry, the dirty bastard, has a very nippy puppy.’ No. In a student essay he would circle that in red.

You get lost looking for the sign that says You Are Here.

As the good Girl or Boy Scout that you are (or suddenly wish that you were), you think to stay calm and to shout on occasion and then to shoot your gun (thankfully you have that) twice in the air to signal your friends when they come out looking for you as of course they will, eventually, this is what you think or sometimes say to yourself (or write in your journal: they will come looking, they will), until it gets completely dark and only a distant fire can be seen, flickering on some ridge, accompanied by a soundtrack with strings.

After the fire dies out, a moon appears, in real time, which takes years.

Hispanic Man Working a Weed-eater Against the Bank

Before the session, you find yourself sitting in conference room Spruce, next to Pine and Fir and just across the hall from Aspen and Birch, when a Hispanic man in goggles approaches from outside with a weed-eater, working it against the bank just beyond the patio doors in a determined and somewhat aggressive manner.

As difficult as this is now proving to be—the man as welcome as a yellow jacket at a watermelon feed—you and the other early arrivals decide to sit politely through his display. Don’t panic. Certainly don’t swat at him; that will only make him upset. Just ignore him, basically, pretend that he’s not here—pretend invisibility—and eventually he’ll fly away.

Sometimes a Mountain

But imagine what it must be like before it all begins, while standing at a second floor office window, for instance, while holding a mug of painfully strong coffee in one hand and in the other a glass of water. Imagine slowly pouring the water from the glass into the cracked dirt of an unknown office plant left behind months before by someone who had been laid off, someone you were recently hired to replace. Imagine what it must look like to any of the others who happen to see you there, as if you are simply standing at the window to water the plant.

When the truth is of course that you are having a sort of bulletpoint moment.

The dwarfed trees spaced equal distance one from the other in their square plots up and down the sidewalk just outside the window have yet to bud. Are these dogwoods? No one seems to know. Through these trees, between the frame of the Ben Franklin Parking Tower on the left and the Marriott Hotel on the right, you can see the river, slow and brown and full of secrets. Beyond this river is the interstate and then more of the city queuing out from the city and much farther out sometimes a mountain.

Imagine seeing it if you can, on this clear midmorning in winter, through leafless trees, between the tower and the hotel, past the river, the interstate, the city beyond the city.

Hello. If you are reading this, please come help me. I am stuck inside of a giant bottle in the middle of a grassy field. I’m not sure exactly where I am—I was hiking around the Acorn Valley Reservoir and at some point I wandered off the trail. You’ll find my red Saturn in the parking lot. Walk on the trail starting from that parking lot for, I don’t know, twenty minutes, then turn LEFT and walk into the forest. After a little while, you will emerge from the forest into a large grassy field. In the middle of the field, you should see a GIANT BOTTLE. That is where I am, inside of that bottle. Please come find me as soon as possible.

2.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, PLEASE COME HELP ME. I AM TRAPPED IN A GIANT BOTTLE. The piece of paper that you hold in your hand was thrown by me through the top of this giant bottle in which I am trapped. I am tossing these notes out in the hope that the wind catches and carries them to someone who can help. I’m in the middle of a large grassy field outside the Acorn Valley Reservoir. Bring a ladder and some rope.

3.

My name is Robert Ebenhoe and I am trapped in a field near the Acorn Valley Reservoir Hiking Trail. Please send help right away.

4.

My name is Stacey Miller and I am being held against my will in a field near the Acorn Valley Reservoir Trail. Please come help me before my fiendish captors do something awful. I’m twenty-two years old and beautiful.

5.

Robert Ebenhoe—Late September (?) 2007—I am stuck inside a giant bottle in the middle of a grassy field. I said before I was hiking here. That was a lie, sort of. I left my wife. That was about two weeks before I got stuck inside here. I told myself that she was boxing me in, that if not for her I would be free. But after she left I just sat around the apartment, so in an effort to prove to myself my own freedom, I drove out to the reservoir and walked into the woods. And then found a giant bottle, and became trapped inside it. I’m near the Acorn Valley Reservoir. The bottle is green. Come get me.

6.

I realized that I started the first note I threw out of the neck of this bottle with “Hello.” Seems kind of funny now. But at the time it felt weird to just dive into things without some kind of greeting, especially because of the strangeness of my position. Anyway, my name is Robert Ebenhoe, and I’m stuck in a giant bottle near Acorn Valley Reservoir. It’s like a wine bottle, tipped over on its side. It looks like there was a label at one point, but it’s been peeled off so now there’s only sticky white backing left. I sit underneath its shadow at noon, when the inner temperature of the bottle peaks. Also, the bottle is filled with receipts and other scraps of paper. Hamburger wrappers and stuff. If you’ll turn this note over you’ll see it’s written on the back of a receipt for chewing gum from the Union 76 station on Redwood. The date on the receipt is worn off. But I have to assume this means someone knows about my bottle, and will be along eventually. But you should come and help me now, anyway. Bring some tools and stuff.

7.

Robert Ebenhoe here. Stuck-in-a-giant-bottle guy. I climbed into the bottle. I never said that before, because I was embarrassed, but that’s how I got in here, in case you were wondering. I was wandering around in the woods, and then found this giant bottle in a field. It’s lying on its side—did I say that already? It is—so if somewhere else you’ve found an upright giant bottle, that’s the wrong one, I’m in the tipped over giant bottle. I can see what looks like the stem of an upright giant bottle peeking over the tree line, but I think that it’s actually a water tower. Anyway, the neck of the bottle sits about eight feet above the ground, just low enough that you can jump up and grab it, and hoist yourself up and crawl down the stem. But the thing is, once you get inside the main part of the bottle, the sides are curved in such a way that you can’t climb back out. Your feet can’t get any traction because of the glass. So I realize my mistake, and trust me, I won’t make it again. Now please come get me.

8.

If you found a note from Stacey Miller saying she had been kidnapped and brought to a field near the Acorn Valley Reservoir, that was actually from me. I thought people might respond faster if they thought a twenty-two-year-old girl was in trouble, instead of a middle-aged divorcé stuck in a bottle. Either way, send help.

Stuck in a giant bottle in a field,
Robert Ebenhoe

9.

Is it possible that there exists a race of giants among us, so big that we can’t even comprehend them, yet their giant wine bottles occasionally find their way on to our plane of being? Is my presence in this place some kind of test they are putting me through? Are all human endeavors merely responses to obstacles put in our paths by these giant drinkers? Or perhaps I overstate my own importance. More likely I am to them as a mouse is to normal-sized humans, a creature to be ignored except when it wanders into one of our human-sized wine bottles and becomes trapped and starves to death, or maybe dies of fright, only later to be picked up and pondered by some behemoth conservationist trying to rid his world of one more piece of litter. O strange mysteries of life.
—Robert “Stuck in a Giant Bottle” Ebenhoe

10.

A bird today flew into the mouth of the bottle! Whether by an act of God or a simple misjudgment like my own, this seagull soared through the neck with remarkable grace, but became panicked upon its emergence into the larger chamber and in its alarm crashed into the thick glass base, at which point I took advantage of its bewilderment and descended upon it. I must say that my system is unused to meat, subsisting as I have been on the moss that grows in the corner, and the occasional piece of chewing gum I find amongst the paper scraps that I now use for bedding. But gastronomic maladies aside, a new energy surges through me, and I recommit myself to my winter preparations. Seagull jerky will serve as a crucial addition to my stockpiles, and the rendered fat will be useful fuel for my stove, keeping warm my receipt hut. My name is Robert Ebenhoe and I am stuck inside a bottle!

11.

I found a note today. I woke up and it was lying there near the entrance. At first I thought it was just another receipt, but then realized that was impossible—all available paper is incorporated into my winter shelter (and then occasionally picked off to write these missives). But on closer examination, I realized this was a note to me! It reads:

Dear Robert, I just want to say that I enjoy your writing very much. I once got my finger stuck inside the neck of a bottle, and boy was that a pickle! While I can’t imagine what you must be going through, every time I find one of your notes, blown up against my front steps, or one time on top of a leaf pile, I drop what I’m doing and read right away the latest installment. My only request would be that I think you should talk about the seasons more because I always think that area out there is so pretty when the seasons change. Otherwise, keep up the good work! Yours truly, Leslie Tate

Well, Leslie, we’ve reached that time of year when every morning I wake to find a gentle frost blanketing the ochre grass, and the glass of the bottle becomes a milky white, fogged on the inside by my precious body heat. Hibernation seems to have come for the deer and the rabbits, but thankfully there are crows and the occasional quail to keep me company. Is that enough for one note? Also, did you come out here? If you come again, do you think you could bring help and get me out of this bottle? I’d appreciate it! Thanks for your comments, and keep on reading!
—Robert Ebenhoe

12.

Greg Hickey writes:

Hey Ebenhoe. I was stuck in a bottle once, and I sure didn’t whine about it as much as you do! I made sure to buckle down and get myself out of there as quickly as I could. The fact that your still in that giant bottle is because your lazy. I’m tired of reading about it, and I think people are wrong when they say your a good writer.

Well Greg, would that it were so easy for me. I can’t speak to the size or location of your bottle, but believe me when I say that I would not remain here by choice even for a minute. Don’t think that I haven’t tried charging the mouth of the bottle, hoping to build the momentum required to then dive headfirst into the bottle’s neck, only instead to slide hopelessly back into this green glass tomb. And do not assume that I haven’t attempted weaving every receipt at my disposal into a rope, which I tie around the end of my shoe and heave out into the clear air in an attempt to grapple my way to freedom, but in actuality losing a good number of receipts and my left sneaker. I am glad to hear that you’re free from your own bottle, but please don’t assume that your situation is the same for all others. R. Ebenhoe

13.

Today I received at the mouth of the bottle this critical excerpt:

Ebenhoe’s ‘notes’ have unfortunately lost the terse wit and poignant observation they once carried, and now appear to be exclusively responses to his fan base and critics. It seems that Ebenhoe may have embraced his newfound celebrity, and in the manner of so many college professors and lecturers (and several critics I could name), turned his back on the creative endeavors that led him to the top of the tower. While Ebenhoe may have a future as a workshop instructor or magazine editor, it seems clear, to this critic, anyway, that the sun has begun to set on the Robert Ebenhoe school of writing.

The rest is shallow name dropping and general intellectual masturbation. I quote this only to note that this is the first mention I’ve heard of a school of thought associated with me. I can’t speak for those who emulate my work, but only to my own writing, which has never been intended to please critics, or even a readership, which has never had any other purpose than to relay the details of my physical condition and location, and which, rest assured, I will continue to do until that condition changes.
—R.

14.

I am Robert Ebenhoe. I am trapped in a giant bottle. I will not be silenced.

Chuck and I were standing in the hot lunch line holding our blue trays. We were tired of waiting. He pushed at the tray’s edges and spun it like a basketball on his pointer finger. I held mine steady. I would like to say that it was because I was reverent and respectful and aware of my actions, but, indeed, I couldn’t make trays spin on my pointer finger, attracting the wide-eyed gaze of both younger kids and coming-into-themselves girls.

At some point during the painstaking wait, while I was counting floor tiles and arranging them into some grand Escher extravaganza, a few boys lanked by and not exactly whispered, niggers.

Chuck was aware of its meaning, but I was more naïve. What is this niggers, I thought? At home my mother explained to me the significance of the word and the whys about not using it, but only after popping me in the mouth with a flick of her hand.

Kahului, Maui, HI

I used to think that it was because my mother forced me to school that first day, in nearly seventy-degree weather, clad in a tight chocolate wool sweater and fading brown corduroys. I tried to imagine that it was the glasses that my mother made me wear, all brown-rimmed and big, two storm windows across my eyes. I was sure it was the way I laughed and how I scrunched my nose, the bridge seeming to buckle between my eyes, which squinted and lost themselves in the folds of my lids.

It was a Japanese girl named Susie who noticed it first—when I raised my hand in Hawaiian language class when the teacher asked, Who here is Hawaiian? Susie turned to her pasty friend and said, He’s not Hawaiian…he’s hapa haole. I’d heard the term before, but consulted my mother when I got home. She told me that it meant half white and that it was bad to say. It was a way of saying that someone isn’t really part of something.

After that year in sixth grade, Susie never let up and, instead, was able to recruit many more to her cause.

Chuck, however, was never harassed. I thought that it might have been because he was a football player, had confidence, got popular. I thought it might have been because he had lighter skin than I, that maybe because he didn’t necessarily look Hawaiian, but possibly more Italian, they didn’t expect as much from him.

Chuck told me that I didn’t fit in because I didn’t speak Pidgin. Because I couldn’t:

Ey, bra? or

You hear dat Mrs. Takanawa go da kine? or

Da car broke down already, bumbai go make, die, dead, eh? or

Some fool you. Like one backhand?

And he was right. I couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. I tried once with my Samoan friend, Ka’inalu, but he told me I sounded like some asshole in the movies. He said that I sounded da kine, which clearly meant hapa haole.

I tried to explain to Chuck that I knew more about Hawaii than they did. I knew the dances. I knew the music. I was better at learning the language. I had my mother’s stories about old Hawaii. And I was Hawaiian. I was kanaka. Though not of Hawaii, I was part of Hawaii. They were the transplants.

Hapa haole. I would rather they called me hapa Hawaiian.

Jacksonville, FL

My brother, Terry, is as dark as me. He has that same thick, brown nose. My mother calls it Hanamaikai, her family name.

Here, there were more differing colors of skin than in the Midwest. His first day of school, Terry stopped for water at a drinking fountain. A boy interrupted and told him that it was a white-only fountain. Not wanting to get into a fight or make an issue, he moved on to the black fountain, biting his tongue all the way. As he bent down for a sip he was interrupted by a black boy who told him that he couldn’t drink there, that it was a black-only fountain. He wondered where the brown-boy fountain was. He spent that year drinking out of the groundskeeper’s garden hose.

Bradner, OH

They made me sleep in a trailer, she said. I asked them if the babies could sleep inside, but they wouldn’t allow it. We all had to sleep in a trailer.

My mother thought that Hawaii was bad, being second class in your own country, having to move to the side when a naval officer passed by, hearing the ladies cough from under their half-mooned hands, carrying handkerchiefs, Damn, jungle bunny. But there was worse. Like:

Marrying a man named Gomer who loves you, and you give him two children, and he takes you home, to Texas, and he is so certain of himself that he doesn’t stop to think about his family who hates blacks and how they might see his brown wife and they won’t let you or your children through the door, they simply turn the corners of their mouths down, fold their arms across their chests all pious-like, and tell him, not in this house, and he obeys and you sleep outside and you ask them if the babies can sleep in the house, but they won’t allow it and you and the babies sleep outside while your husband drinks scotch in the living room, making small talk, catching up, remembering old times. You’re just happy there’s a pot-bellied stove in the trailer.

In a Bathtub

There came a point when being white seemed to be my only option. So I filled the tub with bleach. Three gallons of bleach. Some hot water. I lay in that tub until I couldn’t take the burning anymore. My skin pealed and cracked. I couldn’t wear pajamas that night. The soft mattress picked at me. So I fixed myself on my back in one spot on the hardwood floor, and tried to look through the ceiling, tried to look beyond the roof and the tree and the clouds, their wetness cooling my skin, and tried to go even further then, shooting through the stratosphere. To float. And if I didn’t find God then, I would blend in with the dark. They wouldn’t find me in the nightness.

—as a light bulb can be seen from all sides—

How true, thought Builder. Shifting in his seat causing loud cracking noises to come from the chair legs, he took off his cap, laid it on the table and continued turning the pages of the black and grey book.

At the Bury St. Edmunds’ Manor House Museum, renaissance clocks made in Augsburg Bavaria are prized. Nothing like them was made anywhere else. The mirrored room fills with ticking and gonging and no one in the room has trouble telling the correct time, unless they’re too young to tell time, of course, or too old to remember.

Jenkins chews at the inside of his cheek, closes one eye and screws up his mouth, then stoops down low and throws the dice. They bounce back from the painted wall of the tool shed and rattle across the dirt.

Seven! he exclaims. Wow! Seven on the first throw!

The large-faced Other pushes away from the tree he’s been leaning on and points to the dice with a long-nailed grimy finger. His lank hair hangs down on the sides.

Oh, seven’s easy to get, it’s the one most likely to come up with any roll of the dice, says The Other. There are six different ways to roll a seven—the most ways of any number.

Scowling, Jenkins bends down and retrieves the dice. He shakes them in his broad fist, ready to roll again.

We’ll see, he says. He spits into the dirt at the feet of The Other. The Other’s shoes are brown and badly scuffed.

Bright-eyed Dale came into the room where Builder sat and he sat down at the other end of the brown table, his chair legs also creaking as though about to snap. Without looking up Builder turned a page of the book. Dale placed his hands on the table and watched as Builder continued to read.

—fainter stars have become visible through telescopes— Builder leaned back in his chair with the book held before his eyes. Dale licked his upper lip. He doesn’t seem to notice me, doesn’t he even notice me—

If this is the case—if this is what the masses are consuming—what hope is there for experimental literature’s survival? In a Harper’s Magazine article, Ben Marcus rages against the judges of 2004’s National Book Award in fiction, saying their quick dismissal of low-selling works was “a clear announcement that the value system for literature [is] tweaked to favor not people who actually read a lot of books but a borderline reader…who might read only one or two books in a year.”[2] Marcus’ argument is based on a premise that American readers are not interested in being mentally challenged and that the publishing elite cater to this by marginalizing economically any writer “interested in the possibilities of language…[who] appreciate artistic achievements of others but still dream for [them]selves …[and believe] that new arrangements are possible…new connections of language that might set off a series of delicious mental explosions.”[3] Though the publishing house numbers would support this assertion, what Marcus fails to account for is the fact that experimental writing, from avant-garde to postmodern, has never held the dominant interest. In fact, this is specifically a condition of its existence. As long as mass-produced and formulaic literature exists, there will be marginal groups addressing the crises and conflicts internal to literature itself. And that is okay.

I recognize that the term “experimental” is problematic, and has been found frustrating by many writers. Among the more vocal was Kathy Acker, who openly complained that it invalidates the finished work and creates an illegitimacy that more traditional forms do not have to deal with.[4] She saw the label as “another way of sticking people in the corner,” focusing solely on texts that would be more aptly named transgressive. In contemporary society, it is easy to blur boundaries and get confused. While the experimental and transgressive can overlap, just as the experimental and postmodern can, they are not necessarily the same animal. Experimental writing, for the purposes of this discussion, includes the transgressive, postmodern, and avant-garde. It acts as an umbrella term; a foil to traditional, formulaic, formalist writing.

Experimental writing provides a means of expression that is different from traditional narrative by shifting focus from empathy to sympathy—from “I feel what you feel” to “I feel a supporting emotion about your feelings”—a distancing that creates objectivity.[5] It not only allows the writer to access areas that may have been blocked off by traditional, formalist approaches, but creates an opportunity for the reader to shift consciousness and become aware of the present. And while experimental writing, like other forms, will always exist, it can never become dominant due to its nature to demand shifts in cognition: “Whenever the present achieves expression, those living in it will find it annoying, irritating, unnatural, ugly. Consequently, art can’t be made present by accommodating it to popular styles or dominant ideas” because it will lose its present-ness as a result.[6] Experimental writing will need to reconcile itself to the fringe of publishing society and accept that what it is creating now will most likely not be appreciated for many years to come, when its innovative approaches have become integrated into popular culture and are no longer threatening.

Since the 1960s, an experimental fire has been brewing in France. At first only a slow smolder, the kindling has in the last fifteen years begun to take and spread its embers about the globe. This fire, to end the metaphor here, is the literary form of Oulipo. Now, I must be careful because maybe form is not quite the right word. Genre? No, even that’s debatable. For now, I’ll leave the categorization up to you.Oulipo—otherwise known as Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, OU.LI.PO, and OuLiPo—is experimental, provocative, and transgressive. Oulipo is political and subversive, superficial and multifaceted, weighted and impartial. Oulipo is poetry, prose, fiction, nonfiction, mystery, romance, comedy, and tragedy. In short, Oulipo is everything.

The question, of course, begs to be asked: if Oulipo is everything, how can it be something? In order to answer that, some backtracking is in order. In the early 1930s, a group of French mathematicians gathered together secretly to begin writing a series of books under the collective name of Nicolas Bourbaki. The group’s mission was to rewrite all of mathematics using Set Theory and rigor to create a unifying foundation. Operating as an underground group, Bourbaki managed to publish extensively, subverting conventional mathematics worldwide, particularly at the advanced level. The originators of Oulipo (François Lionnais, Raymond Queneau, et al.) considered their group an homage, parody, and extension of Bourbaki—their intention being to invent and reinvent restrictions by which literature is composed. Oulipo translates the rewriting of mathematics as a whole into the realm of language arts.Unlike formalist approaches, Oulipien literature begins by setting up rules for itself; rules that do not coincide with the conventions of tradition or with which readers have understood to constitute a proper work of art. These rules can be as simple as Christine Brooke-Rose’s decision not to use the verb “to be” in her novel Between, or as complex as Georges Perec’s choice to follow complicated mathematical equations and chess moves in Life A User’s Manual. The rule, once set, then becomes the only initial constant—it is the sole framework within which the author will create.
Many of the constraints that have already seeped their way into popular literature include the anagram, acrostic, and lipogram. The anagram, for those unfamiliar, rearranges the letters of one word to create another (angel into glean, for example); acrostic poems use the vertical succession of a word to form the first letters of each line of the poem (John Cage did this quite a bit); and lipograms exclude one or more letters from the text (Perec’s A Void manages to exclude the letter “e” from the entire novel). Other less familiar constraints conform strictly to mathematical formulas, like W ± n. This relation was originally devised by Jean Lescure and is also known as S +7 and N + 7. Here W stands in for a word, and n stands in for a variable number. The formula is simply to replace each noun in a passage with the seventh that follows in the dictionary. The original texts can be taken from traditional sources or created originally for the project. If we take the quote “Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief” (Act v, Sc.2) from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost and try the formula, we get: “Honest plain workshops best pierce the Earhart of grieschoch.”The amendment, in and of itself, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So what’s the point? Simply, this is one of the easiest ways of breaking down the pre-programmed language structures that condition our experience and expression and subsequently one of the easiest ways of creating something new. By their very nature, these strategies require a lack of intention on the part of the author—the method becomes the focus, rather than the result. This lack of intention within the constraint, though, is only the initial approach to creating a text. It is a compositional approach, just like freewriting or Madlibs. The author does the work of accumulation under constraint and arrives at a point where all of the elements are ready to put into a composition. Oulipien writing, unlike trangressive or avant-garde, is not about rebellion or political agendas. It is about finding new combinations of things, new ways of expressing and seeing, and nothing more.

Where formalist approaches make structure invisible so as to allow for full immersion in the subject-plot, Oulipien approaches draw attention to form and make structure part of the reading experience. Formalism’s structure “conceals certain assumptions about that pre-existing order and its role in creating the possibility for human action and critical theory” and can easily reinforce the framework of society so that readers do not consider re-evaluation.[7] Oulipien, and other experimental forms, subvert this framework.

So what can American writers learn from the French? That we can be more proactive in thinking outside the box with regards to our compositional structures. If mathematics and literature can be combined, why not try other non-literary areas? Why not physics, or ecology, or plumbing (yes, you read that right). It’s an exciting world, this realm of the experimental. Aristotle burst many a bubble with his everything already exists idea—why not find out what connections are lying hidden? Who knows what can happen as a result.

Some notable Oulipien texts worth reading:

Life A User’s Manual and A Void (La Disparation) by Georges Perec

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Cosmicomics, and The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino

My Life in the CIA by Harry Mathews

Zazie in the Metro (Zazie dans le Metro) by Raymond Queneau

Oulipo Compendium edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie

Notes

[1] BookWire. 9 March 2006. Bowker, Inc. http://www.bookwire.com/BookIndustryNews.asp

[2] Ben Marcus, “Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It,” Harper’s Magazine (October 2005): 41

[3] Ibid 40

[4] Kathy Acker interview. http://www.centerforbookculture.org/interviews/interview_acker.html The Review of Contemporary Fiction,” Fall 1989, Volume 9.3

[5] Suzanne Keen, “A Theory of Narrative Empathy,” NARRATIVE 14.3 (October 2006): 207-236

[6] See R.M. Berry, “Avante-garde and the Question of Literature,” Electronic Book Review, ed. Joseph Tabbi 27 Apr 2003 http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/endconstruction/AVAnt

[7] See Jim Hansen, “Formalism and Its Malcontents: Benjamin and de Man on the Function of Allegory,” New Literary History 35.4 (Autumn 2004): 663-684

“Why is your face so red?” I remember asking.

Neighborhood kids said my father looked like Santa with his beard and belly, shirtless in summertime as he strung the hose across the lawn to fill up our Kmart kiddie pool, strategically placed over the oil slicks in our driveway. Six feet tall, he carried weight well in that he looked sturdy, reliable, and likable, if a little sad—like Santa. He wasn’t that fat, either, but neighborhood kids were never discriminatory in their cruelness. Nor were their parents sick. I didn’t know how to defend my father without giving away a part of my life that I could never verbalize, and besides, I told myself, the neighborhood kids would never understand disease if I myself couldn’t. Instead, I began to tell people that he wasn’t my father. A girl who’d lived across the street from me for so many years reminded me of this. It was in high school that she embarrassingly admitted, “I believed that lie about your father for so long!” I was confused—what lie?— and then I remembered with such clarity that I wondered how I could’ve forgotten in the first place. No telling how many children I told, how many afternoons on the school bus where I fabricated details about his busy shooting schedule, if I ever danced with him, and maybe even about his hair products.

In 1992, my favorite movie was Dirty Dancing. And so I’d begun to tell all who cared that my real father was Patrick Swayze.

***

Six cans a minute, six cans a minute, or you are fired. Twenty-five cents an hour.

This is the street of Adelino the fisherman and Clara the canner; their marriage is a tapestry of five years and two children. Adelino speaks almost as much Spanish as Clara speaks Portuguese. This is the street of Clara’s sister, Rose, with the dandelion laugh. She is the poker champion of the Row and the first boss lady of the canners.

Six cans a minute, six cans a minute, or you are fired. Twenty-five cents an hour.

This is the street of the Martín girls: Dolores, the eldest, is the beauty. She has two children but is proud of her hour glass figure. Her once candy-pursed mouth is beginning to pull. Rosa is Dolores’s daughter. She is twelve, petite yet big bosomed. Her head is filled with Nancy Drew mysteries, and impossible romances.  When she hears the ocean she can feel her pulse with the waves. Dolores makes her say she is fourteen so she can work. Rosa’s sister is eight. She is given ribbons for her hair and stays at home. Rosa is unhappy but she must work or her mother will pull her hair.

This is Bella’s street. She is Dolores’s younger sister, the tiny one, the sickly one, the one who will marry in a wedding dress nine inches above her knees to a man from a family her father cursed. This is the street of Carmen with the girlish laugh; she is Dolores’s youngest sister and the fastest canner on the row – a thousand cans an hour. Carmen enjoys the title, but earns the same pay as everyone else.

Six cans a minute, six cans a minute or you are fired. Twenty-five cents an hour.

This is Nick’s street, Rose and Clara’s brother. He has picked up Italian, Portuguese and English so he can work on any boat in the bay. The fishermen call him “waves” because of his perfect curls. His admirers say he is “the most handsome man on Cannery Row.” The jealous say his sisters put his curls in rollers every night. He is in love with Carmen, but she refuses to acknowledge the son of a gambler.

Six cans a minute, six cans a minute or you are fired.

This is the street of Christina, twenty-five years old and fresh from a Palermo convent, and her brother, Giuseppi. Both are angel cheeked, always smiling, and in love with wine.

Twenty-five cents an hour.

This is the street of Jenna, who keeps a finger rosary in her pocket and a widow’s shroud of death over her shoulders.

This is Megumi’s street, the fish cutter with quick hands and a plan.

This is Anthony’s street, his cannery will be the first to burn.

This is Giovanna’s street. This is Katie’s street. This is Connie’s street. Isabelle’s street. Francisco’s street. Billie’s street. Anne’s street. Julia. Margaret. Richard. Adolfo. Ruth. Renee. Pablo. Gustavo. Rafael. Césario. Vivian. Carla. Diane. Beatrice. Carol. Mary. Frances. Rosemarie. Christina. Gabrielle. Jorge. Adelle. Federica. Caroline. Carlotta. Justine. Roberto. Sebastian. Sofia. Dorothy. Andrew.

This is the street of silver harvest; musk in your mouth; knife-edged fish stink.

rib-
eye steak
she says : lichen
tattoos the fire hydrant : bar stool
je ne sais quoi like guns like scampi positioned on a hot plate :
dung beetles scrape the kitchen door : skyline traffic and
the detective rushing out for suicide bomber 46 : l’oeuvre d’une vie

 on thumbnails : the day’s specialty deploys a siren : why enumerate
religion from fluid statics : roll down your socks if you’re
ready for war : hydrogen peroxide soughs knee scabs : further on
the czech patient rumbles in a
paper bag : she
says let’s
eat

 

 

through blinds

the omnipresent goldfish crumples its light: the would-haves
& could-haves wrap a hand around my waist: so many
dust bunnies like eyelashes on the sill & the czech scientist
an off-white color in the riverbed: all of a sudden this tango
swoop without benefit of the right leg: fax me he said
your skirt copythe one with cars & bats & death sentences
the one you said i might or might not like because we are
behind these walls imperfect fetal esplanades:  the carriage
of the typewriter swings within this orbit called pluto
as if it knew exactly what it wanted out of dear letter writer:
81 in shorthand isn’t necessarily 2/4 time or a clothesline
several inches too deep into september: i wake up
to my skin every goddamn day lying to the goddamn mirror
& he positioned that crosswise on the music sheet as if
it would help me open the envelope the box of cornflakes
that long drive into gray where he disappeared in water

 

 

That time my upper lip swelled up

It was some kind of bug.
I woke up with a start, like the prescription label.
The emergency exit sign winked from the far end of the bus.
I thought it will be wanting my autograph next.
I thought if I fixed the time at 2300 hours, I wouldn’t need the pumpkin.
I thought I’ll never be English enough for umbrellas.
No one believed me, of course.
We were in the middle of high tea.
The Welsh rabbit created deeply opinionated friends.
Someone said right, you forgot to mention the talking mice.
Someone said so that’s what the Zurich trip was all about.
Someone said darling, don’t lie; I know exactly how you looked like before.
I wouldn’t be mentioning the names of allergens.
We all left each other wanting a stiff drink.
For the whole day, I watched myself on mirrors.
Is this the aquarius of silicon?
Is this the crime scene for poached eggs?
Is this Osney Island all over again without the slideshow?
I was completely into the sauce of Marilyn Monroe.
Eventually, my lip returned to its normal size.
It was a mosquito; I killed it.

 

 

 

Poem to Save Your Life. Sung by a gnat
who lands on  the  under-carriage moments
after the metal thunder. Rant of chlorophyll
leaving the reddened leaf. Syllabic hum in a
plate   washed,    brief   descant   of   running
water.  Squeak of  wet  hands.  In  a  poppy’s
flanged  bowl  a   net  of  light,   ringing color
that   splashes   the  hue  of  poppy  in  wave-
strings  on  a retina,  a new ding on the eye’s
inner  dish.  It rhymes with a blue and white
bowl of  limes  on  the sill.  This morning she
scours   and    swishes,    song-salving   what
rhymes with wishes.

Poem to Write on Your Birthday. Here’s the
day  named  for  you.  Scary to  have had  so many
yet catapult awake to  light’s  eyelid  tattoo.  Wary,
you  roll  into  the  sun’s  arms.  Exult in a  trick of
birth.  Demur  to  angels  of  air  and  temperature.
Hear       the         warbled        annunciations:        a
woodpecker’s  churr  thrilling  on  the  tree’s   core.
You   clear  a  way  fortune’s  fallen  arrows.   Clues
lurk  in  the  wind-shift,  array  of  a  passing hour’s
gifts.   Loft   with   the   blue   fire   of   a   jay’s  cape
slung   onto    grass.    Despite   the   spider-bite   of
missing   a   friend,   nothing   can   mar   a   day   so
earthened.

At the very least, we need to attach user fees to the books that are borrowed most often. This way, the market will signal which books are in demand, and those who choose to spend more of their money will be free to borrow these books.  Otherwise, the rich will continue to suffer the scourge of discrimination at the library; this state cartel is a place where poorer people have the right to read books for free, which robs the more affluent of the right to use their money to secure the best available books.  Libraries will be able to use the revenue from user fees to maintain themselves and will no longer act as wards of the state.

At the same time, libraries need to be free to stock their shelves with books that will maximize their revenue.  Public libraries must follow the market’s demand and offer books that people actually want to read.  Supply and demand is perhaps the free market’s most important function:  it determines what is valuable and what is not.  Due to the nature of reading, there is no objective way for a person to prove which books we can learn more from—we can only see which are most popular within the market.  LibraryJournal.com shows us that, in January 2006, Mireille Guiliano’s book French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure was among the thirty most borrowed books in American libraries.  Meanwhile, not one of Sophocles’ books are in the top 40.  Thus, if an unregulated market shows that more people want to read French Women Don’t Get Fat than Oedipus Rex, then Guiliano must be a better writer than Sophocles.  Otherwise, why would so many people make a personal investment in reading French Women Don’t Get Fat?  The market can judge which books people want to read the most and libraries must be free to offer more copies of these titles, and less of obsolete ones, thereby granting everybody access to the best books.  Removing libraries from the public spectrum will make them more democratic.  The public system is coercive in that it forces people to read lesser books by failing to offer a higher quantity of the best books.  This is Maoism at its worst; it’s the state telling people which books they can read.  Equally troubling is that the American Library Association reports that Americans made 291,476,000 library reference transactions in the year 2000.  That is tantamount to the United States Government having robbed retailers of 291,476,000 transactions; the public library infringes on a retailers’ right to maximize profits.  Imagine the job creation if all, or even most, of these transactions took place in the private sector.

According to the Online Computer Library Centre, furthermore, the United States government spent $12 billion on libraries in 2000, while Americans made only 4.3 visits per capita to the library.  That’s $43 per capita.  In other words, on average, Americans spent $10 every time they simply went to the library that year.  The ALA offers even more alarming information:  Americans averaged only 1.1 library transactions per capita in 2000.  This statistic shows that it essentially cost Americans $43 to take out one book from the library.  In many cases, this is about twice what it would cost to actually buy a book.  It is utterly tyrannical for a government to spend taxpayers’ money on a service that is so grossly inefficient; the state is interfering with its citizens’ per dollar literary consumption.  LibraryJournal.com tells us that the average entry-level salary for library positions is just under $38,000.  These wages are out-of-control and must be reigned-in by market forces.  It is time to stop allowing gluttonous librarians to grow fat off of taxpayer dollars.  The key issue, of course, is that governments use libraries to be paternalistic:  the state takes people’s money and forces them to spend it on books, thus forcing them to pay even when they aren’t reading.  People should be free to spend that money as they choose, even if they choose to not spend it on books.

The National Centre for Education Studies, moreover, shows that libraries in private schools had more than twice as many books per student as public school libraries.  Here we see that a library funded by private money, and subject to competition with other private schools, is able to offer its students many more books than a publicly funded library.  Sceptics will argue that libraries do not prevent people from going into bookstores and buying whichever books they want in any quantity they choose. This argument misses the fundamental points:  that public libraries are wasteful, oppressive, and discriminatory.

Annie moved quickly down the street, dodging in and out of the shadows as best she could. Despite her evident haste, she tried to avoid close contact with passersby, tried to move unnoticed down the street, hunching her darkened figure in an effort to diminish her large frame.  Her wide shoulders were rounded over her stomach, her thick fists jammed in the pockets of her denim jacket.  She kept her head down, the soft folds of her face purposely obscured by the hood of the sweatshirt she wore under her coat.  It began to rain harder, which suggested that her awkward hurry was an attempt to get out of the weather.

But really, Annie was nervous.  Deep in her coat pocket, she fingered the precious package she carried, thumbing the protective Saran Wrap over and over, the slick plastic rebounding gently from the touch of her fingers.  She couldn’t believe it.  It was there, in her pocket.  Soon she would be able to enjoy the fruit of her illicit labor, if she could make it to a secure place.  Frankie had told her about a burned-out apartment building near the projects that was still waiting approval for demolition.  Until it was knocked down, it was the best place to enjoy her black market jewel in peace. If she wasn’t caught first.

Carefully, Annie gripped the package, cradling her precious cargo from being too jostled as she hurried up the cobbled sidewalk.  In her hand, she nestled the soft cake in the flesh of her palm in order to prevent any damage, any squashing imperfection, any loss of cream filling.  Annie couldn’t believe it. There it was, the real thing.  “It oughta be,” she said to herself.  “Cost me a whole regimen’s worth of carbs.”  An actual Hostess Cupcake.  Totally illegal.

The man that sold it to her had sworn up and down that it was authentic.  “Never mind the packaging,” he’d said when he noticed Annie’s hesitation at the plain plastic covering the treat.  “Environmental laws make it hard to get the right kind of cellophane.  But that there, that’s the gen-u-whine article.”

Annie flinched slightly as his pronunciation.  He sounded exactly like a used car salesman, exactly like a fraud.  She was vaguely certain that her money was not going to be well-spent.  But it had been so long.  So long since she had even smelled something as sweet and processed as a Hostess cupcake.  Even if it were a fake, it would be nice to be reminded of what chocolate and sugar tasted like.  It would beat the hell out of the cardboard NutriMeals she ate every day as part of her state-regulated diet.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said.  “Just take care of the switch and lemme get outta here.  I gotta be home for my marriage counselor’s appointment in a couple hours.”

The guy gave her a tight smile and took her debit card.  “It’ll just be a moment, missy.  Just have to exchange these carbs appropriately. Make everything seem nice and legit.  Lessee…  What’s your daily cal count?”