![]() ![]() "The bedpost, from a more sensible angle, might obscure a portion of the wardrobe, and divide the room in two." Much of J the P measuring, angling, bending, dividing, cutting can be likened to Alain Robbe-Grillet and the French Nouveau Roman, one novel in particular: The Mise-en-Scène by Claude Ollier since Ollier, an engineer by training, continually emphasizes the precise dimensions and angles of objects in space. POSITION OF OBJECTS AND PEOPLE IN RELATION TO ONE ANOTHER The exact positioning of the sentence on the page along with its relation to other sentences and paragraphs contributes to "book as object of art." In this way, John the Posthumous shares much in common with concrete poetry, a form of poetry where the arrangement of words and their appearance on the page is of primary importance. "The lake is named for the town, or for an animal, and is shaped like an ax-blade." In the 2013 OR Books edition, this sentence appears on page 26 toward the top of the page, after a short paragraph ending with "Certain of the words resemble ants in distress." and preceding another paragraph beginning with the word Adulterium in italics. "The bed recurs as a figure in certain burnings - the torches fixed to boards, for skeletons, and the boiling oil in pots, in urns, in bowls." More generally, this Jason Schwartz fiction echoes Lovecraftian horror lurking just under the skin of objects. Rats behind doors, rats behind walls reminds me of the H.P. Fire sometimes traps rats in their galleries or behind an attic door." Is the narrator documenting his "Pre-Road" age? That was the distinct impression I was given.Īs much as or even more than characters (women, men, children), the narrator places focus on objects (houses, rooms, objects within rooms, bridges, outside objects) along with animals of all varieties. Many were the times while reading John the Posthumous, I envisioned the narrator living in the years immediately preceding global catastrophe chronicled in McCarthy's The Road. "The Devil's animal, in the storybooks, is found at the father's house, sometimes composed of white rope." "In Deuteronomy and Isaiah: the husband writes the wife a "letter of divorce." "In our family Bible: the flyleaf is inscribed in blue ink." These three direct quotes are examples of the biblical tone and content of the book, bringing to mind Cormac McCarthy. ![]() So, with this vision in mind, think of the following headings, ten in number, as among the drawers or cubbyholes or shelves that house the contents of JS's unique J the P: In the spirit of approaching this question, I read John the Posthumous as if the novella were, indeed, an object of art, comparable to, say, a Joseph Cornell Box (a number of other reviews have likened Schwartz's work to a Cornell Box), with each section contributing a batch of elements, each chapter a cluster of objects. What does it mean for a piece of fiction to be itself an object of art? ![]()
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