The idea of the alien in Jack Spicer's dictated books

172 Pages·2006·2.07 MB·English

by  Granger, John Frederick

THE IDEA OF THE ALIEN
IN JACK SPICER'S DICTATED BOOKS
John Frederick Granger
B.A.(Hons.), Simon Fraser University, 1976
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in the department
of
English
John Frederick Granger 1982
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
December 1982
All rights reserved. This work may not be
reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy
or other means, without permission of the author.
APPROVAL
NAME: John Frederick GRANGER
DEGREE: Master of Arts
TITLE OF 'II-ESIS: The Idea d the Alien in Jack Spicer' s
Dictated Books
EXAMINING CO~TIEE:
chairman: Prof. Michael Steig
Prof. Robin Blaser,
Senior S u p e ~ s o r ,
Professor of English
Prof. Robert Dmhm,
Associate Professor of English
Prof. Warren Tallman ,
External Examiner,
Professor of English, U.B.C.
Date Approved: December 7, 1982
PART IA L COF'YR IG HT LICENSE
I hereby grant to Simon Fraser Universlty the right to lend
my thesis, project or extended essay (the t i t l e of which is shown below)
t o users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and t o make partial or -
single copies only for such users or in response to a reqbest from the
library of any other university, or other educational institution, on
i t s own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission
for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted
by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying
or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed
without my written permission.
Title of Thesis/Project/Extended Essay
Author:
(signature)
(date)
Abstract
The darkness of Jack Spicer's writing covers an
illumination which, as if invisible, infrared light, makes
apparent a second realm of meanings. Concentrated darkness (the
idea of the alien) disturbs the realm of meanings with which we
are familiar: God, love, and so forth. One must first distinguish
that which darkens from that which illumines the material of
Jack Spicer's dictated books.
The idea of the alien suggests a poetics of alien or out-
side source, and thus a poetics of dictation. Spicer develops
from dictation-theory a complicated series of failures. First is
the 'failure' of the poet, whose absence at the point of com-
position keeps origin in mystery. One eventually gets Spicer's
gnostic sense of failure: the failure to know, the failure to
name God.
Jack Spicer does not shy away from the cosmology he
implies, and his readers are run through Creation from first flash
to last matters. Among the special features of Spicer's creation
is its constant division between contrary orders, both of world
and of mind. Something bent on freedom crosses something sure of
form. The strange, hybrid population of Jack Spicer's dictated
books issue forth from their coupling.
The large, parrying structure of what Spicer called the
real in turn informs the poems. Individual poems carry compli-
cated, half-coded messages, from which we then piece together a
sophisticated theory of language, a hermeneutics, and a theology.
iii
Certain images are invested with such meaning that they come to
perform as symbols. Spicer's use of the symbolic carries his
work behind division, where contraries are bound and composition
starts. Flowing backwards, the symbolic order structures the
poems, determines the poetics, and so completes the circling of
language and the real.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the receipt
of a Simon Fraser University Open Scholarship during the
preparation of this thesis.
Table of Contents
page
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
TITLE PAGE i
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
APPROVALPAGE ii
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ABSTRACT. iii
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PAGE v
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
LIST OF FIGURES vii
Chapter
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.Text 1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Footnotes. 52
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. Text. 60
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Footnotes 111
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Text. 115
F o o t n o t e s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 153
List of Figures
Figure Page
. . . .
1 Freud's Schematic Picture of (Tele-)Sexuality 41
. . . . . . . . . . . .
2 Hkl&ne Smith's Martian Writing 46
.
3 The Signifier Without the Signified. by Roland
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Barthes 47a
. . . . . . .
4 Lesson In Automatic Writing. by Max Ernst 70
. . . . . . . . . . .
5 Map. for the Hunting of the Snark 84a
vii
"The real nature of the marvelous
is that man is without doubt the least amazed"
--Louis Aragon
I
which disappears. Reading around, we are soon fsrniliar with the
I
absences that interrupt discourse today--no God, no public joy,
I
no concord. Ever since Parmenides, men have said that something
is missing, and something, or nothing, still is. But actual
I
disappearance is the ordinary practise of poets, for whom lan-
guage is first invisibility; and among poets, the poet nonpareil
1
of disappearance, Jack Spicer:
There is no excuse for bad ghosts
Or bad thoughts.
6x110 equals 150
And electric socket with a plug in it
Or a hole in your eyeball:
It is bad
And everyone says, "What?" X
-4~110e quals 150.1
X equals 2%, then negative 5--but what (as everyone
says: "What?") does Jack Spicer mean? Spicer seems to propose
I
nothing more certain than changeable X, a hole at the center of
vision, and equation to negative value. In a sense, he means
nothing at all. Yet we feel that his is language packed with
meaning, as Ezra Pound decrees true of all poetic writing.
6 a c k Spicer's writing is packed with the meaning of dis-
J
appearance, and no less, with the disappearance of meaning I
intend to follow these separate developments in Spicer's work as
the play of a single element, which I will call, with some dis-
comfort, the idea of the alien. The idea of the alien is
l b