Jagged Little Stories

the death of rhetoric

From EXOBIOTANICA -BOTANICAL SPACE FLIGHT by Azuma Makoto.

There are two camps now—those for the earth, those interested in what it means to be from here, of here, even if the precise ‘here’ isn’t where your ancestors lived—in fact, very importantly this—and those for whom life on earth has become a very expensive dress rehearsal for a more ruthless intergalactic colonialism, one in which the limits of cruelty, greed, and missile power are not yet defined. For the latter, the devastation of Gaza and refugee camps, the cop cities, the propaganda against multiracial, multigender, working class organizing for agency is a training ground for future atrocities. Their impact is unimportant to them, because they plan to leave it all behind. 

There is no good faith arguing with those who’ve set their sights on living on the moon to get away from their misdeeds. How far apart geographically, imaginatively, can two people be and have the thread of rhetoric still stretch between them? This is presuming that the survival of rhetoric is something to hope for, which I do not at all believe. Remember that before it was used as a bland, depoliticized funding source for creative writing graduate students, rhetoric was already a zombified revival from the romans; we had almost escaped its grasp before the classical revival of the Renaissance elevated rhetoric once again, and it became prized in European humanist circles for aligning logic and rationality with nerve, force of will, and a poise considered inherently white, right, and might. 

Imagine a world where we no longer had to justify ourselves to the rhetoricians, where we didn’t have to exist in their frameworks, where they constellated themselves away from us. Maybe they’ve gone to the moon, maybe we just refuse to acknowledge them as inhabitants of the same somatic playing field. But this isn’t about imagining, because the other camp, the one that has no desire to inhabit space, no desire to test nuclear, chemical, or mechanical bombs, no need to measure firepower, draft and outfit armies, build rockets etc.; this camp is the one that values the present, the hereness of the places where we live, over the much lauded green technology, carbon capture, tech startups anon anon that will supposedly save us from climate destruction. In reality, these technologies are the great bait and switch, each and every one a trial to see what allows the richest the most oxygen, most distance, someplace else.

I’ve been reading a history of histories*, in which the resuscitation of rhetoric is charted so minutely that it’s tantalizing to imagine an alternate course of history had bored, uninspired, powerful men not gone spelunking in the Roman Empire. At one point, early modern chronicles by Guicciardini are described as “jagged” in technique, whereas the more fleshed out humanist histories are “typically smooth and even bland.” A typology of historical genre is provided: “We may say that, as types, annals are disconnected, chronicles are episodic, history is ideally continuous; particular classifications can sometimes be disputable.” If we subscribe to a historically progressive view of history, in which progress marches Mankind down the road toward improvement and ever better technologies, civilizations etc., then the smooth, continuous narratives of modern histories is as good as it gets. 

But as a writer, I get to imagine these alternate courses of history, and go down every jagged, zigzagging path I desire. (Multiversers understand this intuitively.) Lately I’ve found that my stories reject indentations, that the paragraphs float on their own, moving the reader through time but disconnected from one another, from any propulsive forward narrative. It’s a jagged process, one where searching for connections only confuses things more; if a story gets published, the effect often dissolves without careful attention to placement and spacing. It’s not a science yet, probably won’t ever be. Were this newsletter to go on, I’d talk about my thoughts on the bourgeois paragraph and its movement of the reader through space, and how I think this is one of the reasons for the growing popularity of the short story collection masquerading as a novel, but these are thoughts for a future installment. Suffice to say if you’re taking the ice pick to narrative and breaking things up, leaving the corners sharper and more jagged, you don’t always have to file them down. If the hard pivots, the jumps through time, the change of subject keeps them guessing, that could be a very good thing. The camp who stays will get it.

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*I don’t necessarily recommend this book, but for citation purposes, you’ll find it here.

Upcoming

I’ve got a jagged little chapbook coming out with Fonograf Editions. More on that soon, but if you’re in the Portland area, bookmark March 1 for a chap release at Bishop & Wilde, plus a couple special guests. 

Notions: A Sewing & Writing class starts Feb 8. If you wanna look further ahead for classes, March 16 I’m teaching Writing With: A Relational Writing Workshop online through Corporeal Writing, and then the next section of Short Story Multiverse starts March 24. 

If you are on the east coast, you have the opportunity to go see my husband’s queer pop punk band on tour in April. They’re super fun! They’re going lots of places! I’m exhausted just looking at it! Do not expect to see me there, I will be enjoying my quiet house.