COMMUNICATION THROUGH INTERRUPTION: THE DISLOCATED CONVERSATION OF WRITING AND READING By ANNE C. McCONNELL B.A.

, Illinois Wesleyan University, 1999 M.A., University of Colorado, 2001

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A thesis submitted to the

Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Comparative Literature and Humanities 2006

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UMI Number: 3207732

Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

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UMI Microform 3207732

ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346

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ii This thesis entitled: Communication through Interruption: The Dislocated Conversation of Writing and Reading written by Anne C. McConnell has been approved for the Department of Comparative Literature and Humanities

______________________________________ Warren Motte

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______________________________________ Paul Gordon Date______________

The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.

iii McConnell, Anne C. (Ph.D., Comparative Literature) Communication through Interruption: The Dislocated Conversation of Writing and Reading Thesis directed by Professor Warren Motte

Maurice Blanchot employs the concept of interruption to characterize the role of discontinuity in conversation, and in the literary work. For Blanchot, interruption both aids in understanding by allowing for the necessary pauses and intervals that define the boundaries of words and thoughts, and it also disrupts continuity by emphasizing the infinite interval separating the two parts of an

which it arises. One of the most important ideas that comes out of this analysis of interruption concerns the distinction of the book and the work. In The Space of Literature, Blanchot writes, The writer belongs to the work, but what belongs to him is only a book, a mute collection of sterile words, the most insignificant thing in the world (23). While the writers task involves a sort of passive listening to the incessant murmur of the infinite work, she or he must in a sense betray the most essential quality of the work its infinite recession into nothingness by

bringing the work to expression within the material and linguistic confines of the book. In spite of this necessary failure on the part of writing, the book, for the reader, remains the site where she or he may gain a sort of access to the work. Thus, the book becomes a means of impossible exchange between writing and reading an exchange based upon the interruption of the works infinite recession. I develop a reading of Blanchots continual reference to the Orphic

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exchange speaker and listener, writer and reader, writing and the origin from

iv myth throughout his work as a way of considering the impossible communication of literature. After a preliminary chapter dedicated to an analysis of the Blanchotian theoretical perspective that informs my dissertation, I focus upon the notion of communication through interruption as a way of reading five short fiction texts. Franz Kafkas The Burrow, Jorge Luis Borgess The Garden of Forking Paths, Louis-Ren Des Fortss The Bavard, Nathalie Sarrautes Tropisms, and Blanchots Larrt de mort all address the supposed outer limits of the text, meditating upon the interrupting function of textual space in regards to

communication of writing and reading within, and infinitely outside of, the text that serves as their site of exchange. Kafkas narrator obsesses over the outer surroundings of his burrow, which propels him to keep digging, Borges proposes the possibility of unwritten narratives beyond the material space of the text, Des Forts focuses upon the infinite quality of empty chatter, Sarraute says as little as possible by bringing attention to the profound emptiness of the text itself and the characters within, and Blanchot demonstrates the Orphic circularity of writing and reading as it erases the boundaries which create order and definition in the text. In his or her own unique fashion, each writer meditates upon the limiting factors of textual space and seems to search for a certain blankness which defies containment. This blankness provides the interval within which literary communication functions. When reading these texts through Blanchots theoretical perspective, we can see the way that these contemporary writers turn

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the infinite movement of the work. In addition, they focus on the interaction and

v away from the concrete, the meaningful, the significant, in favor of a much less secure grounding that defies spatial, temporal, and cognitive limitations.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. Introduction..1 Writing Interruption Reading...22

The Infinite Patience of Franz Kafkas Literary Interruption46 Wandering Within Jorge Luis Borgess Literary Labyrinths76 Conversing with a Bavard.......108

BIBLIOGRAPHY207

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The Continuity of Discontinuity in Nathalie Sarrautes Tropisms..136

The Circularity of Orphic Communication in Larrt de mort161 Conclusion...197

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

imaginary. In The Song of the Sirens, he insists, The tale is not the narration of an event, but that event itself, the approach to that event, the place where that event is made to happen an event which is yet to come and through whose

power of attraction the tale can hope to come into being, too (447).1 Blanchot evokes Ulysses and the Sirens, Ahab and Moby Dick, and other significant encounters that depict the law of the rcit. The Sirens call Ulysses forward, inspiring him to transgress the laws that govern his world, and to enter into an
1

Lydia Davis translates the French word rcit as tale; my own text will retain the French. I refer to Daviss translation of Le chant des sirnes found in The Blanchot Reader. This essay was originally published in Blanchots Le livre venir. Elsewhere in the dissertation, I use Charlotte Mandells translation of that collection of essays, The Book to Come, but I prefer Daviss translation of Le chant des sirnes. For this reason, citations from The Song of the Sirens come from Daviss translation, but any other references to The Book to Come use Mandells translation

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Maurice Blanchot tells us that every rcit involves an encounter with the

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2 imaginary space that threatens to engulf those who penetrate it. The song resonates from an infinite distance, even as Ulysses hears its melody and struggles to break free from the restraints that keep him from losing himself in this distance. Ahab, on the other hand, sacrifices himself to the distance, as it overcomes him and silences his ability to communicate the experience. Of course, there remains something about those encounters that eludes their participants; Ahab is swallowed into the depths of the sea, and Ulysses feigns mastery over a song that promises to escape his grasp. The encounter that constitutes the rcit surpasses

encounter opens. Herein resides the paradox, the infinite circularity, the unapproachable abyss, the incommunicable communication that guides the rcit.

whale or the alluring song of dangerous temptresses

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The encounter with the imaginary whether in the form of a mythic battle with a clearly depends upon the

tale for its communication; but, at the same time, the tale can only come about by way of the movement towards the point of encounter. In other words, Ahab must encounter the whale, and Ulysses must listen to the song, for the stories themselves to begin. The rcit, as encounter, inspires the telling of the rcit. Of course, temporally, this makes little sense. Blanchot writes: The tale is a movement towards a point, a point which is not only unknown, obscure, foreign, but such that apart from this movement it does not seem to have any sort of real prior existence, and yet it is so imperious that the tale derives its power of attraction only from this point, so that it cannot even begin before reaching it and yet only the tale and the unpredictable movement of the tale create the space where the point becomes real, powerful, and alluring. (447)

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the rcit. Yet, the rcit is the encounter, and it relies upon the space that the

3 From this point of view, the encounter announces itself, in the sense that it precedes itself, only to allow for its taking place. Rather than sacrificing myself to this infinite, inescapable circularity, I would like to consider its implications in regard to writing, reading, and the encounter or communication between the

two. Blanchot uses the examples of Ulysses and Ahab in order to analyze the functioning of the rcit an approach to writing that he privileges because of the

circular process that governs its inception and its communication. For Blanchot, writing and reading are communicative gestures, even if they drown in the infinite distance of the sea separating Ulysses from the Sirens, and Ahab from the whale. In my dissertation, I plan to examine literary communication from that point of view, adducing Blanchots thought in my readings of five short fictions.

song because it proposes his theory of the rcit. It also parallels his understanding of the Orphic gaze, which serves as a central point of reference throughout my dissertation. The Song of the Sirens, though, specifically addresses the question of genre, insofar as it applies to the notion of brevity when comparing, say, a novel to a short fiction. That question poses itself as early as the Table of Contents preceding my dissertation, as the reader might remark the way that each of my chapters focuses on a particular short text whether we term it a short

story, a rcit, a novella, or a collection of tropisms. For that reason, I would like to consider Blanchots reflections on the rcit as a way of entering into a discussion of shortness as it relates to the topic of literary communication. In Maurice Blanchot and the Literature of Transgression, John Gregg asserts,

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I have chosen to begin by referring to Blanchots analysis of the Sirens

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4 Every novel contains secretly invaginated within it a rcit (199, emphasis in original). That rcit resides within the novel, yet exceeds the outer limits of that which appears to contain it; it allows for the writing of the novel even before the novel begins. It is not necessarily that Blanchot dismisses the novel in favor of the rcit, because, as we see here, the one does not exclude the other. In fact, Blanchot celebrates the novel, since Diversion is its profound song. To keep changing direction, to move on in an apparently random way, avoiding all goals, with an uneasy motion that is transformed into a happy sort of distraction (446).

rather than proceeding towards a specific goal, the novel strays, follows multiple paths, branches out in several directions with no regard for a final destination.2 Blanchot continues, The tale begins at a point where the novel does not go, though in its refusals and its rich neglect it is leading towards it (446).3 Another paradox clearly arises with such reasoning. The rcit, unlike the novel, does appear to have a destination; but the novel, in neglect of that destination, ultimately approaches the point that the rcit seeks to confront. Thus, the encounter of the rcit involves distraction, lack of direction, aimlessness even if

the rcit finds inspiration in a single point on the horizon. But the rcit does indeed distinguish itself from the novel, since it begins where the novel leaves off. Blanchot writes, Heroically, pretentiously, the tale is the tale of one single

See Ross Chamberss Loiterature. In the first chapter, Divided Attentions (On Being Dilatory) he discusses a sort of digressive, meandering, distracted narrative approach (3-25). From Blanchots point of view, those qualities overtly characterize the novel, but also suggest the rcit. 3 Hill translates rcit as tale.

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He understands this process of diversion to be intimately related with the rcit;

5 episode, that in which Ulysses encounters the inadequate and enticing song of the Sirens (446). One could perhaps mistake Blanchots identification of the rcit simply for a sort of essentialist vision of what literature can and should do. But even if we understand the tale as the essence, the core, the defining movement of literature, the glaring absence that arises out of the rcit puts any nave claims to essentiality to rest. To clarify, the rcit always involves a distance that perpetuates its infinite movement towards an unreachable point and continually

simply opens onto an abyss that defies any attempt to locate it. And if the rcit consists of an event the event of the encounter

event may speak. Blanchot explains this in terms of Ulyssess encounter with the Sirens:

Therefore, we have two points

song and an imaginary distance separating the two that seems both to prevent their encounter and to constitute it. The rcit, of course, is this always distant

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turns away from its reality as event, towards the imaginary, that the absence of the

It is true, Ulysses was really sailing, and one day, on a certain date, he encountered the enigmatic song. And so he can say: now this is happening now. But what happened now? The presence of a song which was still to be sung. And what did he touch in the presence? Not the occurrence of an encounter which had become present, but the overture of the infinite movement which is the encounter itself, always at a distance, from the place where it asserts itself and the moment when it asserts itself, because it is this very distance, this imaginary distance, in which absence is realized, and only at the end of this distance does the event begin to take place, at a point where the proper truth of the encounter comes into being and where, in any case, the words which speak it would originate. (450) Ulysses and the infinitely distant origin of the

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defers the encounter that constitutes it. If the rcit lies at the heart of writing, it

then it is only when the event

6 encounter. If the narrative of Moby-Dick aimlessly approaches this encounter, and gains its inspiration from it, it merely arrives at the distance that engulfs Ahab and leaves everyone else (Ishmael, Melville, the reader) infinitely outside. But without that impossible encounter, which is the rcit, the novel can never come into being. In some sense, the rcit appears completely to negate itself but, by way of this negation, it also affirms itself. According to Blanchot, the rcit belongs to the other time, which involves an affirmation of nothingness. He develops that concept in The Space of Literature when discussing the fascination that inspires writing: Times absence is not a purely negative mode. It is the time when nothing begins, when initiative is not possible, when, before the affirmation, there

beginnings or ends, or a movement towards a goal, but in the absence of these things, affirms itself both as predecessor and follower, as absence and presence of absence. The rcits circularity it relies on itself to come into being makes such an understanding of time necessary. And that is precisely what distinguishes it, in Blanchots mind, from the novel. He writes: If for the sake of convenience because this statement cannot be exact we say that what makes the novel move forward is everyday, collective or personal time, or more precisely, the desire to urge time to speak, then the tale moves forward through that other time, it makes that other voyage, which is the passage from the real song to the imaginary song. (BR 449, emphasis in original)4

Throughout my dissertation I use abbreviations when citing Blanchots texts: AM (Larrt de mort), BC (The Book to Come), BR (The Blanchot Reader), IC (The Infinite Conversation), PV (La parole vaine), SL (The Space of Literature), and WF (The Work of Fire).

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is already a return of the affirmation (30). This other time does not involve

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7 Thus, the distinction of the rcit and the novel only indirectly involves the issue of length. If the rcit is commonly shorter than the novel, this results from the way that the rcit confines itself to the moment when time becomes the other time. It focuses on the circular moment where distance speaks. It commits itself to a single, distant point, and thereby opens onto an infinite, bottomless, spaceless movement. From this perspective, the concept of length makes little sense. It seems, therefore, that my choice of analyzing short fiction is not a simple question of length even if the term, on the most literal level, identifies

this sub-genre of fiction precisely by its brevity. Blanchots analysis of the rcit reveals the complexity of any act of reduction concerning the literary text. Nevertheless, if we accept the relationship between the other time of the

then we arrive at the conclusion that the rcit consists of the essential moment of narrative without the ten years of a voyage that lead up to, and follow, this

moment. Of course, in Blanchots thought, essence is infinitely elusive; but this remains beyond the point, so to speak. Blanchot identifies the rcit as the abyssal gulf that inhabits any narrative; while the epic or the novel might contain this bottomless pocket, each also provides the superfluous, excessive, distracted narrative that surrounds it. Blanchot does not critique this; furthermore, he notes that the aimless digressions of the novel paradoxically lead to the point they lie outside of. One cannot approach the encounter with purpose or intent; it exceeds any sense of effort, or mastery. This explains Blanchots negative portrayal of Ulysses in The Song of the Sirens: a Greek of the period of decadence who

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encounter and a sort of condensed space that limits itself to this distant encounter,

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8 never deserved to be the hero of the Iliad (444). With that in mind, Blanchot does not dismiss the novel, or epic; rather, he sees the rcit as intimately involved with it. Yet, the rcit takes focus, sending any narrative excess to the outside, if only in order to present its own measureless excess. One might therefore conclude that the rcit takes on a shortened, condensed form as a means of bringing an undistracted attention to its infinite excessiveness. In Small Worlds, a study of minimalism in French literature, Warren Motte suggests the difficulty in identifying something as small. He writes: We designate things as small capriciously and according to different registers of perception. We may focus on a things physical size; on its duration, intensity, or range; on its import, its significance; on the quantity of the elements composing it; or on the simplicity of its structure. What seems common to all of those interpretive moves is the notion of reduction in relation to some more or less explicit norm. Art that insists upon that reduction and mobilizes it as a constructive principle can be termed minimalist. (1, emphasis in original)

In the case of short fiction, or the rcit if we specifically engage Blanchots term, smallness, or shortness, indeed assumes a sense of reduction. And as Blanchot suggests, a certain relativity is implied; in other words, short fiction is short in relation to the traditional novel. Of course, Blanchots definition of the rcit does not necessarily apply to Jorge Luis Borgess short stories, or to Franz Kafkas parables; yet each writer works with a form that plays on the notion of shortness. Moreover, this shortness, or reduction in size, points us towards the notion of essentialism in each case. Borges writes in his Autobiographical Essay, The feeling that the great novels Don Quixote and Huckleberry Finn are virtually shapeless served to reinforce my taste for the short-story form, whose indispensable elements are economy and a clearly stated beginning, middle, and

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9 end (238). Whether or not we take such a statement at face value, Borges clearly celebrates the simplicity and the structure of the shortened form. It comes in a neat, organized package that appears to get right to the point. Motte reflects on these issues of reduction: One may construe [the minimalist gesture of reduction] as a careful process of distillation and concentration through which the desire to approach a representational essence plays itself out (5). If we apply this to the genre of short fiction, which necessarily has a minimalist aspect to it, one might infer that the shortened form reflects an effort to avoid the excesses of a text that

the intentional interruption of a text that could infinitely expand by feeding off of the unending possibilities of excess. While every text that appears between the definitive limits of a front and back cover, no matter what length, can be understood in these terms, short fiction specifically engages the question of textual limitation, simply by virtue of its shortness. In other words, the short form immediately brings the readers attention to the material boundaries of the text. The reader has the sense that the short text seeks to present the essential, and nothing more.5

the import of the genre by identifying it as unfinished, fragmentary, or sketch-like (though these terms might indeed apply). Moreover, sometimes short fictions
As Mottes argument implies, the ideal of approaching some sort of essence does not suggest the pretension of successfully doing so. Rather, many texts that self-consciously play upon the notion of essentialism undermine their own processes of attempting to shed excess. In the case of Blanchots discussion of the rcit, it would seem that the narrowing of the text towards the essential moment of the rcit simply opens the text up onto an illimitable, immeasurable excess. The song of the Sirens demonstrates the infinite distance that lures the rcit into an essential bottomlessness. Paradoxically, the avoidance of excess leads to an infinite excessiveness.
5

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When I refer to short fiction as an interruption, I do not mean to minimize

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could, theoretically, be longer. From that point of view, such a process implies

10 provide a greater sense of wholeness and completeness than longer texts when, for example, they focus on carefully weaving together the pieces of a perfect puzzle. I think specifically of Borges, who clearly values the tidy structure he seems to find in short fiction. Yet, from a Blanchotian perspective, textuality always implies interruption because it assigns boundaries to the infinite work; and, for my purposes, short fiction specifically addresses the material confines of the text because those limits are noticeably cinched in. Furthermore, the texts I have chosen for analysis in my dissertation meditate upon beginnings, ends, and

sense of wholeness we seek from a literary work; despite any appearance of tidiness and completeness that a writer like Borges may offer, each text brings our attention to its inability to constitute a whole.

of wholeness and unity in relation to literature. In The Infinite Conversation, Blanchot warns, Whoever says fragment ought not to say simply the fragmenting of an already existent reality or the moment of a whole still to come (307). I will demonstrate in the first chapter of my dissertation how, from Blanchots point of view, every text functions by way of interruption because the work of literature or art opens onto an infinite, limitless space. In that way, the concept of wholeness, at least in these terms, does not apply to the literary text. Blanchot brings together the notions of fragmentation and interruption when he tries to define what he calls the fragment word: Fragment, a noun, but possessing the force of a verb that is nonetheless absent: brisure, a breaking without debris, interruption as speech

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Considering the text as interruption encourages us to rethink the questions

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other sorts of containment. Each text ultimately pushes the reader to question the

11 when the pause of intermittence does not arrest becoming but, on the contrary, provokes it in the rupture that belongs to it (307). The becoming of literature arises out of the rupture that interrupts it the space that breaks its flow, its unity,

its presence. The fragmented text demonstrates this broken process that proceeds by intermittence, rather than a sort of flowing communication. For Blanchot, this intermittence becomes the speech of literature. He continues, The fragmented poem, therefore, is not a poem that remains unaccomplished, but it opens another manner of accomplishment the one at stake in writing, in questioning, or in an

affirmation irreducible to unity (308).

We can understand the concept of the fragment in several different ways. First, the fragment identifies the material piece of the infinite work; that piece

the impossibility of wholeness, or unity. In this way, any and every text appears to demonstrate this initial understanding of fragmentation. But I would suggest that certain texts self-consciously play on their status as fragment, rather than promoting the illusion of wholeness. When Blanchot refers to the fragmented poem, he specifically mentions Ren Char, who clearly reflects on the processes of interruption and intermittence in his work. This next step in our conceptualization of fragmentation begins to bring our focus to the way that the use of space and silence in a text creates a sense of brokenness, or interrupted flow. In such a perspective, while we may at first think of the fragment in positive terms the material book as a piece of the infinite work, for

instance ,stopping here would miss the complexity of Blanchots argument. The

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does not necessarily function in relation to some ideal whole, but, rather, points to

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12 book, because it brings the infinitely hidden work into a space of readability and cognizance, silences the most essential quality of the work. For that reason, Blanchot brings our attention to the blankness of the text, the interruptions. Perhaps here, in this untainted gap that signifies communicative impossibility (at the same time that it makes communication possible), something more profound speaks. Blanchot privileges the fragmented text not merely because of the fragments themselves, but because of the spaces and silences preserved between them. The interrupted form of communication that remains vigilantly aware of

and reading. In Blanchots thought, the communication of the writer and the work, the reader and the work, and writer and reader function by way of

immediately puts the issues of fragmentation, containment, and interruption into play. In addition, the theme of communication arises in each of the short fictions I have specifically chosen. Up until this point, I have been discussing communication and interruption at the literal level of the text, but it also applies to the representational level of the texts I analyze: Franz Kafkas The Burrow, Jorges Luis Borgess The Garden of Forking Paths, Louis-Ren Des Fortss The Bavard, Nathalie Sarrautes Tropisms, and Blanchots Larrt de mort. Each of these texts addresses the notion of communication in a thematic way whether to make evident the gaps that appear to make positive, meaningful communication impossible, or to focus on the complexities of different kinds of

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interruption a topic I shall fully develop in the first chapter of my dissertation. Returning to the question of short fiction, I believe that the form itself

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the infinite gap between things characterizes the literary conversation of writing

13 exchange. I have chosen texts that offer unique insights on the interruptive quality of communication. While they all have this theme in common, each short fiction provides a different angle for approaching it. I rely on Blanchots critical discourse throughout my dissertation, but I consider the way that the short fictions I have chosen expand upon, invigorate, and even complicate Blanchots ideas. One of the goals of my work involves engaging some of the disparate trains of thought found in Blanchots work. For example, the notion of interruption occupies a very small place in his critical oeuvre; yet, I have sought

view, the short fictions in my dissertation create a sort of communicative thread that encourages conversation between the topics of interruption, the Orphic quest, writerly exile, fragmentation, the resurrection of Lazarus, and the infinite realm of the work and its impossibly distant origin. Even though Blanchots essay on interruption in The Infinite Conversation follows the publication of The Space of Literature, I assume a sort of circularity in his work, allowing for a reading of later texts upon those which preceded them. After a careful analysis of the critical foundation that Blanchots work

provides, I turn to Kafkas The Burrow to begin my study of how the ideas of interruption, communication, writing, and reading play out in narrative. Within the work of Blanchot, Kafka serves to illustrate the plight of the writer; he occupies a central place in Blanchots thought, as his struggle with the world and with writing demonstrate the painful Orphic quest that an artist endures. Kafkas heroes reflect that endless struggle, and therefore illuminate the process of

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to investigate its traces throughout his most influential essays. From this point of

14 writing. The Burrow, in particular, stages Kafkas inability to experience a sense of success and completion through writing; the reader observes, through the eyes of the burrowing narrator, the paranoia and obsessive behavior associated with the infinite process of construction. The winding and incessant thoughts of the narrator parallel the tunnels of his excruciatingly vulnerable burrow, and furthermore encourage the reader to imagine these tunnels as those of a text. While the tunnels branch out in multiple directions, they never provide the sense of stability that the narrator seeks. This textual metaphor plays on the ideas of

each in their attempt to structure the space of the burrow, or text. In that perspective, the concept of interruption applies to the way that any positive manifestation of the work merely interrupts an ongoing and helplessly vulnerable process, and therefore fails to capture the infinite recession of the work. The narrator cant possibly finish the burrow, and this torments him; he is left with the enormous hollowed space he has created, which prevents any communication with the outside world. He inhabits a sort of gap, and can only perceive the threat of an Outside that imposes infinite solitude upon him. These ideas guide my reading of Kafkas unfinished story, and provide a first approach to examining the interruptive process of writing. Borgess evocation of labyrinths throughout his work relates to Kafkas burrow, in that both writers employ textual images to represent the writing and reading of textual space. Kafka examines a sort of centripetal force which moves from the outer limits to the proposed center of the textual metaphor, while Borges

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centrality, linearity, limitation, beginnings and ends, precisely by undermining

15 invokes a centrifugal force, working from the most central chambers of the text to its margins, and perhaps even beyond. The third chapter of my dissertation, on The Garden of Forking Paths, addresses the status of the text as an interruption of infinitely branching, labyrinthine narrative possibilities. I begin the chapter with a discussion of the symbol of the labyrinth a widely-employed symbol

throughout the work of Borges. Labyrinths, for Borges, serve as an image for the navigation of a text by both writer and reader. Depending upon purpose, orientation, and destination, a navigator of a labyrinth can take any of an infinite number of routes. And, most likely, this journey will involve confusion, retracing of steps, and misdirection. Borges uses the textual metaphor to inform his understanding of the way writing and reading operate within such a space.

the site that they share as a basis for communication. Blanchot, of course, informs this perspective on the labyrinth. Then I begin a reading of Borgess detective-style story with this focus in mind. Borges uses a metatext called The Garden of Forking Paths a novel

transgresses the spatial and temporal limitations of narrative. He opposes this metatext with the extremely linear and overly-determined outer narrative that functions through his narrators dictation. Yet the notion of bifurcating space and time spills over into the narrative that Yu Tsun dictates; in other words, Yu Tsuns attempts to forge a singular path are undermined by the implications of the metatext. Throughout the chapter, I develop the notion of communication that arises in various ways: the theme of the chase that focuses on the interaction of

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The interaction between the two seems infinitely complicated when considering

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to theorize the possibility of a text that

16 the pursuer and his target, the relay of a message that threatens to change the course of history, and the attempts of confused readers who try to unravel the weavings of an infinite novel. In each case, one could conclude that it is only by way of interruption that any of these communications take form, which has interesting implications when considering the status of the text itself. In the fourth chapter of my dissertation, I shift from the idea of physical and literary labyrinths to verbal, or discursive labyrinths. In Louis-Ren Des Fortss The Bavard, language reveals itself as excessive, exhaustive, and empty.

meaning or truth. I analyze what it means to be the reader or listener of such a narrative, and I suggest that such a blatant disregard for positive communication actually opens up a more profound, even if empty, communication. The narrative seems to arise from itself, as it becomes impossible to assign it to the I who narrates. By nullifying itself, the text presents itself as a gap, an absence, or an interval, that nevertheless keeps the reader turning the pages. The Bavard thereby addresses the topic of interruption in two distinct ways: the ceaseless chatter of the narrator puts emphasis on a sort of exchange that only stops when the listener decides to interrupt the flow of words; and the emptiness of the words themselves, which points to a different kind of communication one that recognizes the distance that language creates between two participants in an exchange. In Tropisms, Nathalie Sarraute, like Des Forts, addresses the questions of communication and textuality as they relate to the notion of emptiness. While Des Forts fills his textual space with noticeably extended sentences, drawn out

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It is primarily concerned with its own perpetuation, rather than any claims to

17 explanations, digressions, and inane chatter, Sarraute opts to leave a surprising amount of space blank both in terms of her minimalist writing style that

generally says as little as possible, and also in terms of the fragmentary presentation of the text which leaves noticeable gaps between the written passages. Des Fortss narrator gives us the sense that he relates anything and everything that could have a bearing on either the story he tells or the way he tells it; for that reason, the reader perceives the narrative as an exhaustive effort. While the bavard appears to leave nothing unsaid (at the same time that he seems to say nothing significant at all), the third-person narration of Tropisms continually refuses what likely strikes us as essential information: names of characters, identification of setting, developed descriptions, contextualization, and

text feels unfinished and often empty, in that our attention is continually drawn to what the narrator leaves blank, or unsaid. In the preface of Age of Suspicion, Sarraute explains that the fragments of Tropisms aim to capture the impressions left by the fleeting movements of life:

For Sarraute, these passing movements escape verbal explanation and are best communicated through images that create a similar sensation. We see that Sarrautes tropisms function less through a sequential and coherent stringing together of narrative, and more through a fragmentary collection of images that

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a sense of narrative unity, to name some examples. In that way, the space of the

These movements, of which we are hardly cognizant, slip through us on the frontiers of consciousness in the form of undefinable, extremely rapid sensations. They hide behind our gestures, beneath the words we speak and the feelings we manifest, all of which we are aware of experiencing, and are able to define. They seemed, and still seem to me to constitute the secret source of our existence, in what might be called its nascent state. (8)

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