Dear reader, the ultimate goal of this pages-long whimsical jest is to explore what literature is, and to argue that there’s no intrinsic difference between a reader and a fish.
Let me begin by asking, what is literature? It seems like a repetition of the previous sentence, yet this inquiry is far from a mere redundancy. When the question is invoked, you begin to think. You become a conscious subject aware of your own existence and engagement with the world, your consciousness directed toward my words. Since I am another conscious subject —
*
It’s six. The setting sun slants through your window and splays itself lazily onto the sheets. Something about the autumn chill has pulled you from the molasses of sleep.
The day has just begun for you and is ruined already. There is no redeeming yourself with your boss now. Calls unanswered; meetings missed; work undone. Not to mention, the meals uncooked and the house uncleaned. You curse under your breath: a Monday, ruined.
But — Sunday, Monday; Potayto, Potahto — you think. Once a day is given a name, assigned meaning (twenty-first birthday, ten-year anniversary), it’s colonized! Ruined! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…the day is no longer a day of its own, and you are not your own man, just a minor pawn in the Grand Scheme of Days. So today is the day this changes. Today is No-Day, and you are a No-One.
So you cast your phone aside, your job, boss — everything — aside, and head instead for a walk. The East River is particularly lovely… no, the river is particularly lovely this time of year. You catch yourself naming things again.
The sky outside is blurred. Pedestrians squint to see through the fog, but you might be the only one who puts effort into really looking at other people’s faces.You see the fisherman, who comes here every morning, wearing a wader and a long, robe-like jacket. You often see him on one of the Some-Days, when you leave the house at 7 to catch the bus. The News has rained criticism on how he “fiddles around” every day near the river, fishing for a living, as he was one of the best clerks in the Finance Hall, “properly engaging in and contributing to the City”. Why is he here now? You approach him and feel obliged to ask…oh but you shall not.He is not carrying a fishing rod today, but instead he stares blankly into the ripplets of the river. He isn’t even wearing his signature Tommy Hilfiger flat hat.No fishing rod, no wader, no Tommy Hilfiger’s hat…Could he be No-One too?
You want to ask him if he sees anything in the river. But a No-One does not get to question another No-One. He only observes, reads, and interprets the world. The river, a meandering ribbon of blue, reflects the sky’s ever-changing hues. The wind sketches invisible patterns in the air, as if people were the fish on land, surrounded by the flowing ebbs and tides of air. Being No-One, you feel like you could be a fish, echoing along with the waves.You suddenly understand why the other No-One had resigned from his clerk job.Once you get a taste of the allure of breathing in and being rinsed by the watery air to be a fish, it’s too hard to resist. For the first time, you seem to step into his perception of the world; perhaps you’ve become a fisherman as well! No-One can be anyone. No-One is anyone but Some-One.
He stands there, holding the railing. He must have noticed you, but no one speaks and no one looks at each other. A smile steals across your face.
*
My apologies for distracting you from the discussion at hand. Let me begin again—Since I am another conscious subject, our understanding is not connected; I thus must persuade you with a syllogism. I shall begin with clause A.
A. It’s a platitude that literature is a dynamic hermeneutic process in which readers actively construct meaning while reading. As Derrida suggests, language consists of a system of signs and symbols, and words are a form of signs. There’s no constant match between a signifier and the signified, but the meaning is understood by the subject based on the context. Literature plays into that process of signification by providing a unique literary context through literary language, which, according to Viktor Shlovsky, is characterized by defamiliarization. Authors deliberately deviate from “ordinary” language to create a sense of unfamiliarity, challenging what is otherwise considered familiar.
Literature draws the reader’s attention to the language itself by providing a literary context, where the reader forgets parts of reality and their own limited experience, whose imaginations and interpretations could thus be liberated. The conscious subject (in this case, you) is thus invited to explore the labyrinth of signification that now gives birth to countless layers of meanings and interpretations, free from the subject’s (again, your) own constitution.
A good reader is one who accepts this invitation, who isn’t constrained by the past constructs and limitations, and therefore can enter the literary world with ease. Such is B.
*
Another man walks from the other side. He is your co-worker at the city hall, a clerk carrying kraft paper bags, wearing a black coat and pointed shoes, looking at his phone. You have seen his face a few times, but there are no intimate connections between Some-Ones, especially between clerks. That’s the way Some-Ones’ relationships work: you know Some-One, see him a lot, exchange names, phone numbers, small talk – but you don’t really know anything other than that, even though he is your colleague.
But the sight of your colleague has triggered something in you. Something has been jolted awake. Your past comes back to you in flashes, the days when you were also a Some-One working at the city hall, when you were no different from the man walking in your direction. The city hall is a huge and hallowed building, solemn and stately. Everyone who has a job in the city hall is remarkable and respected, seen regularly in newspapers and television and often the subject of rumors. Each one of them has a name–a well-known name, in fact–but to make matters simple, you call them workmen. Workmen walk in and out every day, slaving away at repetitive and tedious work. It’s considered an honor to work here, but even in the after-hours workmen would get constant calls from their superiors in what seemed to be daily emergencies… And you know it’s a workman when you hear that signature, ominous ringtone. Ding-a-ling. Ding-a-ling. Your colleague jumps and picks up the phone.
The workman frowns but answers in a cool, professional tone. “This is Mike speaking.”
“Absent from work? Missing calls?? How strange…He hasn’t spoken to our team all day.” You hear Some-One’s name. Your name, or at least what used to be your name.Immediately, you dart behind the nearest tree and hide in its shadow. He must not see you. “Understood. I will go to his address and find out what’s going on. Yes, I will contact local authorities…”
He hangs up the phone and brushes past your hide-out. Just when you think you’re safe, he turns and stares straight into your cloak of darkness. You make eye contact. It’s too late. “▖▜▝, why are you here? Why aren’t you at work? You know there are consequences, right?”
You cannot answer his question. It doesn’t pertain to you any longer. Seeing him approach, a cold trickle in the pit of your stomach creeps in, and your heart pounds like a frantic drum, each beat echoing loudly in the ears, drowning out all reason. Palms almost slick with sweat, you start to run. Breath comes in sharp gasps, and you look back, seeing the confusion on his face. At the sight of your sudden flight, he seems to be more scared than you are. Fortunately, he does not run after you — his pointed shoes are designed for workmen sitting in the office, not for quick, agile movements. But you do not put your guard down, and quicken your pace.
Though you’ve already turned your phone off, the landline rings.It’s the police, your superiors, and your co-workers. Yes, the Some-Ones have noticed your absence — they are coming for you! Should you just wait for them to arrest you, force you to tell them who you are, and assimilate you, or shall you escape?
But escape to where?
*
But wait, where were we? We’ve gone on an even longer tangent.
Here’s C.
C. Now, it is clear what literature is from the perspective of a conscious subject. The basis of literature is built when the subject leaves his own consciousness in the interpretations of signs and symbols. The ethos of literature is performed when the subjects free the interpretations from everyday thinking. This is done by defamiliarization, swimming in the sea of hermeneutics. When a fish is swimming in an actual ocean, it is the best interpreter and therefore the perfect reader: in the ebb and flow of tides, fish forget all memories beyond 7 seconds, continuing their identity in countless, fleeting seven-second spans. This means total freedom — freedom from memory, perspective, and other constructs; they don’t need the interpreted to be defamiliarized, for there is for them no such thing as constraints and fixed modes of thinking. They enjoy this privilege. With no continuous knowledge, a fish probably doesn’t even know if anything is real or not. When it sees a coral reef, it might ask itself, “is this a creature, an imagination, or just a symbol for something else?” Thus, when fish read a book, they swim in it. Dear reader, allow me to risk imprudence and ask again: when you too swim in a book, do you ever read it?
*
The last slice of the setting sun slides off the horizon. You look around your house and do not know where to go. The air around you feels thick with the presence of Some-Ones: the policemen, the officials, the workmen, and the monitors. You are under their unblinking eyes: it’s nearly impossible to hide. Their forces are palpable. If you are caught by Some-One, you can’t be No-One anymore…They can assimilate anyone if they want.
You consider two plans. 1: Find a place that Some-Ones can’t go to. But there is no such place: the Some-Ones administer every corner in the city, spawning an inescapable net. Or 2: Find a place that protects you from the Assimilation. — And you do have a place in mind! During your time as a student, you came across Borges, and you were awed by his aura and prowess. No, you shall not name him — he gave birth to the first No-One… the first No-One walking out from the Fire temple, the first No-One transforming reality through an eccentric imaginary history, and the first No-One to transform into Cervantes the way you transform into that fish, or that fisherman. He should know how No-Ones can survive in this world.
Fortunately, you have a house with that home library built by the last resident, a librarian who had gone missing years ago. They say on The News that they’re still searching for him, but word is he’s long dead. You remain an avid fan of reading after you graduated, so when you were assigned to this building, you checked out the library immediately, but the perfect symmetry of the shelves disoriented you. Now is the time to walk into this mysterious labyrinth to unearth whatever clues the Father of No-Ones has left you. The shelves stretch like timeless sentinels circularly. The air is thick with the scent of aged paper; their covers have eroded, and their titles are now illegible. You walk into books between the sagging shelves, to the last one where Father’s books lie. You flip through the pages, and your eyes alight at the mention of a distant sanctuary in the depth of the woods to the far East, a place where words, space, and creatures are rid of their shackles, where each book is an infinite possibility, where everything is a combination of 26 characters, periods, commas, and spaces. There holds every conceivable book that has ever been and could be written. You’ve long heard of that place in high school English classes, books, and roadside gossip, and secretly think it’s real. If there truly is such a place, then the language these Some-Ones use would no longer make sense there, since everything they say would merely be a random combination of that 26 characters, as a product of chance; if language no longer makes sense, meanings and names will perish altogether. This is your chance at Nothingness. Even if they catch you and call you ▖▜▖, it would mean nothing. Language wouldn’t make sense anymore… The thought of this comforts you: if you find that sanctuary, you’d be free. You will “vanish” from Some-One’s world into that salvation…
A knock at the door. You resist the urge to ask who it is Of course you know who it is, and speaking the language of those Some-Ones is against your rules. You hold your breath.
“If he does not open the door, we will break in.” You hear a Some-One talking outside. Their boots shift and echo on the hardwood floors, their voices low but clear. You hear them opening all the doors to the other rooms and finally approach the library. The slow crescendo of the creaking door. “We’ve been told you’re here. Stop hiding. Why didn’t you go to work?!”
With a sudden bang, the door to the library bursts open. The troupe of Some-Ones file in. Shh. They’d only be lost in this labyrinth of books that look all identical, title-less, and symmetrical — so there’s no indication of position. You hear grunts of frustration. “Come out now! Wherever you are! Punishment is inevitable, but hiding is a bigger crime. ”
The Some-Ones break into groups to examine the bookshelves, to try to make their way through this endless maze. Their progress is slow, but you know even the sea of shelves won’t protect you for long; you have to leave now.
You cautiously emerge, and with movements as gentle as a breath, tiptoe to the shelves on the left and fix your eyes on a window casting a square of light onto the floor, only a few steps from where you are — your portal to escape. With slow, deft hands, you unhook the latch and push the window open.
Click.
They all turn. Cries of shock. Footsteps quicken. One of them lunges. But before a hand could grab ahold of you, you leap out the window and into the cool autumn breeze. You feel yourself hitting the ground and scramble to your feet. The day has dimmed. The city is now steeped in darkness but for a few broken waves catching the moonlight in the distance. It’s that time of day when everything seems to melt, even the city hall that once stood so grand and proud under the sun. You can barely see, but still you take off at full speed, not towards the light but towards whatever is on the other end. Whatever happens next, you think, No-One knows.
*
A=B=C, Q.E.D. Goodbye and see you next time.
