Response Paper 6

In Preparation of Session 7
Denis Telofy Drescher
June 2, 2014
estion 1
What do you make of this opposition between ction exposed from inside
the conventional and purely mimetic or conventionally realistic ction? And
what might it mean that there is no place except the map and that we make
the map together?
I havent read any of Powerss previous novels, but it seems from the descriptions that
he oen ended them with a metactional frame-popping at the end. I imagine this similar
to Gene Wolfes e Book of the Long Sun, where, at the very end of the tetralogy, one of
the characters reveals himself to be the narrator. In e Book of the New Sun, a second level
of mediation is only revealed at the end of the rst book, when an intradiegetic translator
comments on their problems with the translation.
None of this happens in e Echo Maker, which is probably what Powers sees as the con-
ventional. Mimetic, here, probably refers to the concept of mimesis as opposed to diegesis.
It seems to me that such a distinction only makes sense when applied on the diegetic level
itself, so that mimetic ction might be ction that does not place itself on a hypodiegetic
level.
e narration, however, is so closely focalized on individual characters that it becomes
just as subjective and unreliable as if it were rst-person narration. Marks remarkable
consciousness-forming processes cause the greatest ris in the text, but even as Karin grad-
ually descents into something that I, in laypersons terms, would describe as paranoia, the
narration is empathetically truthful to her perceptions and trepidations. It thus achieves an
eect that would otherwise only be possible with multiple (conscious) narrators. Since it im-
itates behavior that is otherwise indicative of consciousness (and has probably been called
self-conscious), it could be seen as an allegory for the emergent nature of consciousness.
In the sense of a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. e translator is only known as G.W.
Nonetheless, the narrator does have access to the thoughts of dierent characters within the same chapter.
And only Weber has both the ability and an intuitive motive for having wrien the story.
1
e map, in that context, is our model of the world. Since we cant perceive the world itself,
the noumenon, or whatever it might be if it exists, all we have is the model of the world
that we were able to construct through our perceptions and their interpretation. Powers
shows that this model (or map) is malleable and is easily reshaped. In the novel, we see the
same people through the lenses of the dierent focalizations, sometimes even in a temporally
overlapping fashion, so that we can view the same events from two dierent perspectives.
We can also observe how they change and how they discover and rediscover each other.
estion 2
What were your problems with the text? What passages, ideas or concepts did
you nd unclear, unconvincing or otherwise problematic?
Meads chapters were hard to digest, mostly because he uses several very broad, ambigu-
ous terms for specic concepts (such as social objects (Mead and Reck 134) for, roughly,
others), possibly to sidestep unwanted connotations. Either these terms are or were part of
the established jargon or he has introduced them in previous chapters, but since they were
not directly linked with the concepts in my mind but only by proxy of the rough translation
Ive come up with, they slowed the reading.
estion 3
What did you nd interesting about the text? What aspects of the text would you
like to know more about?
Its refreshing that, with few exceptions, Powers does not rely on his characters behaving
naively to create conict. Otherwise I dont have much to add to last weeks impressions. Bar-
bara and Daniel are now both interacting with third parties with and without Karin present.
Here is one sentence that was so personal and evocative it brought me to tears: Some-
thing withers in [Daniel], some basic willingness to go on ghting a species that wont be
rehabilitated and cant be beaten. (Powers 518)
Works Cited
Mead, G.H. and A.J. Reck. Selected Writings. University of Chicago Press, 1981. Web. Library
of liberal arts.
Powers, Richard. e Echo Maker. Vintage, 2007. Print. Vintage Books.
2