Big Time Intertextuality

He belongs to an increasingly rare breed of sophisticated, literary bloggers – this is the thought which (somewhat ironically) crosses Tony’s mind as the sound of the car taking his wife and children away slowly fades, leaving him free to wander into the study and finally sit down to the computer whose siren call he has been avoiding for the past few hours.  He picks up the book he has just finished, noting the aptness of the cover – a man in the process of taking a giant, life-defining leap…

Reading Dublinesque, Enrique Vila-Matas’ stunning novel of a publisher’s trip to Dublin to bury the age of print literature and work out what to do with himself next, has been an exhilarating, absorbing journey through modern literary history, a novel so awash with references to other artists and their works that Tony has stayed up late into the night, stopping here to open his copy of Ulysses (forced into rereading Chapter Six by the obvious parallels with Vila-Matas’ book), pausing there to refresh his memory of Joyce’s short story The Dead (another work frequently referenced in Dublinesque).  Now, as the rest of the world goes about its business, Tony’s brain is still twisting and turning, his mind still searching for elusive threads of meaning.

He walks over to the window, looking for signs of good weather, anything to keep him away from the computer, but mid-winter Melbourne rain continues to flow down, concealing the further edges of the garden and gradually causing the study windows to steam up, leaving Tony isolated in his warm, dimly-lit room.  With a sigh, he sits down at his desk, clicking three times on the mouse with practiced ease and turning on some music to help him focus (Franz Ferdinand – how apt), before opening a Word document – which he proceeds to stare at for a while as the music washes over him…

He tries to concentrate on Samuel Riba, the central character, a former literary publisher whose sudden, irrational decision to fly to Dublin for Bloomsday with some friends shakes his life out of the rut it was in.  The way the writer blends elements from Ulysses, structuring parallels with Joyce’s famous novel, the way he draws on thoughts and images from an astonishingly wide variety of sources…  Tony turns to his copy of Dublinesque, pulls out the scrap of paper with the scribbled notes he has made, and begins Googling images – Hammershøi’s painting of The British Museum in fog, Edward Hopper’s Stairway (another song plays on the computer, The Police’s Wrapped Around your Finger) -, but he’s getting nowhere.  He sighs and continues thinking…

He decides that he needs to distract himself, and he eases himself, not without difficulty, out of the chair he feels so comfortable in, standing up, slowly looking around, as if expecting help to come from someone (even though there is nobody there), before walking out into the kitchen.  He does the washing up to clear his head and then makes a couple of pieces of raisin toast, pouring himself a mug of soya milk to go with his impromptu second breakfast.  Back in the study, he becomes tired of the music and puts on an old Powderfinger CD, and as the strains of Waiting for the Sun ring out, he sits back waiting for inspiration – in vain.  In fact, the only thing he can think of is the irony in the fact of the book about Riba (a publisher deeply disillusioned by the success of ‘gothic’ – i.e. vampire – fiction), being published in English by the same house that brought out Fifty Shades of Grey…

Musing that if Riba was waiting for the return of the real reader, he was probably well out of the publishing game, Tony decides to browse online book shops for other works and writers mentioned in Dublinesque: Finnegan’s Wake (of course), Paul Auster, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett…  Tony pauses, leaning back in his chair, feeling that he has come to the crucial point of his cerebral meanderings at last; for if the first part of Dublinesque has Riba’s life parallelling the events of Ulysses, the final section moves from the high of Joyce to the low of Beckett.  Tony sighs.  In that case, it’s a shame that he has never read anything by Beckett…  As he continues to stare blankly at the mockingly pristine document on the computer screen, the feeling of being watched grows ever stronger, compelling him to turn and look out of the window.  Nothing.  Just a man in a blue jacket, hurrying down the hill in the rain, head fixed straight ahead, in no way looking in Tony’s direction.

Rubbing his eyes, Tony manages to stand up again, now feeling the familiar dry feeling in his mouth from last night’s wine, wanting a glass of water to ease the headache he can sense beginning.  He starts to pace the study, walking around in circles while his thoughts go around in the opposite direction.  Dublinesque is a great book, a wonderful book, a seamless read, a credit to the writer and to his translators into English, Rosalind Harvey and Anne McLean.  But – (Tony’s pacing slows as he struggles against the thoughts coming the other way) – what am I actually going to say about it?  How can I construct a coherent review describing its brilliance while including the feel of the novel?  Should I simply type out 600 words with a brief overview of the plot and a recommendation to just read the book?

Gradually the pacing slows eventually coming to a complete stop as gravity inertia weight of years and the force of the counterbalancing train of thought combine to bring him to a halt Tony looks up and for the first time we see him with a smile on his face as he realises that there is only one way to do justice to the book while concealing his inability to truly understand truly get to the heart of what it actually is Vila-Matas wants to say and he says to himself in the middle of that warm dark room he says that’s what I’ll do I’ll just write it as I think it should be written I’ll style it as if it were taken from Vila-Matas Joyce whoever intertextuality yes intertextuality and people can read into what they will what they want what they feel or is that too obvious perhaps no it’s a good idea better than the usual rubbish anyway will I won’t I and yes I said yes I will Yes.