Craft Notes
Everything all at once: As a Friend by Forrest Gander
I’ve been struggling for a while to put into words what I think is going on in the third section of Forrest Gander‘s slim, remarkable novel As a Friend.
The book is broken into four sections. In section one, Les—the book’s subject—is born. In section two, Clay—a friend—talks about the events that led up to his betrayal of Les. In section four, we read comments made by Les, outtakes from a film someone was making about him.
The birth section is an overture—character comes to life and book comes to life at the same time. A moment on the book’s timeline and its consequences.
The Clay section is a look at this remarkable person. Les is a land surveyor and a poet. He is an out-sized individual. Clay is gives readers a longer timeline—Les over the years Clay knew him. It’s also past tense. Clay has some perspective on Les’s life and his death. (Les commits suicide after Clay betrays him by telling Les’s wife about his relationship with another woman.)
The fourth section let’s Les speak for himself. Outtakes from a movie. Edited highlights.
But the third section is the one I’ve had trouble with. Not because it’s not good. It’s beautiful. It’s lots of little sections in the voice of Sarah, the woman Les was seeing behind his wife’s back, and the woman Clay—of course—is half in love with. All Sarah’s sections are directed at Les, her dead lover:
The subtlety of your visual attention. You could alert me or change the subject with a contraction of your iris.
Almost after you’ve walked past it, snagging the dirty Kleenex from the table and bending down, without slowing, to pick up a dead spider I noticed days ago and meant to sweep up and then forgot. That economy of your gestures. The multiplying purpose.
Natural strategist.
Love solves nothing, but your love made me appear to myself.
Remember when I was lying on your lap and you cleaned my ears with a Q-tip? What a strange, complex intimacy, your at once maternal and sexual tenderness.
The Transverse Lute Position.
Leon Thomas with Oliver Nelson in Berlin, yodeling through “Straight, No Chaser.”
(A debt clearly owed to Markson.)
The thing about this section is that it doesn’t feel linear. It doesn’t seem to have a beginning and end on the stories timeline. It is a cataloging of Sarah’s thoughts about her relationship with Les, and they are in the past tense, so we have a sense that they started to accrue at the moment of Les’s death, but even as the chapter ends, I get a sense of it as unfinished.
It’s like a baseball field. At home plate, there is the focus of a 90 degree angle. The outfield walls are the “end” of the field, sort of. But also, if someone can hit a ball hard enough, the ball leaves the field, and can keep going. Really, it can go on forever from that single point. Until the end of the Universe. And her cataloging can go on as long as she lives.
So it’s something else. And I think I’ve decided that what it is is that all of these thoughts exist unspoken and they all exist all together all at once. The author is the only reason the chapter exists. Sarah knows every element of this catalog. But she hasn’t made sentences out of any of it. They are just things she knows before she has assigned language to them.
All of them, all at once. Like this, a video someone made of every song from Megadeth’s Peace Sells…but Who’s Buying album played all at once:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QlL1o3sBdk
Every once and a while, you can start to pluck a chorus out of it. That’s how section three of As a Friend reads to me.
great post, dude!
section three has a lot in common with the work of C.D. Wright
also, it’s interesting to note the book is basically the tale of Forrest Gander, C.D. Wright, and this gentleman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_stanford
great post, dude!
section three has a lot in common with the work of C.D. Wright
also, it’s interesting to note the book is basically the tale of Forrest Gander, C.D. Wright, and this gentleman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_stanford
I was completely unaware that this was the Stanford story. Thanks for this comment, Mike.
Hey, your book arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Thanks for that, too!
I was completely unaware that this was the Stanford story. Thanks for this comment, Mike.
Hey, your book arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Thanks for that, too!
good post, made me want to check this book out a lot.
good post, made me want to check this book out a lot.
yeah, there are a lot of interesting questions about this book’s relationship with reality that i probably don’t want to go on record asking, hahaha
yeah, there are a lot of interesting questions about this book’s relationship with reality that i probably don’t want to go on record asking, hahaha
I like the baseball metaphor a lot. I hadn’t thought of a field that way, as a confine that is best broken.
I like the baseball metaphor a lot. I hadn’t thought of a field that way, as a confine that is best broken.
when i read it i thought of it as some kind of epistillary. i thought that sarah kept a list of things. and ongoing tribute that she began after clay’s death, or maybe before. i don’t remember why i thought that, i leant the book out, and it has never been returned to me. but i think it felt like a journal of sorts. not things thought so much as collected in sporadic and automatic fashion. in this way the thoughts would ‘exist all together,’ and it would also have an unfinished feeling as the list would be something sarah would add to. or maybe not so much a list written, but just a list of every thought she had since his death catalogued as they occured. shit i need to get this book back.
when i read it i thought of it as some kind of epistillary. i thought that sarah kept a list of things. and ongoing tribute that she began after clay’s death, or maybe before. i don’t remember why i thought that, i leant the book out, and it has never been returned to me. but i think it felt like a journal of sorts. not things thought so much as collected in sporadic and automatic fashion. in this way the thoughts would ‘exist all together,’ and it would also have an unfinished feeling as the list would be something sarah would add to. or maybe not so much a list written, but just a list of every thought she had since his death catalogued as they occured. shit i need to get this book back.
Another game played in an essentially unlimited space is bocce ball. Viva sports in infinity!
Another game played in an essentially unlimited space is bocce ball. Viva sports in infinity!
I met Forrest and C.D. Wright in 2007. She got a lot more attention but I liked his incredible sharp poetry better at the time. Had no idea he put out a novel since. This is great
I met Forrest and C.D. Wright in 2007. She got a lot more attention but I liked his incredible sharp poetry better at the time. Had no idea he put out a novel since. This is great
It’s a really good little book. And I say little because it is 90 some pages.
Reflecting on this, I like that I said the book is “broken” into four sections. Because the pieces are sort of disjointed. Like broken bone that has fused back together.
It’s a really good little book. And I say little because it is 90 some pages.
Reflecting on this, I like that I said the book is “broken” into four sections. Because the pieces are sort of disjointed. Like broken bone that has fused back together.
Do so.
Do so.
Yeah, this is an interesting way of looking at it, too. Like stray thoughts that maybe Sarah would never write down, but that simply get collected. A mental list?
Yeah, this is an interesting way of looking at it, too. Like stray thoughts that maybe Sarah would never write down, but that simply get collected. A mental list?
maybe. also, and i can’t remember correctly because i don’t have the book in my possession, but wasn’t there a scene where they wrote on a wall together? i want to say i remember thinking that maybe all these things were written down on walls. i can’t remember why i thought that though. maybe i’ve been drinking too much.
maybe. also, and i can’t remember correctly because i don’t have the book in my possession, but wasn’t there a scene where they wrote on a wall together? i want to say i remember thinking that maybe all these things were written down on walls. i can’t remember why i thought that though. maybe i’ve been drinking too much.
[…] While “How Forrest Gander is like Megadeth” is pretty good, the headline of the week (so far) goes to “Shocker: Robin Williams’s […]
[…] HTMLGIANT / Everything all at once: As a Friend by Forrest Gander […]