Emptiness

To take a look at emptiness in The Ravickians is difficult simply because our protagonist attempts, so fervently, to deny that there is an emptiness at all. However, this is where it becomes so apparent that the world of Ravicka exists, at this point in time, amongst an air of silence. 

She tries to explain Ravicka as a being filled with noise, but in doing so, betrays the silence: “Ravicka is not at all silent as they say it is. When I am in the city I hear everything. When on Bodi I can hear voices from Shumgater, two blocks away. When those voices cease I hear the Balşa wind. Very late at night, a single car speeds through the streets. I hear its engines shifting gears.” Here, the noises of Ravicka, the single car, the distant voices, they speak volumes to the silence that surrounds them. In a place full with something, these instances would go unnoticed, in this empty Ravicka, they are all we have left.

Similarly, Amini, our protagonist, discusses, inadvertently, the potential emptiness of language. She notes that, when translating, “Sometimes you will have to put a “0” there; this will indicate a hole….” This must happen (or should, at least) when a proper translation is not discernible. But, what does an “0” leave but nothingness. An empty pocket of communication that does not exist, and fills the streets with nothing but more silence.

The notion of “location” as a “series of place” rather than one concrete spatial object is extremely intriguing to me as we move through The Ravickians. Most notably, early on in this novel, in the meeting of Anna Patova on the bridge – “Meeting a person on a bridge and standing there with her, not progressing to either end…” (33). This bridge is a “series of place” and a “series of encounters” much like Clifford describes in his essay on travel. 

While The Ravickians as a whole focuses more pointedly on language than its predecessor, the notion of travel is alive and while within the novel. However, travel is not as simple as a movement from here to there with definitive beginnings and ends. Much like this meeting on the bridge – while a concrete place, the meeting, the event, takes place over a span of places and times as the bridge connects these places and times.

The Urban Experience

An”urban” experience is one that we can see our narrator as having. A large focal point of the novel is how the narrator experiences her actions within the realm of her surroundings: cultural in both their physicality and their mentality. Simon’s “disappearance” behind a door to his “living space” is indicative of just this. Our narrator’s experience within Ravica is bound to a cultural understanding of Simon’s relation to his living space – why he retreats within the door, and, what exactly the door leads to. This is similar in point to our narrator’s experience with the “downtown” and the singular building she questions as to being this “downtown.”

What is this cityscape to our narrator as opposed to our native Ravickians? This is what the book aims to present. Of course the language barrier is representative of simply that – a language barrier. However, it also bolsters the claim that the narrator’s experiences in Ravica are quintessentially urban in their relation to city and functionality of city.

language/liberation

Our unnamed narrator in “Event Factory” presents, ever so simply, as a tourist. But what is a tourist if not someone searching for something? And what is this something if not, perhaps, a sort of liberation? My question then becomes: a liberation from what? It seems that our narrator is constrained by the barriers of language that so plague our everday lives. She wishes to communicate with the place (Ravicka, in this case) that she inhabits, however, she is thwarted by the contraints of language. Both the spoken and written word are not enough to truly communicate – yet our narrator is unable to remove herself from the binds of this type of “communication.” She is so focused on the written and spoken word that she is unable to understand the presence of other, possibly more effective, types of “speaking.”

This, then, is where liberation must take place. Our narrator, perhaps a “typical” tourist. Trapped but what she knows and what she can hold and handle. But in order to engage in real communication – to understand the place she visits, the people she meets, etc – she must be liberated from the conventional understanding of language.

(In)stability of Time

In finishing the novel, I still find myself very interested by the projection of time within In the House… Time is presented in such an atypical manner, that it is only natural that one must reach out in order to understand it. In class we had discussed the stability and instability of the novel – focusing mostly on the stability/instability of the body, etc. I, however, question the stability/instability of time as portrayed by Matt Bell.

The presentation of time as anomalous becomes extremely apparent once we reach the final third of the book. I say, even, the end identifies this point most precisely. Time does not act on each character the same, or, even, in each “world” the same. We see the mother/wife, aged, but then young again, the fondling, forever in a stasis of youth, and the father/husband, old, haggard, and oft teetering between life and death. These things all occur, even, within the same few pages, during the same timeline. While the father ages, the mother ages and reverts, and the fondling remains ever youthful and odd. 

The changes in the world itself seem more linear, but they are distracted by the happenings within the characters. It becomes essentially impossible to view time as normal, or linear, even when our setting presents it as such, because a linear and normal timeline would not age and forget about the people within our setting. This is to say that, perhaps even, the characters interact with time differently than the “world” interacts with time – however, one must overpower the other.

Grotesque

Yesterday in class my group was tasked with discussion “transformation.” Our individual group focused on the presentation of the “grotesque” in the realm of these transformations. I found this to be a very interesting discussion. Why, exactly, are the transformations so, for lack of a better word, disgusting? The squid transformation reads as such: “…the squid opened my skin with its hooks…splitting some number of ribs and also the tissue between…” (164). It is, evidently, unpleasant at best, and horrifying at worst. 

It seemed to me, at least, that this must serve a purpose – but what? Perhaps the intent is to present the grotesque-ness of the husbands actions (that are more emotional and psychological) in a physical and tangible manner. Throughout the novel his actions are told and hinted at, but they are never “in our face” in a way that presents the potential horrors in a way that would ultimately connect with the reader. However, the awful, bloody physical aspects of the novel are obvious and unavoidable. They are seen, and even “felt” by the reader. To present this violence as physical simultaneously presents an emotional violence that may not be presently noted by the reader.

Memory and Things Remembered

On page 153 the husband mentions the “slim difference between the memory and the thing remembered.” But what does this indicate? I’ve been having trouble discerning what is real and what is not in this novel, if any of it may be considered real. In The House seems to be utilizing a sense of mystery in reality in order to bring forth its ideas. This is to say that the novel requires some suspended sense of belief in the “real” in order to value it. 

However, within this suspension of disbelief is also a bit of unreliability. Beyond the impossible is that “possible” that still somehow seems inaccurate. And this is where “the difference between the memory and the things remembered.” As the husband also says, “this desperation that could be either a squid or a whale (167), exists. These things exist within the novel that could be one of many things – but we, and perhaps, the husband himself – have no idea what. 

This is not, however, a purposeful deception, but instead a deception provided by the close-knit confusion between what is a memory, and what we remember. There is a space within this realm that we/the husband cannot quite understand, and the book wants us to grapple with.

The Confusion of Time

Time often exists as a forefront (intentionally or not) in literature. The movement of time is essential, it seems, to the functioning of a novel. That is to say, without time, how does a reader orient themselves around events?
However, In the House plays with time in a way that I have not often seen. This is not to assert that time is not as necessary of a function within Bell’s novel. Instead, the relationship is much more difficult than one may expect. I say this, because time is regularly mentioned. We see in part three of the novel that the husband has aged (seemingly) decades. Time passes, this is stated. But while time is qualifiable in the novel, it is not quantifiable, and this is what is interesting. The husband says, “for the first time in years or decades, in perhaps some other longer length unreckonable as all time then was…” (129), indicating that time is not properly measure – either within this universe, or within his mind. He, according to statement, has aged exponentially. However, the Foundling has aged only to adolescence. And then, even, within the natural movement of the novel, it appears to the reader that little time has elapsed. It would appear to me that, without the husband’s indication of passing time, that no more than days had passed.The changing of time spans is also notable and may help further this confusion. Near the start of the novel, time moves in smaller increments, while by our current point, it jumps in leaps and bounds.

The Growing Home

The “growing home” in In the House… is obviously a fantastical concept. Home’s don’t simply add hallways and rooms and expand on their own. But, ignoring the fabulous that we see within the novel – why would their be a need for a growing home?
It appears to me that the home is a stand in for the progression of relationships within the novel – particularly, at this point, between the wife and husband. As the wife’s relationship with the foundling “expands” in a positive manner (as the foundling and wife become more attached and more “part of one another”) the husband’s relationship with the wife expands in a negative manner. Their relationship becomes fraught with hidden rooms and unknown corridors, much like the home they live in.
What is so interesting about this idea is that the growth of the home can be utilized, as a mentioned, to explain positive and negative movement within the relationship. In some instances, for example, the expansion of the home could be viewed as a good thing: growth, change, forward movement. Yet, the same advancement can be presented as a negative: unexpected, secretive, confusing.

The Uncanny

I am still rather interested in Steinberg’s Spectacle and some discussions we could have in regards to that collection. I’ve been wondering how it would be possible for Spectacle and In the House… to interact. While it would seem that the two pieces of work are far too different to interact positively, this may not be the case. 

We were asked to think about The Uncanny while engaging with In the House. And, although this idea of The Uncanny meshes well with In the House…I think that there are also many ways we can discuss The Uncanny in Spectacle. While the new novel certainly engages more with ideas of The Uncanny on a base level, it is certainly apparent that the emotional themes of Spectacle exist in a similar realm. The words and feelings of Steinberg’s narrator are familiar, maybe even particularly so to a female audience. Her emotions are something that I feel to have encountered before. They are familiar, I know them. But they are also so painfully unfamiliar. I do not know the narrator, I feel separated and confused by the contextualization of the words and the simultaneous depth, and lack of depth, of the emotions presented. In the House deals with The Uncanny more “traditionally” (if this can be said?) insofar as Bell engages more blatantly with a spectrum of real and unreal. Steinberg works with The Uncanny, just on a more limited spectrum.