It’s November, which means it’s time for NaNoGenMo (https://nanogenmo.github.io). Short for National Novel Generation Month, NaNoGenMo is a project coined by Darius Kazemi (https://tinysubversions.com), inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month (https://nanowrimo.org). Similar to NaNoWriMo, the goal in this project is to come up with a 50K word novel in 30 days during the month of November. The participants of NaNoGenMo, however, write code that generates a 50K word novel, sharing the novel and the code in the end.

For the final project, I will be generating a novel in the spirit of NaNoGenMo, novel hacking, Oulipo, and game/play. Using (hacking) novels available in the Project Gutenberg archive and NLTK, I will extract characters, their actions and words to generate a novel where the characters interact with each other (highly possibly absurdly). The actions of the characters will be based on a backgammon game I will play, thus introducing a structured constraint in the spirit of Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle translated as Workshop of Potential Literature), and an element of chance because there is dice involved. This may bring to mind John Cage’s work Reunion, a performance where the moves of the chess players (in this case John Cage and Marcel Duchamp) triggered sensors on the board that activated sound-generating systems prepared by David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman, and Lowell Cross (Cross, 1999).

I have not come up with the specifics of the code, but depending on how I integrate the backgammon rules, the project may become a playable text/a textual instrument as explicated by Wardrip-Fruin (2005), as others may be able to input their own backgammon play in the relevant cells of the Jupyter notebook, and come up with their own novel. 

Either way, the result will be an event-novel, rather than a novel as an event (Robles, 2010); a novel that is performed, rather than one that has “performativity” and one that potentially completely lacks “rhetorical complexity” (Robles, p.2). It will, however, not lack any sentimental value as I will dedicate it to my cousin who taught me how to play backgammon, and who passed away this week due to complications from Covid-19.

In our group project, we looked at the reception of Jean Toomer’s Cane in the 20s when it was first published, and then in the 70s, after it was republished. As may be expected, the difference in reception is significant – most particularly having there been the Civil Rights Movement in between. As per our team work share, I looked at its reception after its second publication, and was able to find many academic articles, a special issue of the CLA on Cane, and other reviews.

Once I read this material, I gained a much better understanding of the book regarding its structure and themes, after which I picked articles and sections in the book that reflected several aspects of/themes in the book – its circular structure, the women and the aggregate man (as relates to the African American experience/identity), its connection to blues and the Bible, and the author’s identity, all of which seemed to be elaborately analyzed in the articles: 

• The title “Cane” and several sections in the book have Biblical references (Cane/Cain) reflecting its mythical aspects, 
• “Oracular” points to its connection to the blues; 
• “Karintha” involves themes on men (an aggregate man is present in the book, as suggested by Fischer, 1971) and women (“the threads which weave Cane together”, and who may, like the aggregate man, be “all the same woman”  as suggested by Chase, 1971, p. 259) that are further developed in the novel. Here is also where the “images of celebration” (Grant, 1971, pp. 33-34) are introduced, and the circular structure of the novel begins geographically as it starts in Georgia later on moving up north; 
• “Song of the Son”, which is at the center of the book, is a poem about black identity; 
• “Kabnis”, a portrait of the artist, his position/experience as a black man, continuing its theme as blues, and finally, adding to the circular theme of the book since this last section is in Georgia as was the first. 

While there is certainly more to the book, I enjoyed this combination of articles that -at least in my head- reflected the beauty and power of the piece as a blues song humming a myth/reality.

References:

– Blake, S. (1974). THE SPECTATORIAL ARTIST AND THE STRUCTURE OF “CANE”. CLA Journal, 17(4), 516-534. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44329086

– Chase, P. (1971). THE WOMEN IN “CANE”. CLA Journal, 14(3), 259-273. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44328357

– Fischer, W. (1971). THE AGGREGATE MAN IN JEAN TOOMER’S “CANE”. Studies in the Novel, 3(2), 190-215. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/29531458

– Goede, W. (1969). Jean Toomer’s Ralph Kabnis: Portrait of the Negro Artist as a Young Man. Phylon (1960-), 30(1), 73-85. doi:10.2307/273361

– Grant, M. (1971). Images of Celebration in Cane. Negro American Literature Forum, 5(1), 32-36. doi:10.2307/3041141

– Lieber, T. (1969). DESIGN AND MOVEMENT IN “CANE”. CLA Journal, 13(1), 35-50. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44328732

– McKeever, B. F. (1970). Cane as Blues. Negro American Literature Forum, 4(2), 61. https://doi.org/10.2307/3041353

– Scruggs, C. W. (1972). The Mark of Cain and the Redemption of Art: A Study in Theme and Structure of Jean Toomer’s Cane. American Literature, 44(2), 276. https://doi.org/10.2307/2924510

For the Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street (1853) audiobook project, I was in the Office Crew team. We collaborated over Google Docs and Zoom so as to discuss our process and progress. As the framework for our project, we chose ‘Exquisite Corpse’, a method invented by Surrealists where participants collectively create texts of images, each contributing to the whole as they wish/in their own style, and the whole is revealed only at the end. This way, we were able to “hack” (Allred, 2014) Bartleby without relying on an interpretive reading/editing of the text, and allowing each participant to creatively and freely work with the text culminating in a plurality: multiple interesting voices, readings, and takes on Bartleby. Barthes’ “Death of the Author” and “From Work to Text” are particularly relevant here – each of us were present as readers and performers as we played with and reproduced the work, thus approaching it as a text. 

For my role as a ’reader’, I decided to go the ‘computable/DH’ route, and also approached this as a sound project:   1. I chose the reactions of the narrator each time Bartleby uttered “I prefer not to” – whatever he says or does immediately following the utterance. We could perhaps then see how they contrasted (or not) Bartleby’s monotone presence. We could see the score (as in musical score) that’s in the text.    2. I used an AI powered (which minimizes the robotic-ness) text to speech tool. I recorded them onto my phone from my computer, which added a lot of glitch (the distance + my computer’s damaged sound card). I am fairly fond of experimental music and used to do a radio show (where I got phone calls like ‘hey your signal is broken’ to which I had to respond ‘no, that’s actually what I am playing on my show’), so my individual contribution as well as my suggestions to the group/group process were very much influenced by that. I had also been part of music improvisation groups, where each person contributed to the sound created in their own individual way, so to me, our audio project was in line with those creative endeavors. 

I was completely fascinated by the final outcome -it was like one of my radio shows in one sense 🙂 : my teammate Lisa’s fantastic voice and reading of her own parts, my teammate Ostap’s equally fantastic but at the same time completely different reading of his part, all of our different voices/reading styles combined, and the amazing editing job done by Maggi,  all made for a very interesting audio project/product to listen to. Kevin pulled all our ideas together greatly so I could better reflect on our project. One could just as well see this as an experimental radio play where we hacked Bartleby in such a way that not only we -the performer/producers- contributed idiosyncratically, but also the listeners would inevitably  hear and make sense of it in idiosyncratic ways (love/hate it, focus on completely different parts or aspects of it, etc). While this is true for any sort of reading/sense making, the nature of this audio project might lend itself to further diverse ways of reception. Referring to Benjamin’s Storyteller here – how would they remember/reproduce our version of Bartleby?

Our project made me reconsider my take on audio books. I have so far enjoyed being the isolated reader that Benjamin describes – one who, as he perfectly put it- “seizes upon [her] material more jealously than anyone else… ready to make it completely [her] own” (p. 100).  I wanted to read and process words in my own way. May be re-read them, may be slower or faster, may be forget they were there, may be think about how I wold translate them, etc. I did not want anyone else’s imagination in the imaginary worlds that I created and so enjoyed. Even though I love experimental works – opening my mind to the unusual, the edges of others’ imagination.  To me, those (reading unintruded vs being open to anything that might come my way) were separate joys. I have now decided that this is indeed a good take, I can listen to audio books as audio projects, not necessarily a replacement of novel-reading, but an experience entirely its own.