Murnane Gerald - A Million Windows

The anthropologist arranged for the last survivor, so to call him, to be accommodated at his, the anthropologist’s, university in a suite of rooms adapted to his needs. Until the survivor died from an infectious disease some ten years later, he lived contentedly, or so it seemed. He learned the language of his rescuers; he dressed as they dressed; and the book in which these matters are reported includes even a reproduction of a photograph of the survivor seated and smiling in a private box during a theatrical performance.

The first-person narrator who was last mentioned early in the paragraph preceding the previous paragraph reported that an earlier version of himself, so to call him, had been so affected by his having read about the last survivor, so to call him, that he, the earlier version, had planned to write a work of fiction the chief character of which would be a young man, rather more than a boy, who was obliged to live in surroundings utterly uncongenial to him, almost as though he was himself the last survivor of some or another sort of extinct people. The work of fiction that I referred to earlier as the second work of fiction is largely an account of the chief character’s trying to write the work of fiction mentioned in the previous sentence.

The last survivor, so to call him, took pleasure from demonstrating to the anthropologist and his colleagues the details of his, the survivor’s, previous way of life, so to call it: how his people had built their dwelling-places and had obtained their food and had made their clothes and utensils and weapons; what might be called their religious beliefs; and, of course, their language. The survivor, however, would never reveal his name, which had been a secret between himself and a few others. He was known to the anthropologist and his colleagues by the word that was the equivalent of man in the language of the perished people. One other matter the man, as I should now call him, would never discuss. Although he explained in outline the customs or conventions of his people in matters such as courtship and their forms of betrothal and marriage, he would never reply to any question about his own personal history. Of the two female persons who had been his last companions until they had died, one was much older than he while the other was of about his own age. Whenever the anthropologist would try to learn what relationship, if any, existed between the man and the women and would even question whether he and one or another of them had been sexual partners, the man would fall resolutely silent and would blush. The anthropologist surmised that the older woman might have been the mother of the man while the younger might have been what might be called some sort of cousin: a member of a clan or sub-group that he was forbidden from approaching, even if he and she might have been the last of their people on earth.

It was wonderful how she felt, by the time she had seen herself through this narrow pass, that she had really achieved something — that she was emerging a little in fine, with the prospect less contracted. She had done for him, that is, what her instinct enjoined; had laid a basis not merely momentary on which he could meet her. When, by the turn of his head, he did finally meet her, this was the last thing that glimmered out of his look; but it came into sight, none the less, as a perception of his distress and almost as a question of his eyes; so that, for still another minute, before he committed himself, there occurred between them a kind of unprecedented moral exchange over which her superior lucidity presided…

We may seem, to some of the other factions and groupings in this huge building, as though we are sure of ourselves: as though we long ago worked out our position in matters fictional and have never since wavered. We are, however, as liable as any other group with a policy to feel sometimes as though we restrict ourselves unduly, or, at least, as though we need encouragement of some sort. Especially when one of us has pointed out to the others a paragraph in a newspaper reporting that a valuable literary prize has been awarded to a person known to us as incapable of composing a shapely sentence, or when one of us has read a so-called review of one of his books blaming him for seeming to avoid crucial moral and social issues — especially at such a time will many a one of us try to cheer himself by doing as I did a few minutes ago when I reached for the nearest of my collection of books with Henry James for their author, let the pages fall apart wherever they might, and then read aloud one or another of the many passages there that might have suited my purposes.

None of us has ever claimed to feel much affinity for the man of flesh and blood who went by the name of Henry James and who died nearly a century ago. I doubt whether any of us knows more than a few details of the life or the character of that man. All of us, though, feel a comradeship with the personage seemingly responsible for the texts of the works of fiction with Henry James for their author. We see that personage as the exemplar of what we call the strong narrator: a personage who has never sought to hide behind his or her subject-matter as the author of a filmscript or playscript hides but who seems to stride defiantly to and fro between his or her subject-matter and the reader, asserting his or her right to be the sole interpreter of that subject-matter, so that we seem to see or to hear, while we read, not the pretend-deeds or the pretend-words of persons pretending to be actual persons but the measured sentences of true fiction: sentences reporting what no one but the narrator has seen or heard in the invisible setting where all fiction takes place.

I have already betrayed, as an accepted habit, and even to extravagance commented on, my preference for dealing with my subject-matter, for ‘seeing my story’, through the opportunity and the sensibility of some more or less detached, some not strictly involved, though thoroughly interested and intelligent, witness or reporter, some person who contributes to the case mainly a certain amount of criticism and interpretation of it.

The above is a mere fragment from the most astonishing account of fictional narration that I have read or expect ever to read. The account, as I call it, is the Preface that Henry James wrote for The Golden Bowl when that work was published in 1909 as part of the so-called New York edition of his works. One of our group has learned by heart not only the passage above but several other long extracts from the Preface. He tells us that he recites one or more of the passages aloud whenever he needs to remind himself that the task of fictional narration is no mere drudgery prescribed in advance by the seeming solidity of its subject but an undertaking to be compared with the drafting of a musical composition for full orchestra. If the same man, however, at some or another gathering of ours, seems likely to begin one of his recitations, a certain one of us will always leave the room in order not to hear words that frighten him, so he says, rather than inspire him. He once read a large part of the Preface, so he tells us, and next day, at his desk, was scarcely able to write, so hindered was he by the continual suspicion that he might not have the right amount of sensibility or detachment, or that he might be too involved, or not enough interested or intelligent or not able to contribute the right amount of criticism or interpretation. This fearful fellow, however, is an exception among us. We others will often call on our memoriser to recite for us, and often, after we have heard him to the end, and especially if we are drinking, will take to the floor ourselves, with one after another reading aloud his favourite passage from his favourite work of Henry James and struggling to make himself heard above such cries from his audience as ‘Go, you champion narrator!’ and ‘You tell’em, Harry!’