WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.710 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.710 --> 00:00:02.225 align:middle line:90% That's an ordinance. 00:00:02.225 --> 00:00:04.040 align:middle line:84% A flattening of the ground and building 00:00:04.040 --> 00:00:06.350 align:middle line:84% cities on grids of roads laid parallel 00:00:06.350 --> 00:00:08.390 align:middle line:84% and in precise right angles or as 00:00:08.390 --> 00:00:11.573 align:middle line:84% in Washington DC, like spokes extending from a wheel. 00:00:11.573 --> 00:00:13.490 align:middle line:84% As they're building the streets and cities are 00:00:13.490 --> 00:00:15.860 align:middle line:84% mathematical constructs, it comes as no surprise 00:00:15.860 --> 00:00:17.480 align:middle line:90% that our maps of them are. 00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:20.660 align:middle line:84% The road map tells us that our destination lies at G8 00:00:20.660 --> 00:00:21.710 align:middle line:90% and we read across. 00:00:21.710 --> 00:00:24.260 align:middle line:84% And then down we identify the appropriate rectangle, 00:00:24.260 --> 00:00:25.460 align:middle line:90% and we spot it. 00:00:25.460 --> 00:00:27.358 align:middle line:84% If we give the activity a moment's thought, 00:00:27.358 --> 00:00:29.900 align:middle line:84% we're simply grateful someone has taken the trouble to divide 00:00:29.900 --> 00:00:32.299 align:middle line:90% the world up so neatly. 00:00:32.299 --> 00:00:32.900 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:00:32.900 --> 00:00:34.192 align:middle line:90% Here comes the argument, right. 00:00:34.192 --> 00:00:36.200 align:middle line:90% A story is a kind of map. 00:00:36.200 --> 00:00:39.710 align:middle line:84% The oldest extant terrestrial globe dating to 1492 00:00:39.710 --> 00:00:42.565 align:middle line:84% was made by Martin Behaim, who lived in Nuremberg-- 00:00:42.565 --> 00:00:44.690 align:middle line:84% So he probably didn't pronounce his name that way-- 00:00:44.690 --> 00:00:47.553 align:middle line:84% called his globe Erdapfel, or Earth Apple, 00:00:47.553 --> 00:00:49.220 align:middle line:84% although an Earth apple wasn't an apple. 00:00:49.220 --> 00:00:50.540 align:middle line:90% An Earth apple was a potato. 00:00:50.540 --> 00:00:54.140 align:middle line:84% So we've got metaphor after metaphor here. 00:00:54.140 --> 00:00:56.252 align:middle line:84% Even in its roundness a terrestrial globe 00:00:56.252 --> 00:00:57.710 align:middle line:84% is not so much a model of the Earth 00:00:57.710 --> 00:00:59.540 align:middle line:90% as a metaphor for the Earth. 00:00:59.540 --> 00:01:03.290 align:middle line:90% A map is at yet another remove. 00:01:03.290 --> 00:01:06.860 align:middle line:84% The moral of a story is not merely the sum of all the words 00:01:06.860 --> 00:01:09.110 align:middle line:84% we put on a page or on many pages. 00:01:09.110 --> 00:01:11.750 align:middle line:84% When we talk about entering the world of a story as a reader, 00:01:11.750 --> 00:01:14.060 align:middle line:84% we refer to things we picture or imagine 00:01:14.060 --> 00:01:17.120 align:middle line:84% in responses we form to characters to events of which 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:20.390 align:middle line:84% are prompted by but not entirely encompassed by the words 00:01:20.390 --> 00:01:21.560 align:middle line:90% on the page. 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:23.510 align:middle line:84% As writers we know that to be true. 00:01:23.510 --> 00:01:24.890 align:middle line:84% At the moment I'm going to assume everybody in the room 00:01:24.890 --> 00:01:25.460 align:middle line:90% is a writer. 00:01:25.460 --> 00:01:27.455 align:middle line:90% If not, play along. 00:01:27.455 --> 00:01:29.330 align:middle line:84% As writers we know that to be true because we 00:01:29.330 --> 00:01:30.455 align:middle line:90% don't write everything out. 00:01:30.455 --> 00:01:31.880 align:middle line:84% We trust the reader to understand 00:01:31.880 --> 00:01:33.770 align:middle line:84% why a young American man might be 00:01:33.770 --> 00:01:36.470 align:middle line:84% apprehensive to learn that his fiance's work will take her 00:01:36.470 --> 00:01:37.473 align:middle line:90% to Libya-- 00:01:37.473 --> 00:01:38.390 align:middle line:90% we don't explain that. 00:01:38.390 --> 00:01:40.100 align:middle line:84% We understand-- or what is implied 00:01:40.100 --> 00:01:42.320 align:middle line:84% when a narrator says his family's ideal vacation is 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:44.390 align:middle line:90% a weekend at Dollywood. 00:01:44.390 --> 00:01:45.770 align:middle line:84% When a character is making a joke 00:01:45.770 --> 00:01:48.080 align:middle line:84% or when a line is intended to be sarcastic or ironic, 00:01:48.080 --> 00:01:50.150 align:middle line:90% we want our tone to be clear. 00:01:50.150 --> 00:01:53.210 align:middle line:84% But we resist explaining our intention in so many words 00:01:53.210 --> 00:01:56.120 align:middle line:84% since to do so would be to defeat that intention. 00:01:56.120 --> 00:01:59.330 align:middle line:84% We expect, we require the reader to understand 00:01:59.330 --> 00:02:01.370 align:middle line:90% more than we spell out. 00:02:01.370 --> 00:02:03.020 align:middle line:84% So the world of a story is a thing 00:02:03.020 --> 00:02:05.330 align:middle line:84% we create or summon into being for which 00:02:05.330 --> 00:02:08.180 align:middle line:84% the reader participates in creating and understanding. 00:02:08.180 --> 00:02:11.180 align:middle line:84% A story or novel is a kind of map because like a map, 00:02:11.180 --> 00:02:12.530 align:middle line:90% it is not a world. 00:02:12.530 --> 00:02:16.500 align:middle line:84% But it evokes one or at least one for each reader. 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:17.000 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:18.000 align:middle line:90% So a story's like a map. 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:21.445 align:middle line:84% Maps are based on geometry and higher math. 00:02:21.445 --> 00:02:23.570 align:middle line:84% Modern maps that mean to be scientifically accurate 00:02:23.570 --> 00:02:25.280 align:middle line:84% are the product of a complex geometry. 00:02:25.280 --> 00:02:26.810 align:middle line:84% The Earth is not perfectly round. 00:02:26.810 --> 00:02:28.842 align:middle line:84% We can refer to it as an oblique spheroid. 00:02:28.842 --> 00:02:30.800 align:middle line:84% But as anyone who has ever walked up a mountain 00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:32.600 align:middle line:84% or fallen off one can attest, it's 00:02:32.600 --> 00:02:35.030 align:middle line:90% an irregular oblique spheroid. 00:02:35.030 --> 00:02:37.700 align:middle line:84% There is no way to plot points from the lumpy ball we call 00:02:37.700 --> 00:02:40.400 align:middle line:84% Earth on a sheet of flat paper with a uniform degree 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:41.240 align:middle line:90% of accuracy. 00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:45.073 align:middle line:84% There is unavoidably some degree of distortion. 00:02:45.073 --> 00:02:46.490 align:middle line:84% The maps in our glove compartment, 00:02:46.490 --> 00:02:48.980 align:middle line:84% the ones we bought for their accuracy and usefulness, 00:02:48.980 --> 00:02:50.720 align:middle line:84% their clarity, and simplicity lie 00:02:50.720 --> 00:02:55.030 align:middle line:84% on an invisible but essential bed of mathematics. 00:02:55.030 --> 00:02:55.530 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:02:55.530 --> 00:02:57.660 align:middle line:84% Form and fiction, here's a quote from Edgar Allan 00:02:57.660 --> 00:03:00.010 align:middle line:90% Poe who wrote of "The Raven." 00:03:00.010 --> 00:03:01.080 align:middle line:90% You know the poem. 00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:03.840 align:middle line:84% The work preceded step by step to its completion 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:06.030 align:middle line:84% with the precision and rigid consequence 00:03:06.030 --> 00:03:08.610 align:middle line:90% of a mathematical problem. 00:03:08.610 --> 00:03:09.720 align:middle line:90% Form and fiction. 00:03:09.720 --> 00:03:11.377 align:middle line:84% If a story is a kind of map and maps 00:03:11.377 --> 00:03:13.710 align:middle line:84% are created through the use of projections or distortion 00:03:13.710 --> 00:03:16.680 align:middle line:84% formulas, what are the analogous projections or distortion 00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:19.410 align:middle line:84% formulas for fiction and on what sort of geometry are they 00:03:19.410 --> 00:03:20.922 align:middle line:90% based? 00:03:20.922 --> 00:03:22.380 align:middle line:84% Contemporary fiction is essentially 00:03:22.380 --> 00:03:24.390 align:middle line:90% without defined forms. 00:03:24.390 --> 00:03:27.060 align:middle line:84% We have the story, the novella, and the novel, the short short, 00:03:27.060 --> 00:03:29.102 align:middle line:84% the long story, the novellete, and the novellini. 00:03:29.102 --> 00:03:32.040 align:middle line:84% I think Bob used to have that cartoon on his door. 00:03:32.040 --> 00:03:34.668 align:middle line:84% But those terms describe only length. 00:03:34.668 --> 00:03:36.960 align:middle line:84% While the novella may once had been more fully defined, 00:03:36.960 --> 00:03:38.610 align:middle line:84% right, it was originally a German form, 00:03:38.610 --> 00:03:42.300 align:middle line:84% and it had thematic concerns and a much more narrow page length. 00:03:42.300 --> 00:03:44.550 align:middle line:84% These days, it's really just a piece of fiction that's 00:03:44.550 --> 00:03:45.850 align:middle line:90% almost impossible to publish. 00:03:45.850 --> 00:03:46.350 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:03:46.350 --> 00:03:49.920 align:middle line:84% It's some awkward length between 30 and 120 pages. 00:03:49.920 --> 00:03:53.220 align:middle line:84% Essentially the forms of fiction are small, medium, and large. 00:03:53.220 --> 00:03:55.410 align:middle line:84% A story can imitate other kinds of writing. 00:03:55.410 --> 00:03:56.910 align:middle line:84% And so it can take the form we might 00:03:56.910 --> 00:04:00.200 align:middle line:84% say of a letter, a myth, a condemned man's journal, 00:04:00.200 --> 00:04:03.000 align:middle line:84% a scrapbook, an instruction manual for a photocopier. 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:05.220 align:middle line:84% I've read the stories that do all those things. 00:04:05.220 --> 00:04:07.950 align:middle line:84% But such imitative forms are very loosely defined. 00:04:07.950 --> 00:04:10.800 align:middle line:84% We don't talk about formal fiction versus free fiction 00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:13.560 align:middle line:84% the way poets talk about free verse and forms. 00:04:13.560 --> 00:04:15.300 align:middle line:84% We may talk about the episodic novel. 00:04:15.300 --> 00:04:17.910 align:middle line:84% The buildings remain the picaresque and so forth. 00:04:17.910 --> 00:04:20.130 align:middle line:84% But those terms don't describe the shape or size 00:04:20.130 --> 00:04:22.620 align:middle line:84% of a narrative in any kind of detail. 00:04:22.620 --> 00:04:26.130 align:middle line:84% Yet writers from Aristotle to Flaubert to Flannery O'Connor 00:04:26.130 --> 00:04:28.290 align:middle line:84% have argued that form is essential. 00:04:28.290 --> 00:04:31.620 align:middle line:84% And fiction writers have no defined forms to choose from. 00:04:31.620 --> 00:04:33.930 align:middle line:90% Woe is us. 00:04:33.930 --> 00:04:36.120 align:middle line:84% Some fiction writers then invent forms. 00:04:36.120 --> 00:04:37.650 align:middle line:90% One example is the Oulipo. 00:04:37.650 --> 00:04:40.980 align:middle line:84% Do y'all know about the Oulipo, the French group? 00:04:40.980 --> 00:04:42.900 align:middle line:84% Or the workshop of potential literature, 00:04:42.900 --> 00:04:44.880 align:middle line:90% began in Europe in 1960. 00:04:44.880 --> 00:04:46.560 align:middle line:90% Members of the Oulipo-- 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:47.340 align:middle line:90% it still exists. 00:04:47.340 --> 00:04:48.930 align:middle line:90% I have correspondence with them. 00:04:48.930 --> 00:04:50.700 align:middle line:84% --are interested in investigating 00:04:50.700 --> 00:04:53.880 align:middle line:84% scientific ways of generating poems, stories, and novels 00:04:53.880 --> 00:04:56.730 align:middle line:84% or what they call, the systematic application of text 00:04:56.730 --> 00:04:58.470 align:middle line:90% generating methods. 00:04:58.470 --> 00:05:02.700 align:middle line:84% In his second manifesto, François Le Lionnais writes, 00:05:02.700 --> 00:05:05.790 align:middle line:84% "the activity of the Oulipo and the mission it is entrusted 00:05:05.790 --> 00:05:09.030 align:middle line:84% to itself raise the problem of the efficacy and the viability 00:05:09.030 --> 00:05:12.750 align:middle line:84% of artificial and more generally artistic, literary structures." 00:05:12.750 --> 00:05:14.430 align:middle line:84% The efficacy of a structure, that 00:05:14.430 --> 00:05:16.140 align:middle line:84% is the extent to which it helps a writer, 00:05:16.140 --> 00:05:18.330 align:middle line:84% depends primarily on the degree of difficulty 00:05:18.330 --> 00:05:21.450 align:middle line:84% imposed by rules that are more or less constraining. 00:05:21.450 --> 00:05:23.820 align:middle line:84% Most writers and readers feel or pretend 00:05:23.820 --> 00:05:26.580 align:middle line:84% to feel that extremely constraining structures are 00:05:26.580 --> 00:05:30.240 align:middle line:84% mere examples of acrobatics and deserve nothing more than a wry 00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:32.340 align:middle line:84% grin since they could never help to engender 00:05:32.340 --> 00:05:34.500 align:middle line:90% truly valid works of art. 00:05:34.500 --> 00:05:36.210 align:middle line:84% At the other extreme, there's the refusal 00:05:36.210 --> 00:05:39.150 align:middle line:84% of all constraint, shriek literature, 00:05:39.150 --> 00:05:40.860 align:middle line:90% like the dada right. 00:05:40.860 --> 00:05:42.925 align:middle line:84% Between these two poles exists a whole range 00:05:42.925 --> 00:05:44.550 align:middle line:84% of more or less constraining structures 00:05:44.550 --> 00:05:46.440 align:middle line:84% which have been the object of numerous experiments 00:05:46.440 --> 00:05:49.140 align:middle line:84% since the invention of language, primarily in poetry but also 00:05:49.140 --> 00:05:52.380 align:middle line:84% in song and other forms, certainly in drama. 00:05:52.380 --> 00:05:54.690 align:middle line:84% The Oulipo holds very strongly to the conviction 00:05:54.690 --> 00:05:57.730 align:middle line:84% that one might envision many, many more of these. 00:05:57.730 --> 00:05:58.230 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:05:58.230 --> 00:06:00.720 align:middle line:84% So if you don't know this, a few of the constraints that Oulipo 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:01.950 align:middle line:84% has yielded-- and they get together. 00:06:01.950 --> 00:06:03.270 align:middle line:84% They have meetings, I think, twice a year. 00:06:03.270 --> 00:06:04.380 align:middle line:84% They had a big meeting in New York. 00:06:04.380 --> 00:06:06.420 align:middle line:84% And it was written up in the "Believer," a year 00:06:06.420 --> 00:06:09.510 align:middle line:84% or two ago, very funny, an interesting article. 00:06:09.510 --> 00:06:11.940 align:middle line:84% But they're primarily interested in creating 00:06:11.940 --> 00:06:16.770 align:middle line:84% methods of generating text, not so much in generating texts. 00:06:16.770 --> 00:06:19.680 align:middle line:84% It's a bunch of eccentric guys, scientists, writers, painters, 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:20.610 align:middle line:90% all kinds of people. 00:06:20.610 --> 00:06:22.610 align:middle line:84% A few of the constraints that Oulipo has yielded 00:06:22.610 --> 00:06:25.050 align:middle line:84% include the Belle Absente, a form of acrostic encoding 00:06:25.050 --> 00:06:26.550 align:middle line:84% in which the letters of a given name 00:06:26.550 --> 00:06:30.150 align:middle line:84% are the only letters not used in the text. 00:06:30.150 --> 00:06:32.190 align:middle line:84% The cento, a text composed entirely 00:06:32.190 --> 00:06:34.440 align:middle line:90% of passages from other texts. 00:06:34.440 --> 00:06:37.200 align:middle line:84% Eye-rhymes, a poetic form in which the inner rhymes 00:06:37.200 --> 00:06:40.980 align:middle line:84% are visual, not sonic, such as no and now 00:06:40.980 --> 00:06:43.530 align:middle line:90% or Kansas and Arkansas. 00:06:43.530 --> 00:06:46.500 align:middle line:84% They look like rhymes, but they don't sound like rhymes. 00:06:46.500 --> 00:06:49.740 align:middle line:84% The heterogram, a text in which no letter is repeated, 00:06:49.740 --> 00:06:52.011 align:middle line:90% short text, hey. 00:06:52.011 --> 00:06:55.350 align:middle line:84% The lipogram a text in which a given letter does not appear 00:06:55.350 --> 00:06:56.868 align:middle line:84% and various replacement formulae. 00:06:56.868 --> 00:06:58.410 align:middle line:84% For instance, a poem might be created 00:06:58.410 --> 00:07:00.240 align:middle line:84% by taking a currently existing poem 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:03.690 align:middle line:84% and replacing each word with, say, the 11th word following 00:07:03.690 --> 00:07:05.670 align:middle line:84% the given word in a particular dictionary 00:07:05.670 --> 00:07:08.065 align:middle line:84% or a cookbook or an auto repair manual. 00:07:08.065 --> 00:07:08.940 align:middle line:90% They do these things. 00:07:08.940 --> 00:07:13.260 align:middle line:84% You can read collections of work by the Oulipo, 00:07:13.260 --> 00:07:15.300 align:middle line:90% well, if you dare. 00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:18.117 align:middle line:84% The most famous lipogram is George Perec's novel "A Void." 00:07:18.117 --> 00:07:19.950 align:middle line:84% Probably some of you have read that, a novel 00:07:19.950 --> 00:07:21.367 align:middle line:84% famous for the fact that it avoids 00:07:21.367 --> 00:07:24.680 align:middle line:84% the letter E, which would be the one most difficult to avoid. 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:27.180 align:middle line:84% Another product of the workshop, which I particularly enjoy, 00:07:27.180 --> 00:07:30.095 align:middle line:84% is Italo Calvino's "On a winter's night, a traveler." 00:07:30.095 --> 00:07:33.280 align:middle line:90% 00:07:33.280 --> 00:07:35.360 align:middle line:84% Calvino's essay about composing that book, 00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:37.990 align:middle line:84% which is in one of the Oulipo primers, 00:07:37.990 --> 00:07:41.230 align:middle line:84% includes a diagram of part of its structure. 00:07:41.230 --> 00:07:42.280 align:middle line:90% And he had this diagram. 00:07:42.280 --> 00:07:45.770 align:middle line:84% He wrote every other chapter to conform to it. 00:07:45.770 --> 00:07:48.580 align:middle line:84% I personally cannot imagine such a thing, but there you go. 00:07:48.580 --> 00:07:49.960 align:middle line:84% The writers in the Oulipo believe 00:07:49.960 --> 00:07:52.960 align:middle line:84% constraints can inspire writers to be creative in new ways. 00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:55.420 align:middle line:84% They believe constraints can lead to a kind of freedom. 00:07:55.420 --> 00:07:58.060 align:middle line:84% They're joined by artists as diverse 00:07:58.060 --> 00:08:00.850 align:middle line:84% as Igor Stravinsky who said, "the more constraints one 00:08:00.850 --> 00:08:03.880 align:middle line:84% imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that 00:08:03.880 --> 00:08:05.320 align:middle line:90% shackle the spirit. 00:08:05.320 --> 00:08:07.720 align:middle line:84% The arbitrariness of the constraint only serves 00:08:07.720 --> 00:08:10.060 align:middle line:84% to obtain precision of execution" 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:13.300 align:middle line:84% and Paul Valéry who said, "my delight is in precision. 00:08:13.300 --> 00:08:16.510 align:middle line:84% I feel myself putting on chains to free myself, 00:08:16.510 --> 00:08:19.180 align:middle line:90% taking my own form." 00:08:19.180 --> 00:08:21.220 align:middle line:84% Poets continue to use forms hundreds even 00:08:21.220 --> 00:08:23.800 align:middle line:84% thousands of years old and a discussion of Elizabeth 00:08:23.800 --> 00:08:29.380 align:middle line:84% Bishop's revisions of One Art, that poem, Ellen Bryant Voigt 00:08:29.380 --> 00:08:31.960 align:middle line:84% suggests how they provide artistic opportunity, 00:08:31.960 --> 00:08:34.120 align:middle line:84% Ellen wrote in her essay on that poem. 00:08:34.120 --> 00:08:36.669 align:middle line:84% Bishop's biographers can't quite translate 00:08:36.669 --> 00:08:38.530 align:middle line:84% for the general reader the extent 00:08:38.530 --> 00:08:41.200 align:middle line:84% to which the working poet sees in initial drafts 00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:42.490 align:middle line:90% a formal challenge. 00:08:42.490 --> 00:08:45.700 align:middle line:84% The essential problems presented by this draft center on tone 00:08:45.700 --> 00:08:47.860 align:middle line:84% and the high degree of repetition. 00:08:47.860 --> 00:08:49.720 align:middle line:84% Bishop's response, the discipline 00:08:49.720 --> 00:08:53.140 align:middle line:84% of an existing traditional form that converts reiteration 00:08:53.140 --> 00:08:54.580 align:middle line:90% into refrain. 00:08:54.580 --> 00:08:56.560 align:middle line:84% By the next draft, Bishop is committed 00:08:56.560 --> 00:08:59.620 align:middle line:84% to the villanelle with a secure opening and recurrent line. 00:08:59.620 --> 00:09:03.700 align:middle line:84% Now the work will have purpose and focus. 00:09:03.700 --> 00:09:05.920 align:middle line:84% All of this may sound foreign to those who believe 00:09:05.920 --> 00:09:08.560 align:middle line:84% in the essential role of impulse intuition, good fortune, 00:09:08.560 --> 00:09:11.410 align:middle line:84% the muse, the subconscious, or whatever we call the source we 00:09:11.410 --> 00:09:13.750 align:middle line:90% call on but cannot control. 00:09:13.750 --> 00:09:16.150 align:middle line:84% Embracing form requires an appreciation 00:09:16.150 --> 00:09:18.400 align:middle line:84% of the pure products of the mind an eye 00:09:18.400 --> 00:09:22.270 align:middle line:84% for the beauty of, say, a mathematical proof. 00:09:22.270 --> 00:09:24.040 align:middle line:84% So one of the tensions of our day 00:09:24.040 --> 00:09:25.720 align:middle line:84% and much of the last century really 00:09:25.720 --> 00:09:28.990 align:middle line:84% is that between realists who see all the material they'll ever 00:09:28.990 --> 00:09:31.240 align:middle line:84% need in simulations and considerations of people's 00:09:31.240 --> 00:09:34.305 align:middle line:84% lives and others modernists but also magical realists, 00:09:34.305 --> 00:09:36.190 align:middle line:84% metafictionists, hypertextualists 00:09:36.190 --> 00:09:39.340 align:middle line:84% who feel realism has done what it can do. 00:09:39.340 --> 00:09:43.570 align:middle line:84% In his famous essay, the Literature Exhaustion. 00:09:43.570 --> 00:09:45.850 align:middle line:90% Does anybody remember "64?" 00:09:45.850 --> 00:09:47.500 align:middle line:90% It was in the '60s. 00:09:47.500 --> 00:09:50.410 align:middle line:84% Barth wrote that anybody writing in the realistic tradition 00:09:50.410 --> 00:09:52.900 align:middle line:84% was essentially writing 19th century fiction. 00:09:52.900 --> 00:09:55.972 align:middle line:84% And then he backed up and wrote a reply 00:09:55.972 --> 00:09:57.430 align:middle line:84% in the literature of replenishment. 00:09:57.430 --> 00:09:58.972 align:middle line:84% But there are many people who believe 00:09:58.972 --> 00:10:00.668 align:middle line:90% the same thing that to write-- 00:10:00.668 --> 00:10:01.210 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:10:01.210 --> 00:10:03.340 align:middle line:84% For Rick Russo to write another Rick Russo novel 00:10:03.340 --> 00:10:06.070 align:middle line:84% is for Rick Russo to be writing Dickens. 00:10:06.070 --> 00:10:09.910 align:middle line:84% And in essence it's to be reworking the past. 00:10:09.910 --> 00:10:11.500 align:middle line:84% The writers in the Oulipo and people 00:10:11.500 --> 00:10:13.542 align:middle line:84% like them believe constraints can inspire writers 00:10:13.542 --> 00:10:14.830 align:middle line:90% to be creative in new ways. 00:10:14.830 --> 00:10:17.740 align:middle line:84% They believe constraints can lead to a kind of freedom. 00:10:17.740 --> 00:10:20.050 align:middle line:84% They're joined as I said by artists as diverse 00:10:20.050 --> 00:10:23.200 align:middle line:84% as Stravinsky and Paul Valéry, also people like Elizabeth 00:10:23.200 --> 00:10:24.730 align:middle line:90% Bishop. 00:10:24.730 --> 00:10:28.150 align:middle line:84% So there's a tension between realist and the postmodernist 00:10:28.150 --> 00:10:29.710 align:middle line:90% and experimentalist. 00:10:29.710 --> 00:10:33.190 align:middle line:84% Realists tend to say that work like this is cold 00:10:33.190 --> 00:10:37.060 align:middle line:84% or is overdetermined, is lifeless, is too intellectual, 00:10:37.060 --> 00:10:38.720 align:middle line:84% somehow not have emotional resonance. 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:41.960 align:middle line:84% And it's missing a lot of what they love in literature. 00:10:41.960 --> 00:10:44.560 align:middle line:90% Art they say is reduced to idea. 00:10:44.560 --> 00:10:46.935 align:middle line:84% A design is everything the debate between the two 00:10:46.935 --> 00:10:48.310 align:middle line:84% is useful, I think, to the extent 00:10:48.310 --> 00:10:51.400 align:middle line:84% that it helps us to recognize like minded fellow artists 00:10:51.400 --> 00:10:53.950 align:middle line:84% and just as important to understand and consider 00:10:53.950 --> 00:10:56.890 align:middle line:84% what other people are doing so that we can define and develop 00:10:56.890 --> 00:10:58.510 align:middle line:84% our own practice or if we're reading 00:10:58.510 --> 00:10:59.968 align:middle line:84% to try to understand why people are 00:10:59.968 --> 00:11:01.870 align:middle line:90% doing these different things. 00:11:01.870 --> 00:11:05.350 align:middle line:84% According to Milan Kundera, "two centuries," he says, 00:11:05.350 --> 00:11:08.620 align:middle line:84% "of psychological realism have created some nearly inviolable 00:11:08.620 --> 00:11:09.580 align:middle line:90% standards." 00:11:09.580 --> 00:11:11.750 align:middle line:84% A writer must give the maximum amount of information 00:11:11.750 --> 00:11:13.750 align:middle line:84% about a character, about his appearance, his way 00:11:13.750 --> 00:11:15.550 align:middle line:90% of speaking and behaving. 00:11:15.550 --> 00:11:17.740 align:middle line:84% He must let the reader know a character's past 00:11:17.740 --> 00:11:19.907 align:middle line:84% because that's where all the motives of his behavior 00:11:19.907 --> 00:11:20.607 align:middle line:90% are located. 00:11:20.607 --> 00:11:22.690 align:middle line:84% And the character must have complete independence. 00:11:22.690 --> 00:11:24.760 align:middle line:84% That is, the author with his own considerations 00:11:24.760 --> 00:11:27.460 align:middle line:84% must disappear so as not to disturb the reader who 00:11:27.460 --> 00:11:29.260 align:middle line:84% wants to give himself over to illusion 00:11:29.260 --> 00:11:31.750 align:middle line:84% and take the fiction for reality. 00:11:31.750 --> 00:11:34.990 align:middle line:84% But a character is not a simulation of a living being. 00:11:34.990 --> 00:11:38.440 align:middle line:84% It's an imaginary being, an experimental self. 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:41.890 align:middle line:84% Understand me, I don't mean to scorn the reader in his desire, 00:11:41.890 --> 00:11:44.470 align:middle line:84% as naive as it is legitimate, to be carried away 00:11:44.470 --> 00:11:48.160 align:middle line:84% by the novel's imaginary world and to confuse it with reality. 00:11:48.160 --> 00:11:53.070 align:middle line:84% But I don't see that technique as indispensable for that. 00:11:53.070 --> 00:11:56.160 align:middle line:84% When we read a realistic novel, we make believe the characters 00:11:56.160 --> 00:11:58.470 align:middle line:90% in places described to exist. 00:11:58.470 --> 00:12:00.600 align:middle line:84% It isn't just that we can imagine the world created 00:12:00.600 --> 00:12:02.370 align:middle line:84% through words, the power of tales 00:12:02.370 --> 00:12:04.690 align:middle line:84% is that we want to enter their world. 00:12:04.690 --> 00:12:06.690 align:middle line:84% We're engaging in an act similar to the one that 00:12:06.690 --> 00:12:08.820 align:middle line:84% allows us to look at, say, a Monet painting 00:12:08.820 --> 00:12:13.050 align:middle line:84% and see water lilies and not oil stains on a canvas. 00:12:13.050 --> 00:12:15.810 align:middle line:84% While Kundera sees this as naive and others may call it 00:12:15.810 --> 00:12:18.510 align:middle line:84% a romantic act of denial or self-deception, 00:12:18.510 --> 00:12:20.370 align:middle line:84% the ability and inclination is essential 00:12:20.370 --> 00:12:22.613 align:middle line:90% to imaginative understanding. 00:12:22.613 --> 00:12:24.030 align:middle line:84% Post realistic work, which is what 00:12:24.030 --> 00:12:25.680 align:middle line:84% I'm going to call all that other stuff, 00:12:25.680 --> 00:12:28.260 align:middle line:84% work beyond or in response to realism in one way 00:12:28.260 --> 00:12:30.660 align:middle line:84% or another simply asks us to imagine 00:12:30.660 --> 00:12:32.100 align:middle line:90% other ways of imagining. 00:12:32.100 --> 00:12:33.870 align:middle line:84% Some of it draws the reader's attention 00:12:33.870 --> 00:12:36.300 align:middle line:84% to the artificial nature of its construction, 00:12:36.300 --> 00:12:38.280 align:middle line:90% right, metafiction. 00:12:38.280 --> 00:12:40.080 align:middle line:84% Jorge Luis Borges's stories, like Nabokov's 00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:42.720 align:middle line:84% and Calvino's novels, are intricately mapped, as 00:12:42.720 --> 00:12:44.760 align:middle line:84% carefully explored played and designed 00:12:44.760 --> 00:12:46.470 align:middle line:84% as their metaphoric labyrinth chess 00:12:46.470 --> 00:12:48.420 align:middle line:90% games and invisible cities. 00:12:48.420 --> 00:12:51.840 align:middle line:84% At the same time, explicitly or implicitly post realism 00:12:51.840 --> 00:12:54.510 align:middle line:84% takes as its subject our ability to imagine ourselves 00:12:54.510 --> 00:12:58.680 align:middle line:84% in a world created entirely by the placement of ink on a page. 00:12:58.680 --> 00:13:00.570 align:middle line:90% John Barth. 00:13:00.570 --> 00:13:03.570 align:middle line:84% Lost in the funhouse provides a simple metaphorically potent 00:13:03.570 --> 00:13:04.110 align:middle line:90% narrative. 00:13:04.110 --> 00:13:06.480 align:middle line:84% A boy's trip to a boardwalk amusement park 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:09.450 align:middle line:84% as the spines to which are attached countless asides 00:13:09.450 --> 00:13:11.730 align:middle line:84% discussing the techniques and conventions of fiction 00:13:11.730 --> 00:13:15.600 align:middle line:84% and so engages us both in the world of the story, the story 00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:17.640 align:middle line:84% of that guy going to the boardwalk and that 00:13:17.640 --> 00:13:21.450 align:middle line:84% of a playful essay or even better in some new world one 00:13:21.450 --> 00:13:25.050 align:middle line:84% that includes them both as well as the space in between. 00:13:25.050 --> 00:13:27.900 align:middle line:84% "Let's pretend to believe in that," the work says to us. 00:13:27.900 --> 00:13:29.610 align:middle line:84% But let's remember we're pretending, 00:13:29.610 --> 00:13:31.260 align:middle line:84% which is a stance that John Barth has 00:13:31.260 --> 00:13:32.550 align:middle line:90% again and again in his work. 00:13:32.550 --> 00:13:34.633 align:middle line:84% Right, he's always talking to us about the fiction 00:13:34.633 --> 00:13:37.110 align:middle line:84% and then trying to re-engage us in the fiction. 00:13:37.110 --> 00:13:39.810 align:middle line:84% Kundera puts it this way, "a novel examines 00:13:39.810 --> 00:13:41.820 align:middle line:90% not reality but existence." 00:13:41.820 --> 00:13:44.010 align:middle line:84% And existence isn't what has occurred. 00:13:44.010 --> 00:13:46.680 align:middle line:84% Existence is the realm of human possibility, 00:13:46.680 --> 00:13:50.460 align:middle line:84% everything that man can become, everything he's capable. 00:13:50.460 --> 00:13:52.470 align:middle line:84% Novelists draw up the map of existence 00:13:52.470 --> 00:13:55.410 align:middle line:84% by discovering this or that human possibility. 00:13:55.410 --> 00:13:57.870 align:middle line:90% The Kafkan world, Franz Kafka. 00:13:57.870 --> 00:14:00.870 align:middle line:84% The Kafkan world does not resemble any known reality. 00:14:00.870 --> 00:14:06.070 align:middle line:84% It's an extreme and unrealized possibility of the human world. 00:14:06.070 --> 00:14:07.650 align:middle line:90% All right, an example. 00:14:07.650 --> 00:14:10.440 align:middle line:84% Have many of you read "Arctic Dreams," the Barry Lopez book? 00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:12.720 align:middle line:84% There's a striking illustration in that book. 00:14:12.720 --> 00:14:17.460 align:middle line:84% And it's an illustration of part of the coastline of Alaska. 00:14:17.460 --> 00:14:19.680 align:middle line:84% And it's drawn by a fisherman who had never been 00:14:19.680 --> 00:14:21.600 align:middle line:90% in a helicopter or a plane. 00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:24.300 align:middle line:84% And he puts it next to a map made 00:14:24.300 --> 00:14:25.710 align:middle line:90% of the coast line of Alaska. 00:14:25.710 --> 00:14:28.200 align:middle line:84% And the remarkable thing is how similar 00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:31.110 align:middle line:84% the two are although, obviously, the fisherman had never 00:14:31.110 --> 00:14:35.610 align:middle line:84% had that view, instead he had to project imaginatively 00:14:35.610 --> 00:14:37.680 align:middle line:90% that perspective onto the page. 00:14:37.680 --> 00:14:40.500 align:middle line:84% And he was able to do it fairly successfully. 00:14:40.500 --> 00:14:42.960 align:middle line:84% "The map presents us with the reality we know," 00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:45.870 align:middle line:84% Denis Wood says, "as differentiated from the reality 00:14:45.870 --> 00:14:47.850 align:middle line:90% we see and hear and feel. 00:14:47.850 --> 00:14:50.250 align:middle line:84% Similarly as writers, were able to, 00:14:50.250 --> 00:14:53.670 align:middle line:84% we need to project ourselves so we can recreate what 00:14:53.670 --> 00:14:56.010 align:middle line:84% we may have never actually seen or experienced 00:14:56.010 --> 00:14:57.210 align:middle line:90% but can imagine." 00:14:57.210 --> 00:15:00.380 align:middle line:84% That's what science fiction is all about, among other things. 00:15:00.380 --> 00:15:01.380 align:middle line:90% I could have been cruel. 00:15:01.380 --> 00:15:02.760 align:middle line:84% And so that's what romance novels are all about. 00:15:02.760 --> 00:15:04.760 align:middle line:84% But no, that's what science fiction's all about. 00:15:04.760 --> 00:15:06.960 align:middle line:84% Kafka presents readers with the reality he knew. 00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:08.280 align:middle line:90% And readers recognize it. 00:15:08.280 --> 00:15:10.950 align:middle line:84% Something similar happened when Calvino read Borges. 00:15:10.950 --> 00:15:13.620 align:middle line:84% Calvino said, "the major reason for my affinity with him 00:15:13.620 --> 00:15:18.300 align:middle line:84% is my recognizing in Borges of an idea of literature 00:15:18.300 --> 00:15:21.030 align:middle line:84% as a world constructed and governed by the intellect. 00:15:21.030 --> 00:15:22.830 align:middle line:84% This is an idea that goes against the grain 00:15:22.830 --> 00:15:24.288 align:middle line:84% of the main run of world literature 00:15:24.288 --> 00:15:26.880 align:middle line:84% in this century, which means in the opposite direction, aiming 00:15:26.880 --> 00:15:29.088 align:middle line:84% to provide us with the equivalent of the chaotic flow 00:15:29.088 --> 00:15:30.660 align:middle line:90% of existence and language. 00:15:30.660 --> 00:15:33.240 align:middle line:84% But there is also a tendency in 20th century literature, 00:15:33.240 --> 00:15:35.640 align:middle line:84% a minority tendency which champions 00:15:35.640 --> 00:15:39.120 align:middle line:84% the victory of mental order over the chaos of the world. 00:15:39.120 --> 00:15:41.370 align:middle line:84% The discovery of Borges was for me 00:15:41.370 --> 00:15:43.380 align:middle line:84% like seeing a potentiality that had always 00:15:43.380 --> 00:15:46.860 align:middle line:84% been toyed with now being realized, seeing a world being 00:15:46.860 --> 00:15:50.010 align:middle line:84% formed in the image and shape of the spaces of the intellect 00:15:50.010 --> 00:15:52.980 align:middle line:84% and inhabited by a constellation of signs 00:15:52.980 --> 00:15:57.540 align:middle line:84% that obey a rigorous geometry, Calvino on Borges." 00:15:57.540 --> 00:15:59.460 align:middle line:84% Calvina also read Galileo and wrote 00:15:59.460 --> 00:16:02.850 align:middle line:84% about the astronomer's notion of a mathematical alphabet, 00:16:02.850 --> 00:16:06.030 align:middle line:84% the Renaissance key to unlocking the universe. 00:16:06.030 --> 00:16:07.980 align:middle line:84% The goal of post-realistic work is not 00:16:07.980 --> 00:16:10.020 align:middle line:84% to reduce the universe any more than Galileo 00:16:10.020 --> 00:16:11.010 align:middle line:90% wanted to reduce it. 00:16:11.010 --> 00:16:12.810 align:middle line:84% Rather like that astronomer, it aims 00:16:12.810 --> 00:16:15.440 align:middle line:90% to find a way to understand it. 00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:15.940 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:16:15.940 --> 00:16:17.895 align:middle line:90% So back to the sticking point. 00:16:17.895 --> 00:16:19.020 align:middle line:90% Maybe some of this is true. 00:16:19.020 --> 00:16:22.740 align:middle line:84% But what if you just don't enjoy reading that fiction? 00:16:22.740 --> 00:16:24.490 align:middle line:84% What if you don't enjoy thinking that way. 00:16:24.490 --> 00:16:26.620 align:middle line:84% What if you don't enjoy that level of abstraction. 00:16:26.620 --> 00:16:28.080 align:middle line:84% Well, if you don't enjoy it, I mean, you don't enjoy it. 00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:29.580 align:middle line:84% There's nothing to be said about it. 00:16:29.580 --> 00:16:32.310 align:middle line:84% But it is interesting to consider that all of us 00:16:32.310 --> 00:16:35.160 align:middle line:84% operate in the world of that sort of abstraction 00:16:35.160 --> 00:16:37.770 align:middle line:84% in different ways and sometimes without being the least 00:16:37.770 --> 00:16:39.660 align:middle line:90% bit aware of. 00:16:39.660 --> 00:16:45.020 align:middle line:84% This is the board for the game, Risk, which 00:16:45.020 --> 00:16:46.313 align:middle line:90% I assume some of you played. 00:16:46.313 --> 00:16:47.730 align:middle line:84% Or at least you've been in a house 00:16:47.730 --> 00:16:51.968 align:middle line:84% where somebody or some six guys were playing it at length. 00:16:51.968 --> 00:16:54.510 align:middle line:84% And this is a map of the world although it's a strange world. 00:16:54.510 --> 00:16:57.727 align:middle line:84% You notice the United States is divided in half, East and West. 00:16:57.727 --> 00:17:00.060 align:middle line:84% And there are all sorts of oddities about the Risk board 00:17:00.060 --> 00:17:01.685 align:middle line:84% and what countries you know because you 00:17:01.685 --> 00:17:04.597 align:middle line:84% played Risk and the strange shape the world takes. 00:17:04.597 --> 00:17:06.180 align:middle line:84% But if you look at that, certainly you 00:17:06.180 --> 00:17:08.160 align:middle line:84% understand it as a map of the world. 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:10.290 align:middle line:84% And you know you're playing for world domination. 00:17:10.290 --> 00:17:11.498 align:middle line:90% And you can make sense of it. 00:17:11.498 --> 00:17:13.800 align:middle line:90% You can get right to your fun. 00:17:13.800 --> 00:17:16.829 align:middle line:84% This is a game that's probably played by even more people, 00:17:16.829 --> 00:17:17.585 align:middle line:90% I'm guessing. 00:17:17.585 --> 00:17:18.960 align:middle line:84% But I assume by even more people, 00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:22.290 align:middle line:90% but the map is even stranger. 00:17:22.290 --> 00:17:23.910 align:middle line:84% I mean, the game board for Monopoly 00:17:23.910 --> 00:17:25.932 align:middle line:90% is a map of Atlantic City. 00:17:25.932 --> 00:17:28.140 align:middle line:84% Hardly anybody thinks of it as a map of Atlantic City 00:17:28.140 --> 00:17:29.550 align:middle line:90% because it's so idealized. 00:17:29.550 --> 00:17:31.047 align:middle line:90% It's so abstracted. 00:17:31.047 --> 00:17:32.880 align:middle line:84% But when you sit down to play and you think, 00:17:32.880 --> 00:17:33.885 align:middle line:90% OK, I'm in a city. 00:17:33.885 --> 00:17:35.760 align:middle line:84% I mean, there are other versions of the game. 00:17:35.760 --> 00:17:37.110 align:middle line:84% But the tradition is Atlantic City. 00:17:37.110 --> 00:17:37.830 align:middle line:90% I'm in the city. 00:17:37.830 --> 00:17:38.730 align:middle line:90% I'm buying streets. 00:17:38.730 --> 00:17:39.540 align:middle line:90% I'm buying real estate. 00:17:39.540 --> 00:17:40.410 align:middle line:90% I'm building houses. 00:17:40.410 --> 00:17:41.580 align:middle line:90% I can buy water works. 00:17:41.580 --> 00:17:43.260 align:middle line:90% You can think of it as a city. 00:17:43.260 --> 00:17:45.510 align:middle line:84% You can move around it and grasp the strange rules 00:17:45.510 --> 00:17:46.920 align:middle line:90% of moving around the city. 00:17:46.920 --> 00:17:48.973 align:middle line:84% And the board, I mean, there probably 00:17:48.973 --> 00:17:51.390 align:middle line:84% are not very many games in the 20th century that have been 00:17:51.390 --> 00:17:53.270 align:middle line:90% more successful than Monopoly. 00:17:53.270 --> 00:17:56.040 align:middle line:84% There's probably a University of Arizonopoly. 00:17:56.040 --> 00:17:57.310 align:middle line:90% It's everywhere. 00:17:57.310 --> 00:17:58.920 align:middle line:84% So it's a game virtually everybody 00:17:58.920 --> 00:18:00.930 align:middle line:84% can understand and play even though that's 00:18:00.930 --> 00:18:02.100 align:middle line:90% a very strange map. 00:18:02.100 --> 00:18:05.070 align:middle line:84% This would be a terrible map for a tourist in Atlantic City 00:18:05.070 --> 00:18:07.050 align:middle line:84% even in the year the game was made. 00:18:07.050 --> 00:18:08.820 align:middle line:84% But it's a tremendously useful map 00:18:08.820 --> 00:18:12.600 align:middle line:84% for this particular movement around an idealized city. 00:18:12.600 --> 00:18:15.060 align:middle line:84% All right, stranger still more abstract. 00:18:15.060 --> 00:18:17.490 align:middle line:84% Let's say for a moment that that's a chessboard. 00:18:17.490 --> 00:18:19.440 align:middle line:84% Remember a chessboard is the territory 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:22.440 align:middle line:84% of two equal kingdoms, two equal kingdoms at war. 00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:27.600 align:middle line:84% And their people are represented by these odd tokens, a night, 00:18:27.600 --> 00:18:29.280 align:middle line:84% a rook, a pawn, all that, which are 00:18:29.280 --> 00:18:31.590 align:middle line:84% given different power, which kind of equate to what 00:18:31.590 --> 00:18:32.437 align:middle line:90% they're worth might. 00:18:32.437 --> 00:18:34.020 align:middle line:84% Interesting, of course, that the queen 00:18:34.020 --> 00:18:37.270 align:middle line:84% is more valuable than the King, but that's another discussion. 00:18:37.270 --> 00:18:40.680 align:middle line:84% But this is an abstraction of two kingdoms at war. 00:18:40.680 --> 00:18:42.750 align:middle line:84% And if you think of this as a checkers board, 00:18:42.750 --> 00:18:45.000 align:middle line:84% it's even more abstract because checkers, 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:46.660 align:middle line:90% all the pieces are identical. 00:18:46.660 --> 00:18:48.300 align:middle line:84% The only differentiation is when you 00:18:48.300 --> 00:18:52.053 align:middle line:84% king somebody, when you move them up to royalty, 00:18:52.053 --> 00:18:53.970 align:middle line:84% when they get to the other side of the board-- 00:18:53.970 --> 00:18:56.880 align:middle line:84% and it's quite easy to forget that you're actually 00:18:56.880 --> 00:19:00.540 align:middle line:84% looking at a representation of territory being fought over. 00:19:00.540 --> 00:19:03.885 align:middle line:90% It's all reduced to the grid. 00:19:03.885 --> 00:19:06.510 align:middle line:84% So even children-- I don't know when you first played checkers. 00:19:06.510 --> 00:19:07.860 align:middle line:84% I can't remember when I first played checkers. 00:19:07.860 --> 00:19:09.900 align:middle line:84% But certainly you don't have to be six. 00:19:09.900 --> 00:19:12.700 align:middle line:84% You can be pretty young to give checkers a shot. 00:19:12.700 --> 00:19:16.410 align:middle line:84% And even children can understand what's at stake 00:19:16.410 --> 00:19:18.900 align:middle line:84% and how the game is played even though this doesn't look 00:19:18.900 --> 00:19:21.240 align:middle line:84% like any place, even though the pieces don't look like anybody 00:19:21.240 --> 00:19:22.198 align:middle line:90% fighting over anything. 00:19:22.198 --> 00:19:23.130 align:middle line:90% They're just circles. 00:19:23.130 --> 00:19:26.940 align:middle line:84% You can play with anything, blots on a board. 00:19:26.940 --> 00:19:28.950 align:middle line:84% Some people feel fiction based on constraints, 00:19:28.950 --> 00:19:30.575 align:middle line:84% fiction that doesn't pretend to be real 00:19:30.575 --> 00:19:31.980 align:middle line:90% seems false or lifeless. 00:19:31.980 --> 00:19:33.300 align:middle line:90% And some of it does. 00:19:33.300 --> 00:19:35.610 align:middle line:84% Far from celebrating the results of every experiment, 00:19:35.610 --> 00:19:37.200 align:middle line:84% members of the Oulipo themselves are 00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:39.990 align:middle line:84% quick to acknowledge many of the poems created by replacement 00:19:39.990 --> 00:19:42.120 align:middle line:90% strategies are tedious. 00:19:42.120 --> 00:19:43.590 align:middle line:84% If you read one of their primers, 00:19:43.590 --> 00:19:44.730 align:middle line:84% if you're inspired to look at their work, 00:19:44.730 --> 00:19:46.438 align:middle line:84% if you haven't, a lot of it is very funny 00:19:46.438 --> 00:19:48.730 align:middle line:84% because the only way to get through a lot of this stuff 00:19:48.730 --> 00:19:51.180 align:middle line:84% is for it to be very funny because the constraints of they 00:19:51.180 --> 00:19:54.210 align:middle line:84% place on themselves are ridiculous. 00:19:54.210 --> 00:19:55.590 align:middle line:90% But we all use constraints. 00:19:55.590 --> 00:19:58.230 align:middle line:84% And we all not only tolerate but work at a very high level 00:19:58.230 --> 00:19:59.260 align:middle line:90% of abstraction. 00:19:59.260 --> 00:20:01.710 align:middle line:84% We even played at a high level of abstraction. 00:20:01.710 --> 00:20:04.170 align:middle line:84% If we've abandoned board games for television, 00:20:04.170 --> 00:20:05.730 align:middle line:90% the evidence is just as strong. 00:20:05.730 --> 00:20:08.610 align:middle line:84% The constraints on the script of a network situation comedy 00:20:08.610 --> 00:20:10.680 align:middle line:90% are as naughty as a sustinance. 00:20:10.680 --> 00:20:13.680 align:middle line:84% The most popular fiction of our day on screens large and small 00:20:13.680 --> 00:20:16.500 align:middle line:84% and in genre novels is by far the most rigid. 00:20:16.500 --> 00:20:19.410 align:middle line:84% So a writer for say, "MASH," if anybody is old enough 00:20:19.410 --> 00:20:20.202 align:middle line:90% to remember "MASH-- 00:20:20.202 --> 00:20:21.660 align:middle line:84% But a writer for "MASH" was working 00:20:21.660 --> 00:20:23.790 align:middle line:84% under far more constraints than the typical fiction 00:20:23.790 --> 00:20:26.850 align:middle line:84% writer in the program here at U of A. 00:20:26.850 --> 00:20:29.282 align:middle line:84% You've got 26, 27 minutes for the episode. 00:20:29.282 --> 00:20:30.990 align:middle line:84% You've got certain beats you have to hit. 00:20:30.990 --> 00:20:32.790 align:middle line:84% Certain times commercials have to come in. 00:20:32.790 --> 00:20:34.820 align:middle line:90% You have three storylines. 00:20:34.820 --> 00:20:38.130 align:middle line:84% This applies to almost any network situation comedy. 00:20:38.130 --> 00:20:39.990 align:middle line:90% HBO has changed the rules. 00:20:39.990 --> 00:20:41.820 align:middle line:84% But you would have three storylines. 00:20:41.820 --> 00:20:43.500 align:middle line:84% You'd have one that serves as a frame. 00:20:43.500 --> 00:20:44.970 align:middle line:90% Radar loses his Teddy bear. 00:20:44.970 --> 00:20:46.160 align:middle line:90% Radar finds his Teddy bear. 00:20:46.160 --> 00:20:47.910 align:middle line:84% And there's some joke about it in between. 00:20:47.910 --> 00:20:49.620 align:middle line:84% And then there's usually two storylines 00:20:49.620 --> 00:20:51.600 align:middle line:84% that cover the duration of the show, 00:20:51.600 --> 00:20:55.650 align:middle line:84% one more serious, one different tonally, one more comic. 00:20:55.650 --> 00:20:57.550 align:middle line:84% And they focus on different characters. 00:20:57.550 --> 00:21:00.250 align:middle line:90% The template was very strong. 00:21:00.250 --> 00:21:01.785 align:middle line:84% And there are a lot of constraints 00:21:01.785 --> 00:21:03.660 align:middle line:84% placed on the people who try to write for any 00:21:03.660 --> 00:21:05.850 align:middle line:90% of those shows, [INAUDIBLE]. 00:21:05.850 --> 00:21:08.910 align:middle line:84% So it's not as if work that's less brainy 00:21:08.910 --> 00:21:10.830 align:middle line:90% is necessarily simpler to write. 00:21:10.830 --> 00:21:12.960 align:middle line:84% In fact, it will be much more complicated if you 00:21:12.960 --> 00:21:15.090 align:middle line:90% think of this is complicated. 00:21:15.090 --> 00:21:15.933 align:middle line:90% One more example. 00:21:15.933 --> 00:21:17.850 align:middle line:84% And if there any musicians or any songwriters, 00:21:17.850 --> 00:21:18.840 align:middle line:84% you know [? this ?] all the time. 00:21:18.840 --> 00:21:20.490 align:middle line:84% You walk around with a certain song forms in your head. 00:21:20.490 --> 00:21:23.370 align:middle line:84% If you write the blues, you have blues chords in your head. 00:21:23.370 --> 00:21:25.175 align:middle line:90% And you work within them. 00:21:25.175 --> 00:21:26.550 align:middle line:84% You don't lose when you restrict. 00:21:26.550 --> 00:21:27.300 align:middle line:90% No, you gain. 00:21:27.300 --> 00:21:28.320 align:middle line:90% That's true of all art. 00:21:28.320 --> 00:21:30.320 align:middle line:84% "What killed off the theater, the glory of which 00:21:30.320 --> 00:21:31.830 align:middle line:84% was Shakespeare, had been, TS Eliot 00:21:31.830 --> 00:21:34.860 align:middle line:84% postulated, its limitless appetite for realism," 00:21:34.860 --> 00:21:38.490 align:middle line:84% So says Hugh Kenner in his biography of animator 00:21:38.490 --> 00:21:40.940 align:middle line:90% extraordinaire, Chuck Jones. 00:21:40.940 --> 00:21:42.000 align:middle line:90%