An Open Vein

(Grove Creek: Grove Creek Publishing LLC, 2006)

The following is an abstracted portion of a work in progress, Dr. Denver Glendaire Sasser's On the Art of Analyzing and Writing a Novel, an Exploration in Pragmatic and Praxitic Critical Theory and Axiology. Dr. Sasser, the holder of eleven academic certificates and degrees (including two doctorates and three masters), has a long and distinguished academic career, teaching in a variety of American and Asian universities. He is the author of twenty unpublished novels and over 400 published poems, short stories, plays, articles on criticism and ćsthetics and theory, and many journalism articles. His plays have had readings and productions at various venues, including the University of California at San Diego and the American Film Institute. He is also an accomplished artist and musician.

In J.M. Warwick's novel, An Open Vein (2006), the first line is, "My mind taunts me with useless questions that run endlessly, like a hamster on a wheel." First of all, we probably take the novelist's word for it that the questions are "useless." But subconsciously we know that questions which continue to present themselves and will not go away are not in any way useless. They are calling insistently our attention to one or more desperately serious problems, and imploring confrontation and resolution. This is a psychological factual phenomenon.

Contrary to Nora Roberts' novel (which I have not read, but which in fact, I am reading only one sentence at a time), I have read this novel and so know more, hopefully. And what I think I know is that these supposedly useless questions in fact constitute the key to the understanding of this complex, intriguing, and ambiguous work. (In fact, its artful complexity places it on a level with Henry James' fine short fiction, "The Turn of the Screw" 1898) On the surface, this is an intriguing but straightforward novel. But in reality, it is anything but simple; it is extremely and psychologically profound. Psychologists and psychology students should read it for its presentation of the subconscious and the sublimation of desire. It is also an exemplary work in the playing of endless head-games by some human beings. It is, among other things, a story of manipulation, victory and escape, and then surrender.

These questions are, actually, in one way, useless to the fictive ego (a young man) because he refuses to face the reality that they persist in presenting to him. He refuses to acknowledge the truth about himself and the truth of the motivation that brings him to such a pass in his life.

But I am ruining this novel for you-perhaps. Maybe it would be better and would have been better for you to have read it cold. Finish it. Exclaim: "WHAAAAAT!" And then have to go back and reread it to straighten out the kink it's put in your brain.

The first part of the sentence ("My mind taunts me") is powerful, to the point, extremely direct, and extremely pregnant with meaning. Notice that it's not his heart, but his mind that will not leave him alone. This is a novel about hidden mind. And it is his mind that taunts him, not the deeds or thoughts of another. The entire novel is from the fictive ego's perspective. It is his novel, and it is his mind. The theme could be stated in a sentence fragment as something like, "Perception, the cloak for deception." The deception of perception is both the fictive ego's and the reader's. The fictive ego perceives but then deceives himself. We perceive but Warwick deceives us.

Warwick does not allow immediate certainty to equal the truth. To the contrary, immediate certainty is illusion and deception. Most of us know, or at least believe, that we want certainty to represent reality and the truth of reality. When we deceive ourselves and others, there arises in most of us a basic dissatisfaction, which remains, no matter how hard we tried to shove it away and keep it away from us. We've mentioned Kenneth Burke, S.T. Coleridge, and Anthony Trollope as the critics, poet, and novelist who so well exemplify the truth that form in art is that which first arouses and then satisfies our desires.

This first part of the first sentence, with subject, predicate, and object tells us what we should expect, but don't. Warwick, certainly not here another Nora Roberts, is going to trick us and trick us badly. But it will be our own fault, because right here she is warning us against complacent certainty in our reaction to presented supposed-reality. Most, if not all, of the time, the uncritical, lazy mind is always fooled by life and the illusions that constantly embrace us in feigned good-fellowship. Some, if not much, of the time, so is the alert and intelligent mind. Will this be the writer's sole warning? Or will she, in the fashion of Hemingway, continually and repeatedly warn us that we are dupes of illusion. Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (1929) remains one of the very best examples in all of literary history of form as the incredible vehicle for truth but the hiding of truth, and then for the revealing of the truth behind the appearance of truth.

One can never escape being constantly astonished and stupefied by the stupidity of critics and academics. They won't let us. We know-and even critics and academics understand-that Catherine is dead. Her spiritual aura and the molecules of her mortal body have begun their dissipation and dissolution into the formlessness of death. But Henry too is quite dead, spiritually and psychologically. Here is the final sentence of the novel: "I walked out of the hospital, through the rain, back to my hotel." The italics are mine so that you, the reader, can't miss the meaning of the ending. (Incidentally, English professors in the last century in droves began to turn away from attempts at literary interpretation to, rather, embrace linguistics, literary theory, and certain movements in philosophy-such as deconstructionism-because they had been so heartily ridiculed for their hilarious attempts at interpreting literary works of art.)

Warwick also has a comparable elliptical ending to Hemingway's (an ending that is not completed overtly but is completed subvertly: the final scene is left out because it is unnecessary because what has gone before tells us the final scene). She also fills the novel with clues, clues which she, like Hemingway, so cleverly clothes in diversion that we miss them until the very end. And then we hit ourselves in the head for not realizing the clued meanings of the novel as we read through it. This is a painful experience. (A Farewell to Arms is a painful book, so beautiful, so great-but so painful and disturbing to read; and so is An Open Vein.) But it is also a beautiful experience because this is the way that life is. If we were just clever enough or awake enough, we could pretty much tell what our lives are going to be. But we aren't clever enough or alert enough, usually. Those who have experienced unfaithfulness by a spouse, for example, can look back and see clues all over the place. The same is true of the survivors of a suicide. And so on. Both of these books, thus, are great examples of how novels should be put together, how their form should be. Form is almost everything: almost all the differences between men and women are formal. The differences between a leaf and a tree are formal. And so on. Truly, " 'What counts is informing. In the literal sense: giving a form. Where is the form?'" Hemingway uses rain to inform A Farewell to Arms; Warrick uses misleading psychological perceptions to inform this work. Of course, both writers use more elements than these to inform. In an extended piece of rhetoric, we expect an introduction. However, in extended prose we never know. Here, the opening sentence could have been merely an introduction, but I have already told you that it is not merely an introduction but, rather, what we call in rhetoric, a thesis (or topic) sentence. Is the mind the central metaphor of the work? I've already told you that it is.

The pronoun clause, "that run endlessly," gives us the first clue that this opening sentence is importance. The author could have simply said, "My mind taunts me." But she didn't do so. She added this clause to draw attention back to the object of the preposition "with," which then leads back to "questions," which in turn lead us back even further to the subject, "mind," which leads us back even further, to the possessor of the mind, the subject of the novel, the fictive ego. The prepositional phrase, "with useless questions," is an adverbial prepositional phrase, modifying the verb, "taunts." This is grammatical movement between several poles, and "in moving between…poles, you are seeking to move beyond them." Questions that repeat in our minds do not "run" in a literal sense. But their repetition reminds us of the act of running; there is or can be some kind of analogy between them. This image therefore is a metaphor functioning as an idiom. The writer could have said that the questions repeat in the fictive ego's mind, which would have been accurate but lacking in color, in artistry. The use of metaphor here, not only beautifies the prose, but also provides a clue, a warning, that the book will be metaphoric; that is, literality will be clothed in subterfuge.

Metaphoric subterfuge is the presentation of something essential in the guise of another external object. The linking together of such discrete objects (such as in William Blakes' poem, "The Rose") causes a blending together of the two objects being compared. Metaphoric art is the blending together of two moments of experience so as to provide us with another moment, a third moment, a third moment of immediate experiential certainty-which then transforms itself into some kind of truth, poetic or psychological or whatever. To grasp a metaphor, we must be able to provide the metaphor with a contribution from ourselves: an act of perceiving, which implies an act of appreciation. Our act of appreciative perception draws us into a partnership with metaphor. Subject (we) and object (metaphoric construct) are joined in that relationship of subject and object. But then, almost immediately, the object (the metaphor) becomes the subject and we the object, in that the metaphor has caused us to appreciate by perceiving. This reciprocity constitutes life itself. In addition, metaphor defines more sharply the members of its construct; metaphor reveals essentials about both members (i.e., for example, a woman and a rose are both beautiful and both are characterized by an aroma, a fragrance that acts powerfully upon the male; one reminds us of the other). The taunting mind and the endlessly running questions are applying a terrible and destructive force against the fictive ego's psyche.

In case we missed this opening metaphor as metaphor, the writer follows it up with an explicit simile, "like a hamster on a wheel." A hamster is not compelled by an outside force to run on its wheel. It chooses to do so. The questions taunt and run in the fictive ego's mind because he chooses to allow them to do so. He allows them to do so because he knows that they are crucial questions, even though he is unable to face them truthfully and deal with them forthrightly. We might want to recognize and remember the shape of the wheel.

Warwick has given us an opening sentence that on the surface is a vivid and accurate description of a young man's tortured mind. But we are uneasy because we suspect that there is more here than we immediately are able to perceive. There is something more here than the words and their apparent meanings themselves that we are vaguely perceiving. Subconsciously we become uneasy and begin vaguely to suspect and expect more than what we seem to be receiving from the writer. Will we be given more? Will the opening promise of hidden-things-to-be-revealed be fulfilled?