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12 APR/MAY 11 #227CC: And I what I like about this book is that youhave this wilderness that you’ve obviously beenin, and then created with language, but you’re notfeminizing it. And even this dual “we,” it doesn’t feelgendered.CH: It paradoxically is and isn’t gendered. It’s alsopolymorphous. So that even though heterosexualityis strongly represented, there’s not an exclusive presentationof heterosexual experience or imagination.LH: There’s the boat captain.CH: Oh yeah. I still have a crush on the boat captain.CC: I’ve also been meaning to ask: you mention allegorymore than once. How do you feel it works inthis text?LH: The more I talk about allegory, the less I understandit. I have gotten myself way out on a limbas someone who is about to tell people about allegory.I was supposed to give a talk, and I called thetalk “The Function of Allegory and the Production ofTime”; that’s my title. And I had some great ideasthat have completely washed up.CH: It sounds very….Russki-formalist. (laughing)LH: It’s Lefebvre—The Production of Space—andMichel de Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life,says that—apparently this is true, in Athens, thebuses are called metaphori—to go someplace youtake a metaphor. So I thought, well that’s cute andclever, but what about, could you do time travel withallegories. Which is why I’m reading the Walter Benjaminbook, because the whole second section ison allegory. And I don’t think you can. But that waswhat sparked me. The allegorical function would beto do time travel. And I could argue it, and I probablywill have to, but I’m not sure it really holds up. Thatdoesn’t answer your question.CC: Well you had said in here [the book] that it couldbe an allegory for artists and art-making.[CC looks it up.]LH: I had this idea, Carla, and this comes out of[Walter Benjamin’s] The Arcades Project, but—andthis is not related to The Wide Road, this is just whileCori is looking for the passage. But: anything thatyou would take, and then name it, can become allegorical.for example, say we have this as a sculpture.[LH moves objects around on the table.] Andthen we name it, “After the Revolution.” And whatbefore was a pepper grinder or a jam jar becomesnow this allegorical image. And then gets re-read.And it’s the captioning that renders the thing allegorical.So like, in Pilgrim’s Progress, you’ve gottruth and, blah blah blah.CH: I could go along with that, to some extent.LH: I’ve been finding little drawings and then thinkingabout captions.CH: I’m very skeptical of this sort of claim that allwriting is allegorical. It wastes the meaning of—LH: Right. But Jameson says it’s horizontal. It’sabout mapping and scanning. It has nothing to dowith verticality.CC: It’s changed over time.CH: Yeah. But anyhow, I’m interested in what you’re[to CC] querying. Where does it come up?CC: It’s in one of the letters from Lyn to you. And itjust says: “To live in a disenchanted world is to live ata dead end. In The Wide Road, ‘we’ finds enchantments.The work may be an allegory about artistsand the role of art-making.”LH: That seems problematic to me.CH: That’s something she was thinking at the moment,but I don’t think the work is an allegory aboutart-making. Or, it is about art-making in respect tothe collaborative process. The work is very muchcontingent on quite specific structures of relationshipsthat also have the ability to change over time, butall of those structures of relationships—living in thesame town, being in the same poetry community,having years of conversation that led up to the texts,being able to arrange to get together later and revisit—Imean there’s just so many material entailmentsto the work that have such specificity…CC: The work does change; even though it’s dislocatedand without specific time and place, it has