The Caribbean Review of Books (New vol. 1, no. 19, February 2009)
A sample of the new CRB, as published by MEP until 2009
A sample of the new CRB, as published by MEP until 2009
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Caribbean</strong> <strong>Review</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Books</strong>, <strong>February</strong> <strong>2009</strong><br />
Influences<br />
Prosimetrum*<br />
Fred D’Aguiar contemplates the elasticity <strong>of</strong> time and space in the fiction <strong>of</strong><br />
Wilson Harris<br />
Wilson Harris told me a<br />
story in the late <strong>19</strong>80s<br />
while we walked in a<br />
tree-lined street divided<br />
by a trench in Georgetown.<br />
Harris said, in the quiet tone <strong>of</strong><br />
meaningful confession, that when he<br />
was a schoolboy in the early <strong>19</strong>30s a<br />
friend <strong>of</strong> his fell into this very trench<br />
we were <strong>no</strong>w walking beside, and his<br />
friend climbed out wet and apologetic,<br />
feeling bad for making a fool <strong>of</strong> himself<br />
by his own clumsiness. Harris said he<br />
felt terrible, because it was he, in fact,<br />
who had nudged his friend into this<br />
trench, and though he regretted doing<br />
so the moment his friend tipped into the<br />
water, he could <strong>no</strong>t do anything in time<br />
to save his friend from his tumble, <strong>no</strong>r<br />
was he able, back then, to confess to his<br />
friend that the fall was <strong>no</strong>t an accident.<br />
<strong>The</strong> adolescent he was at that time just<br />
couldn’t bring himself to own up to<br />
what had actually happened. So his<br />
friend went on believing in his self-pr<strong>of</strong>essed<br />
clumsiness, and the deliberate<br />
action instigated by Harris himself that<br />
resulted in the embarrassing tumble became<br />
entrenched in memory.<br />
We walked on in silence for several<br />
yards. I looked hard at dry cracks in<br />
the mud-bed, and my eyes flicked from<br />
* A prosimetrum (Latin) is a literary piece<br />
made up <strong>of</strong> alternating passages <strong>of</strong> prose<br />
and poetry.<br />
one crumbling mud-bank to the other.<br />
Perhaps the water table that fed it had<br />
sent the contents elsewhere, caused by<br />
some geological tilt away from the area,<br />
so that <strong>no</strong>w, fifty years after his friend’s<br />
baptismal event, all I could see was a<br />
dry space.<br />
I had <strong>no</strong> idea at the time why I<br />
said the three things that I then said<br />
to Harris, but they came to me right<br />
away. First, I suggested to Harris that<br />
he should push his friend, again, since<br />
this time, meaning right then and there,<br />
<strong>no</strong> harm would be done in what was<br />
<strong>no</strong>w a dry place. Second, I speculated<br />
that he, Harris, might look at his friend,<br />
falling, back then, from the vantage<br />
point <strong>of</strong> the present, and somehow<br />
reach back in time and grab his friend’s<br />
arm, just in time to save him from getting<br />
soaked. And third, should both<br />
those methods fail to appeal, or the<br />
rescue <strong>no</strong>t work out, somehow Harris<br />
could confess to his friend what he had<br />
done, again across time, the moment<br />
his friend climbed out <strong>of</strong> the trench.<br />
Of course, he might opt simply <strong>no</strong>t to<br />
push his friend at all, by suppressing<br />
the awful adolescent impulse with the<br />
restraint <strong>of</strong> an adult sensibility, again<br />
exercised across time in this shared<br />
space.<br />
Harris laughed and <strong>no</strong>dded in recognition<br />
<strong>of</strong> his own imaginative procedure<br />
in his fiction, as it was being dished<br />
back to him by one <strong>of</strong> his readers. So<br />
where did all that magic talk <strong>of</strong> bending<br />
time and stretching space and reversing<br />
history originate?<br />
I’d spent the months before the trip<br />
to Guyana re-reading Harris’s fiction,<br />
essays, and poetry, and gleaning from<br />
them his theory about the elasticity<br />
<strong>of</strong> time and space, best articulated in<br />
his <strong>19</strong>87 <strong>no</strong>vel <strong>The</strong> Infinite Rehearsal.<br />
Harris’s idea <strong>of</strong> infinite rehearsal treats<br />
memories, images, and dreams as unfinished<br />
dramas ripe for contemplation.<br />
His theory bears some relation to the<br />
existentialist <strong>no</strong>tion <strong>of</strong> perpetual return,<br />
but differs in the effect <strong>of</strong> the experience<br />
on the subject, who remains somewhat<br />
fixed in Nietzsche’s theory. For Harris,<br />
each return to a memory, image, or<br />
dream yields new insights, and each<br />
time the viewer or thinker participates<br />
in the recall or act <strong>of</strong> gazing — from a<br />
necessarily partial because particular<br />
viewpoint — that person changes a<br />
little. <strong>The</strong>re is <strong>no</strong> possibility <strong>of</strong> easy<br />
closure. <strong>The</strong> artistic compulsion to look<br />
and keep looking at this rich source <strong>of</strong><br />
self-k<strong>no</strong>wledge creates the sense <strong>of</strong> a<br />
revisionary potential when it comes to<br />
apparently fixed realities. <strong>The</strong> process <strong>of</strong><br />
writing becomes an interactive one. <strong>The</strong><br />
imagination <strong>of</strong> the writer changes as a<br />
result <strong>of</strong> this deliberate act <strong>of</strong> exposure.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is the promise <strong>of</strong> a deepening sensibility.<br />
Ceaseless exploration <strong>of</strong> earlier<br />
discoveries leads to more complex accounts<br />
<strong>of</strong> them.<br />
Something happens to time itself.<br />
Time switches from a linear narrative<br />
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