Nuages and Nuances

Nuages and Nuances

Jill has pointed out a nuance that I left quite cloudy. I was using “and then . . .” in a sense identical with the drive-through scene in Dude Where’s My Car, not as an implicit causality. The transformation in that scene does move toward causality, and that’s when the anger really heats up, ending in the destruction of the drive-through speaker. Something like this:

I’ll have a coke.

And then . . .

Oh, and a burger, some fries . . .

And then . . .

a frostie

And then . . .

That’s it.

And then . . .

That’s all.

And then . . .

You give me my food and I drive away

And then . . .

NO MORE AND THEN!!!!!

Are a burger, some fries, a coke, and a frostie causally related? No way dude! Is driving away? Yes, dudes and dudettes. Paratactic in the Webster’s sense, is adjacency without a coordinating conjunction. Paratactic, in the linguistic sense I was using it in, is:

Adjacency with equal syntactic relevance, with or without a causal relation, which may or may not include a coordinating conjunction.

(loosely paraphrased from Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction by Michael J. Toolan)

Clear as mud? The key part is equal syntactic relevance— in other words, a burger and fries do not have any real precedence or direct relationship. They do not, in and of themselves, constitute a narrative or subordinate structure, though they are presented in a temporal sequence. Expectation of a causal relation in a temporal sequence is what causes the annoyance. That was the cloudy thought driving that blog entry and the reason why I got obsessed with using that conjunctive sequence (and then . . .) for a group of entries following it until I was clear enough on the concept to write about it.

Violation of a paratactic, expected, temporal sequence was one of the primary tools of early oral storytellers like Homer. Events were not related in strictly chronological order, or even in reverse chronological order. Jill is far more deeply read in narrative theory than I am. Genette’s Narrative Discourse rests at my elbow, along with a whole other stack of books on the subject that I want to read. I was shaving on a different splinter that is deeply related. Though largely paratactic, early oral compositions were indeed narrative, but what is unique about them is periodic structure that is not necessarily presented in a temporal, causal relation. That is why I feel they are an important analogue for blog entries. My usage of the term oral is not in any way synonymous with the general banter about conversations. I mean it in a very specific, nuanced way which can only be read in context with a great many entries that I’ve been writing in my blog.

Not all blog constructions result in easily identifiable, or definable, narratives. That, I think, is the beauty of it. Though built on a narrative, temporal, foundation— they don’t really comply with expectation.

{For the lay reader, I’m compelled to quote my Blake professor: “Sometimes confusion is the correct response.” I’m confused myself. So if you feel like you don’t understand half of my writing— well, dude, neither do I.}