James Chapman, Degenerescence (Fugue State Press, 2009)«The storyteller has many faces and many voices. It is his responsibility to hide behind the faces and voices of peoples past to tell about the things that have happened. He weaves beautiful often obtuse words into a quilt of drama and intrigue wrapping you in it, kindling the fire of familiarity in your mind. The storyteller tells the same seven stories in words forever sevenfold.
James Chapman is disenchanted with the storyteller. In his Degenerescence, Chapman undermines the storyteller, he takes the story and breaks it over his knee; he then cares for it, nurtures it, and strips it of what it’s worth, leaving only the raw event, the ‘it’ of the story, and tosses everything else aside. Chapman captures the ostinato of the ancient mind pattern, conjuring the habits of the pre-Sophoclean man. In essence, James Chapman has written an epic.
Said epic begins in a world defined by lack of definition. It is a world constructed of words; if a word exists, then so the object exists. Each named thing, each thing in existence, is divine, and has purpose to exist. We enter into a world of primordial semantics, devoid of all implication. Take, for example, this excerpt:
Speak of fish. Take it in your hands. Fish is brought here by the speech of the name “fish.” Speaking the name “fish” enables fish to appear. First fish appears in the mind, then in the hand…
In this, Chapman has portrayed the rudimentary desire to obtain, and to do so by speaking words. He communicates with the reader not in a cerebral fashion, but instead taps into a more primal brain function, for the proto-Babel language.
In Degenerescence, we see the world being destroyed and recreated by a tumultuous goddess named WOE, who takes it upon herself to define the world through the speaking of words; she speaks words for one thousand eight hundred days, and creates a world of her own. She births seven daughters, with the stillborn inkling of an eighth, with the intention to send them into the world that she created, only to have them each fail in succession, and return to their heavenly abode—a hut—where their mother cares for them once more.
WOE watches on as the world she created moves without her. The people have appointed themselves a king, with whom she speaks regularly. The rest of the people, however, deny the presence of WOE’s daughters, her only ambassadors to her world:
They live together among the white cedars. WOE has created the world, yet only her seven daughters know her. All other persons of her creation ignore her or shun her as a shamed mother, an unmarried mother. She created them, and they treat her as a shamed mother, an unmarried mother.
Note the usage of repetition, calling to mind ancient Sumerian devotional literature. What that particular excerpt has in common with ancient epics is that they have concepts that any reader can relate to. The words used are remarkably relatable, and yet eerie in their foreignness. There’s something queer about reading your life 2000+ years ago. Are we so mutable and recyclable? So the story goes.
And so the novel begins to tell things that happened. WOE looks on in horror as Portuguese explorers, Magellan and Pigafetta, step foot on the land of her people and give them words empty of substance. They give them the flowery, obtuse words of story, and the world she founded begins to collapse before her. Her words hold no water, and her world, too, holds no water. She comes to find truths about it, flaws. It is not, in fact, a world, but a mere island, to be called Mulatto, amongst many islands that the Britons (to represent the Western people) have conquered, and plan to conquer. WOE laments as the history of her people, however ungrateful they are, succumbs to this new story of Veni, Vidi, Vici.
It is interesting to note, for all those historians and anthropologists out there, Chapman’s geographic placement of WOE’s world. Upon further research, one can see that Magellan indeed circumnavigated the globe. However, Pigafetta accompanied him on his voyages to the Maluku Islands of the Indonesian archipelago only. Our created people of the novel, the Mulattans, are mentioned alongside the races of Dyaks, Jakurs, Battaks, and Fuegans, who were actually tribes of people from Borneo, Sumatra, and South America. Chapman, therefore, remains painstakingly within the confines of Magellan’s knowledge, but also filters it through the voice of the people, ignorant to all other things. The effect is a curious one, such that one feels the people live on a sort of congealed continent, a Pangaea of sorts.
WOE perceives her world as a Pangaea, a giant mass which she recreated on her own. And now, having nearly forgotten herself and her meaning because of her people’s neglect, she decides to leave. She sinks into her Panthalassa, the endless sea, and leaves her daughters, all her creation to un-create itself and to write itself a history.» - Carah Naseem
«James Chapman, novelist and publisher, has been admired for years by a devoted and slowly-expanding group of readers. BLATT Magazine: "It seems that Chapman has made a career out of becoming himself - slowly, gorgeously, and as publicly as a small press like his own Fugue State can afford. If he is an undiscovered genius, it's because genius can only be undiscovered. After that, all is canon, and can be worried apart into schools, influences and intentions..."
Chapman is the author of seven novels so far, most recently Stet and How is This Going to Continue?
Must one consciously experiment to write experimental fiction?
It's very traditional to invent new forms. The tradition of doing that starts right at the beginning of art. So if you're inventing new forms you're not avant-garde anyway, if you see what I mean. That's a healthy thing—since if you're spending any time looking at your work saying 'Is this startlingly new, am I avant-garde enough today?' you're basically looking in a mirror saying 'Am I cool, am I beautiful?' We all do that, but while we're doing it we know we're kind of alienating ourselves from our actual faces.
If you only write the sentences that're most like yourself, you'll slowly automatically start to clear out the old habits of copying what's around you, of trying to impress anybody, of trying to fit in or wanting to stroke the reader to make him love you. You become more singular, in the sense of strange. It's not experimentalism, it's less practical than that. It's just being left alone with your own temperament and tendencies, and finding your way. It's the best fun.
People don't call Goya an experimental painter...nobody calls Beethoven's Missa Solemnis an experimental mass... but those works were so odd that it took a hundred years to catch up with them.
That kind of person does experiment, but with their real lives. Melville basically said "What if I follow my inclinations? Even if it doesn't please anybody? Do I survive?" He tried it. He won, he lost.
There're always some people for whom it's very hard to live in the world. They don't feel things in the normal way. So if they happen to make art, they'll "give the public" a thing "the public" has never remotely asked for at all. Their stuff is different, only because they themselves are different. They absolutely can't help it.
Must one consider marketability if one hopes to be read?
I was lucky because for many years I hung out with some friends who were working their way up in the New York social/literary world. My friends generously let me watch very closely, as a sort of spy, and see what it all actually means, what happens at those parties, what the mysterious content of fame really is, and what happens to writers while they turn themselves into a power nexus.
So it became easier for me to give up, let the illusion go, and instead choose a life where you don't get excessive numbers of readers for your books. I don't interfere with readers, I don't push myself at them or try to trick them into buying my books. In return, nobody interferes with me either, because there's no utility to me—no profit, no fame, no connections are to be had through me. So I can do exactly the work I need to do, no matter whether it's savvy or clever to do that. And I feel better with every book. I get closer and closer each time, on this open path.
If you're a writer and you really do speak out of yourself, you'll be understood by the exactly right number of humans. My readers kind of select themselves. There aren't thousands of them. They're odd individual persons who don't belong to an overall tendency. Somehow it's easy for them to feel the emotions I'm writing about, emotions that're just opaque to everybody else. That opaqueness protects me and hides me, so I can keep working.
DH: Why not write poetry or something else?
Well. Yeah. But there was something I did love about novels, like with symphonies or any epic form—it was the accumulating completeness. The building-up of a contained expanding universe. Having all the time in the world to say everything you can say about one emotion, going all the way into it, till you can shine light through it. It changes you to write a novel, it cures you of a lot of things. I still want somehow to go through that experience.
But it'll have to take a different form now, because absolutely everything's changed on me. I don't know what I write like. It'll be fun figuring it out.
I did made a start with this book called Degenerescence. It's a novel that's incantation and hymn, in preference to story, and's about the creation and destruction of the world, the involvement of language with that, the way we destroy reality by naming things and making stories. I wrote it while I was floored by the ancient Near East writing. The sound of the Sumerian voices (in good editions where it's not edited and smoothed-out into reasonable literature)—the fantastic drumming repetition, the way terror inhabits everything in their world. My book, compared to that, is just a pastiche. But it's also personal, it's about my private world and what I destroyed and created.» - An Interview with James Chapman
by David F. Hoenigman
Excerpt from Degenerescence:
«WOE threw down her clay flute, WOE changed. She threw down her flute. WOE, whose hair flows over the sea, she threw down her flute.
The island persons, created-by-WOE persons, they are like grain, they have flowed into a new vessel. The persons have composed one hundred stories about the creation. They have composed one hundred stories about Magellan. They have composed one hundred stories about each one of the persons of the village.
Created-by-me persons have done this foreign thing. I am WOE. I am as strong as this island world. I am as strong as this encircled world. I am as strong as this flooded, infiltrated world. I existed prior to water, but I was silent then. I existed prior to the foreigners, but I was ignorant then. I made no distinction between honey, rats, swords or birds, when I first spoke those names. If rats are not as beautiful as honey, if rats are not as aware as birds, if rats are to be condemned even above swords, then I am wrong, my words are wrong, my eyes are wrong, my island is wrong. If I must protect myself from creation, if I must hide from the words of others, if stories are normal, if I am not normal, then the cave of the heart of all creatures is empty.
I protected seven babies, and saw them die. But I will not protect myself.
I gave my island to a foreigner, then I killed him. But I will not flee, I will not hide.
What is within me is also every place. What is every place is within me. I must have invented stories, I must have invented fate, I must have invented tedium, I must have invented drinking alcohol, I must have invented lies, I must have invented pain. I will not insult the names of these things, I will not insult the forms of the gods, I will not insult the gods of these names. I will stop speaking, rather than use their names in storytelling, I will stop speaking and remain silent rather than trap the gods in a story. I will become mute rather than ruin the objects of the world by using them to decorate stories.
I am the size of a thumb, my island is the size of a jar, my silence will make no difference among these thousand speaking voices. But I will not pretend to be happy, I will not put my heart into the furnace and talk it away.
I am the size of a drop of water, I travel down the mountain, I split into streams. The man who thinks that is a story, he gets lost in many streams.
A drop of water is enough. The man who sees it, he is satisfied.
I hear a word as I hear my own breath. I hear a hymn as I hear my heart beat. I hear a note on the flute as I hear the footsteps of my own people. I hear a story as I hear a shadow that falls over the light.
When I sleep, then I awaken and say this rhetoric:
The misery of WOE...a daughter she did not hear: incomplete baby: fearful islanders: murder of Magellan: the cursE and the river: seven daughters mourn: Spaniards in bronze: the destruction of music: Briton ignorance: an army defeats itself: murder of all foreigners: plague of impotence: WOE leaves the island forever: the wreck of the island: weeping of men and women. The misery of WOE.
Before this story began, there was no River Swastika flowing through the island, neither the Greater nor Lesser Swastika. The island was without a shape. There was no arrangement to the colors. There were no roots underground.
We had the mist-tree. Each morning, the sun struck the tree in the east, a cloud formed around the tree, the tree vanished in cloud. Tree, no-roots-tree, unseen tree. In daylight, all the leaves dropped, we went to collect them. They were pods full of sweet water.
At night, more leaves grew out. This happened all the year. All the year was the same and there was no border to a year, there was no border to the time.
In those days you passed your hand in front of your face and did not know your hand was there. Motions of your body had the form of rustling sounds. Speech was murmur all the day and night. Speech did not come from voices of persons. Speech was in the earth.
Birds of those times had long feathers. Birds were born with differing colors each morning, according to the color of cloud around the mist-tree.
After Magellan came, after Magellan disturbed the world, after Magellan offended the gods of words, after Magellan died upon a log bridge, after Magellan fed two rivers, then no birds were born in a colored mist.
Blue, orange and jade birds lost their names, their names lost the souls of names, the birds were lost. They were called birds, meaning "world birds." They could not change their name to "island birds."
WOE looked at the sea, WOE was the size of the point of a knife. The sea was much larger than the former sea. Before Magellan came, the sea was called "sea," meaning the water gird of the world. It could not change its name to Path toward the World, Distance from the World, Sea of Enemies, Sea of Darkness.
If the sea has no weight, if the sea has no depth, if the sea has no color, if the sea has no smell, if the sea has no taste, if the sea has no sand, if the sea is no good to work in or play in, then it loses the faith of its name. The word "sea" has nothing of SEA and the sea has nothing of SEA.
Every other name and thing on the island came into such a condition also. Each tree was without its god. The red fish was without its god. The spear point was without its god. Every thing you can name lost the faith of its name.
There is a fire lit: the fire has lost the faith of its name. Persons look into the fire, the fire fails to hold the eye. The fire fails to speak to the eye.
WOE, whose spoken speeches are permanent, whose words are bone, who is made of words, who holds the souls of words: where is your voice, where is your language, where is your creation?
Now persons meet in a group every night, around a false fire. The persons are thirsting for a story.
One man tells a story to all. His story makes every person listen. Every utterance makes you laugh. His story creates a foolish woman, every utterance makes you laugh at the foolish woman, at her foolish husband, at the stupid dog owned by them.
Every utterance of the story is made of a false word, put together with a word that used to be true.
The listeners have nothing they can see. No thing is created here. The listeners look into the fire, to try to see. The fire is dark, the fire is not enough bright.
They hear the utterances, they hear the story. LAUGHING does not want to be laughed but LAUGHING laughs upon being forced to laugh.
The story teller, he shouts, he says he sees this woman, he sees her husband, also the dog. He shouts as if the woman is concentrated out of ten women, as if the husband is concentrated out of ten men, as if the dog is concentrated out of ten dogs.
What is wrong in this story, what is terrible in this story, what is missing from this story that must be added, what is within this story that must be removed?
Persons are laughing at a woman and a man and a dog. The woman is trapped, the man is trapped, the dog is trapped. They can do only the things that are funny. They can say only the things that are funny. The man and woman and dog, they will die without singing, they will die without dreaming, they will die without walking, they will die without sitting alone, they will die without thinking, they will die apart from every other soul, they will die and never live beneath the earth, they will never live after the story ends. They are being told, they are being told by STORY, they are trapped, they will die.
The story teller shouts, and the woman and man and dog are bright, terrible, they flame in the night, they hurt the eyes. There is nothing, it is dark, it is not enough bright. His story is a burial. His story cuts short the life of those who hear it. His story is a sharp dagger, his story is a baited trap.
WOE, when you made the world, there was no falsehood. You held out a word, there was the word in your hand.
WOE, you who created the world, you can not explain. You can make a hymn, but you can not make a story and explain.
Your muteness was the foundation of the world. Your muteness, it is a crack in the world. Your muteness will be the destruction of the world. You are a failure. You are mute.
In the times before these times, the first story was told. WOE, you are mute. So that Magellan told the first story. He said "Tomorrow I will bring gifts." We all heard him. He spoke "gifts" and GIFT listened, GIFT sang for us all the night. Magellan spoke "gifts" even though no gifts were before us.
We saw the gifts. The words came from his mouth, the words were gifts, we saw gifts. We slept the night dreaming of unseen gifts. Our huts piled high with unseeable gifts. We gifted ourselves with GIFT, and GIFT gave us transparent gold, floating boxes, silver water moving through tubes in the sky, whirling statues whose faces changed every moment. We saw lambs made of pig, pigs made of fish, a song of blue stone that fit under the tongue and sang out. Magellan spoke our word for gifts, he changed our word for gifts.
Magellan, tomorrow he then brought gifts. They did not match. They did not match what we saw. We wept, we heard a story, we believed a story about the future, it diverted us, it was bright, it was false.
A false story does not happen, but it is true while it is told. WOE said this.
A true story would say:
The sun rose up, the sea waves waved.
The sun continued in rising. The sea waves continued the waving.
The sun, the waves. The sun, the waves.
WOE told that story to her daughters. She told another true story, saying: A true story would be every word that does now appear.
Cinnamon, banana, stone, eyes, fish net, mouse.
This story can be believed. But it cannot be listened to.
When her daughters left home to go to the village and speak, WOE told them this rhetoric:
Tell stories that can be listened to. Tell true stories that can be listened to. Create a true story that can be listened to. Speak each word with honor to the god, speak each word as you sing. You are the beautiful singers of the world, you are the beautiful singers of the known and unknown world, you are the beautiful singers of the three worlds. Speak stories with the same care as you sing.
WOE said all this, to each daughter, this is what she said. Every daughter heard her.
After her daughters died, they did not believe her words. They questioned her words.»
