Narrative Schmarrative: Interesting Bits from Chimera
With a book such as John Barth’s Chimera, writing a paper examining its craft can become rather daunting. Which elements to choose? How can I relate through analyzing craft, the great feeling I get from reading a book so well written? Easy. Emulate his voice (But you’ve done that already--see “Self Serving [ ] [Another Essay I Wrote on John Barth {I tend to be very self referential at times}]”). Right. So rather than dive into emulation as a means of description, I think this time I’ll try to focus upon the narrative elements within this book, and hopefully avoid dropping myself into a large writing project. So narration it is.
About the book: Chimera, like the mythical creature is really three novellas, which are connected through one medium (which of course works in a couple of ways: self referral, connection to other works by Barth, and all appearing in the same book --> notice the three, chimera like aspect of the connections as well). Each novella examines some old myth, the 1001 nights, Perseus, and Bellerophon. However, in doing so, Barth examines these tales from different circumstances, such as from the point of view of Scheherazade’s sister Dunyazade, or Perseus at age forty looking back upon his life and wishing he was young and heroic again (likewise, somewhat, in the case of Bellerophon.) Therefore, though the stories told through the novel are largely unchanged from their original form (save that the language is spiced up), Barth tells the stories in a different manner in effect to revitalize an old lost form of literature, as mentioned in his essay, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” when talking about Jean Louis Borges’ Quixote (a novel where a fictional character authors Don Quixote). Barth describes this rejuvenating action because “[Borges] confronts an intellectual dead end and employs it against itself to accomplish new human work” (31). Therefore we can expect to find similar with Barth’s treatment of these mythical subjects.
I guess what I’ll do here is devote a section upon his narrative actions within each of the three novellas.
SECTION 1: DUNYAZADIAD
The “Dunyazadiad,” as I’ve previously stated tells the tale of the 1001 Nights. However, the tale starts after Scheherazade has told the last tale, in the king’s brother’s bedroom, to be exact. However, the only indication that the reader is given alluding to the story starting after the end of the tales lies with the opening character, a set of double quotes—we are being told a tale. As it so happens, this tale starts on the 1000th night of Scheherazade’s storytelling. He narrates the tale in a kind of looping manner, making use of multiple narrators and viewpoints. Because of the looping story aspect of the novella, the structure of its plot is directly affected by its narration.
The entire first part of the three part novella is told as a massive monologue from the perspective of Dunyazade, which interestingly enough does not end with a complete thought: “Your brother’s docked; my sister’s dead; it’s time we joined them’” (38). Barth uses this open ending sentence as a sort of launching point into the next section and a more or less third person objective narration. Until the very end of the first chapter, the last lines to be exact, the reader has no real idea where Dunyazade is, nor does the reader know how far in the future this monologue is taking place. By doing this, Barth has set up a great deal of reader suspense, stringing us along, knowing that she is talking to Shah Zaman, brother of Shahryar, but not knowing the circumstances. Thus when we are revealed the location of the speaker, standing over Shah Zaman with a razor to his privates, we are interestingly justified for the great sense of suspense that has been building, a sense of suspense that would likewise be growing in Shah Zaman as Dunyazade neared the end of her story and likewise the possible end of his sex life. Thus the first section goes from the almost present (1000th night of the Nights) back to the pre-night days and then forward clear to the present—a large loop, with wavy bits in the middle (not all 1001 tales are retold).
The second chapter of the book follows a similar, yet slightly altered pattern. As I said, it’s told in 3rd objective, and the two argue back and forth during this middle section. However, while we do hear Dunyazade’s voice here, largely the chapter follows Shah Zaman’s tale concerning his role over the past six and some odd years with the raping/murdering thing. He then, like Dunyazade, loops back to the beginning and tells his tale to the present time, which of course has advanced some since the first chapter. In essence, Barth tells parallel tales in a strangely separate manner, which though Shah Zaman’s story is unwritten in the original publication of the 1001 Nights, its ending sufficiently meets the requirements of the original ending: “the royal couples…emerge from their bridal chambers after the wedding night, greet one another with warm good mornings…bestow Samarkand on the brides’ long-suffering father, and set down for all posterity The Thousand Nights and a Night” (55).
One of the rather interesting things that comes out of this double looping narrative is that it manages to create two almost equal climaxes in the story, of which the third chapter becomes the dénouement. The first climax comes at the very end of the first chapter and beginning of the second, as the reader is first shown the situation of Shah Zaman, and his impending and possible doom. Since he is allowed to tell his tale, we are again given rise of suspense, this time wondering if Dunyazade will believe him, which comes to its own climax at the very end of their conversation: “Good morning, then! Good morning!”--They had made it through the night without killing each other (54). In a sense, Barth has achieved double the efficiency out of the same setting and characters; he does this through using the first climax as a sort of springboard towards the second climax, creating a slightly different, extended, arrangement of the basic parts of the story: exposition, rising action, climax, dénouement:
Because Barth is employing a slightly modified story pattern he also uses a slightly different method to finish the story. The main necessity for modification here is required due to the skipping of the proper dénouement of the first climax, so thus both dénouements need to be picked up in the third chapter. However, the third chapter itself does nothing to further the story, so in a sense the story has no true dénouement (i.e. the small ‘e’ in the above diagram referring to the perpendicular line immediately following the climax indicates the true end of the story’s progression). The remnants cleaned up in the denouement chapter, therefore represent at once an authorial defense of the reasoning behind the novel and the end of the first triangle, which concerns Dunyazade. At this particular junction, Barth is at liberty to explain the need for Dunyazade’s story to end after Shah Zaman’s story, which
must end in the night that all good mornings come to. The Arab storytellers understood this; they ended their stories not “happily ever after,” but specifically “until there took them the Destroyer of Delights and Desolator of Dwelling-places, and they were translated to the ruth of Almighty Allah, and their houses fell waste and their palaces lay in ruins, and the Kings inherited their riches.” (56)
Without realizing the morning after, the story, thus cannot end, and therefore, this is why Barth’s slightly mutated plotting pattern comes into making good sense.
Although there are many other aspects of narration that apply themselves throughout this novella, I believe Barth’s use of narration to control plot in this unique manner is, by far, the most interesting aspect of the narration employed. Although he starts his story in a position that would not normally allow for a proper ending (the end of Dunyazade’s story would not lead to the good morning after in any way or form, thus breaking the Arabic standard), he uses an extended plot diagram, through controlling the narration of the story, and efficiently ties the story up without any real required denouement (save one to explain why he couldn’t stop the story with the end of Dunyazade’s story).
SECTION 2: PERSEID
-text missing-
SECTION 3: BELLEROPHONIAD
-yep, same here-
Works Cited
Barth, John. Chimera. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.
Barth, John. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” The Atlantic. Aug. 1967: 29-34.
In case you're wondering, I believe we had a 5 page limit to the essay, so Sections 2 and 3 were never completed. Sadly, I rented this book out and never got it back. Going to have to re-buy it someday, as it was one of Barth's best.
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