2 In Pursuit of the Receding Plot :sx Some American Postmodernists .sx David Seed .sx In recent years a critical consensus has gradually been forming as to the nature of postmodernism .sx Peter Brooks , for instance , insists that there has been a metafictional dimension to the novel since its very beginnings but now finds a new degree of emphasis among post - modernists , " a greater explicitness in the abandonment of mimetic claims , a more overt staging of narrative's arbitrariness and lack of authority , a more open playfulness about fictionality " ( Brooks 1984 :sx 317) .sx The relation of postmodernism to modernism is , in other words , a complex continuity which , in America at least , can be dated with comparative precision .sx All the novelists who are to be discussed in this chapter began their writing careers in the 1960s and recoiled from the hegemony of naturalistic modes of fiction .sx They have either demonstrated or explicitly acknowledged influences from Beckett , Nabokov , and Borges , or , within the American tradition , from Kerouac ( himself the heir of such modernists as Thomas Wolfe ) who opened up new possibilities of voice and open structure .sx Where Andr e Malraux has stated that modern art is becoming an " interrogation of the world " ( Malraux 1950 :sx 151 ) , the writers under discussion here do not abandon plot as such but interrogate the very means they are using to structure their works .sx Richard Martin's comment on Walter Abish has a general relevance in this context .sx Abish's use of arbitrary formal limits in Alphabetical Africa ( 1974 ) " becomes the vehicle for an adventurous plot while simultaneously investigating various narrative modes " ( Martin 1983 :sx 230) .sx Plot may become a pretext .sx It may be eroded by comedy or decomposed , but it can never disappear , for it constitutes the " dynamic shaping force of the narrative discourse " ( Brooks 1984 :sx 13) .sx It is typical of the vigour of contemporary experimentation in America , that apocalyptic statements of the novel's demise should be converted into fiction in Ronald Sukenick's The Death of the Novel and Other Stories ( 1969) .sx Since the early 1970s , Sukenick has emerged as one of the leading practitioners of narration as process .sx Like Pynchon , he has admitted an influence from Kerouac and the Beats , and , in his 1973 article 'The New Tradition' , Sukenick places himself within a late phase of the modernists' 'Revolution of the Word' where verbal and structural experimentation were aimed at coping with the enigmatic nature of the world ( Federman 1975 :sx 42) .sx Sukenick has also gone on record as seeing writing as an essentially adversarial activity :sx " When I grew up , I grew up with an idea of writing as a form of resistance to the establishment and culture at large " ( Sukenick 1985 :sx 139) .sx One focus to this resistance has been realistic plot-paradigms which Sukenick constantly subverts in the interest of getting nearer to the real .sx " Things don't appear to happen according to Aristotle any more " , he remarks .sx However , Sukenick has been equally consistent in rejecting the view that such a direction marks a narcissistic introversion of fiction , arguing instead that he has engaged more directly with his culture .sx The shift in stance away from cultural exile towards critical engagement , for him marks a shift away from the e litism of the moderns towards postmodernism .sx The political implications of Sukenick's experimentation can be seen clearly in his second novel Out ( 1973 ) , which sets up a journey as structural metaphor in order to comment on the political temper of the late Nixon years .sx A backdrop of meaningless shifts in national policy , from 'escalation' to 'deescalation' and back again , foregrounds the 'characters' in this work , who are subversives armed with sticks of dynamite .sx Sukenick repeatedly draws attention to such underground processes , always as a prelude to comic dismissal :sx the dynamite is a dud , weapons fire blanks , and so on .sx Before any line of action can gel , starkly contrasted possibilities are introduced :sx " You're either part of the plot or part of the counter-plot " ( Sukenick 1973 :sx 1) .sx The novel is mainly devoted to exploring the implications of these propositions for its own form .sx Firstly , within the atmosphere of conspiracy , ludicrous and later incomprehensible messages are introduced to play games with the reader's capacity to interpret textual data .sx A particular detail may " show how events conspire .sx It indicates a plot .sx The job of intelligence is to uncover this plot .sx .. As you can see everything falls into place " ( Sukenick 1973 :sx 124) .sx Through a series of strategic puns Sukenick associates the collection of evidence , analysis and causal sequence with political totalitarianism .sx The threat of 'arrest' becomes the threat of fixity , of stabilized forms , whereas the thrust of the novel is to take us further and further away from such stability .sx This impulse is figured partly in geographical terms ( as Jerome Klinkowitz has noted , " Out moves from the clutter and hassle of the East to the pure space of an empty Californian beach " ( Klinkowitz 1980 :sx 137) ) and partly by shifting the names of the characters and the nature of their situations , so that travelling ceases to be a realistic indication of movement and becomes instead a metaphor for textual purpose .sx A journey in a camper shades into a lift with a driver who turns out to be a narcotics agent ; the former episode is then repeated , with sado-masochistic variations , until that too shades into a bus journey .sx The situational shifts prevent a consistent plot-line from forming , making the novel essentially unpredictable , and Sukenick further complicates our sense of sequence by counterpointing a 'count-down' sequence of chapters against the ascending page-numbers .sx As the novel approaches its end , spaces between its verbal segments grow larger and larger until the text finally recedes into a blank white page .sx By politicizing his text in this way Sukenick runs the risk of linking authorial production with political manipulation , but he regularly plays down the privilege of composition by including himself as a minor character within his narratives .sx In the case of Out , a dialogue within the novel articulates Sukenick's engagement with the reader's probable , realistic expectations .sx A suitably pedagogic figure called Skuul puts the case for cause and effect which is speedily reduced to relativism by an opposing voice :sx " You pursue essentials I ride with random .sx .. You struggle towards stillness I rest in movement " ( Sukenick 1973 :sx 127) .sx As in Gravity's Rainbow , Sukenick pairs contrasting voices to raise the epistemological implications of his own novel and to nudge the reader towards an acceptance of indeterminacy .sx Indeed , Jerzy Kutink has shown that amorphousness and mobility are the prime characteristics of Sukenick's texts .sx They constitute " the ideal condition for fiction but not just for purely aesthetic reasons :sx they are the natural condition of 'things chronic and cosmic' , including humanity itself " ( Kutnik 1986 :sx 87) .sx The very title of Out suggests avoidance , absence , departure ( from norms , order , etc. ) ; even the ending of the novel is signalled as an exit .sx What limits this work is the close association between formal fluidity and a life-style reminiscent of the Beats .sx It is this underwriting of 'moving on' which Sukenick's next novel brings into question .sx 98.6 ( 1975 ) is divided into three sections .sx The first assembles a collage of images to confirm the proposition that " love - power = sadism + masochism " ( Sukenick 1975 :sx 7) .sx Sukenick's own composed sequences ( revolving around routine violence ) are juxtaposed with excerpts from contemporary reports on Hell's Angels , the Manson family , etc. to suggest a picture of conditions .sx It is as if Sukenick were putting into practice the principles of what he has called the " architectonic novel " which ( and he cites Raymond Federman's Double or Nothing as a prime example ) works like a jigsaw puzzle :sx " the picture is filled out but there is no sense of development involved " ( Federman 1975 :sx 38) .sx Having established a context , in the second section Sukenick presents the attempts of a group to set up a commune within the country of Frankenstein ( a transparent label for the USA) .sx This section follows the trajectory of an arc in that the attempts gradually fail .sx The commune attempts to enact its own solidarity through rituals ( group sex , baseball , potlatch , etc. ) , apparently trying to stave off the threats of such hostile outside forces as truckers and bikers .sx The third section ( 'Palestine' ) does not conclude the novel so much as make explicit the narrative implications of what has happened so far .sx The sequence of composition and decomposition , seen in Out 's alternation between meetings and departures , now becomes a textual fact of life :sx " Interruption .sx Discontinuity .sx Imperfection .sx It can't be helped .sx .. Together for an instant and then smash it's all gone still its sic !sx worth it .sx I feel .sx This composure grown out of ongoing decomposition " ( Sukenick 1975 :sx 167) .sx The narrative base to this section ( Sukenick's visit to Israel ) represents a journey to a country of spiritual origins as if he is seeking a lost unity antecedent to the modern state of division .sx In his more recent works , Sukenick has moved even further away from conventional narrative sequences .sx Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues ( 1979 ) makes a virtue out of the condition of " accelerated shatter " he had located in his earlier novels by attempting to link the diverse aspects of his text within a verbal flow , a " stream of language " introduced by a twelve-page unpunctuated single sentence .sx This flux depresses narrative reflection ( " .sx .. it was almost impossible to come to a conclusion about one's own flow and that in fact this was a contradiction in terms since one was precisely one's own flow .sx .. " ( Sukenick 1979 :sx 11) ) and also direction , as the title appropriately suggests a spoken improvisation .sx Characters thus become splintered versions of the dominant voice , examples of what Thomas LeClair has called " artful ventriloquism " ( in McCaffery 1986 :sx 121) .sx Continuity of utterance now becomes an end in itself and lacunae in consciousness , gaps and verbal 'black holes' ( linguistic vortices ) , things to be avoided like the plague .sx Both this work and The Endless Short Story ( 1986 ) confirm Peter Currie's general assertion that " American post - modernism may be seen to endorse a rhetorical view of life which begins with the primacy of language " ( in Bradbury and Ro 1987 :sx 64) .sx Long Talking is preoccupied with the physicality of utterance , whereas The Endless Short Story equivocates about its own length and means .sx It begins as a mock-documentary on Simon Rodia ( architect of the Watts towers ) and then shifts through stories-within-stories , digressions , verbal improvisations ( explicitly modelled on jazz ) , and numerous references to the practicalities of narrating .sx These devices cut across a linear reading of the text , in spite of the early injunction to the reader :sx " It doesn't matter where you start .sx You must have faith .sx Life is whole and continuous whatever the appearances " ( Sukenick 1986 :sx 7) .sx The latter assertion represents no more than a pious belief , since Sukenick's text repeatedly fragments itself into short phrasal units , disparate narrative strands , and oddly shifting 'characters' .sx Many of Sukenick's concerns are shared by his friend Raymond Federman .sx Where both are university teachers , Federman began his career as a critic with a study of Samuel Beckett , Journey to Chaos ( 1965 ) , which played a crucial role in the formation of his attitude towards modern fiction .sx Federman presents Beckett as a practitioner of perversely inverted narrative values , in effect deconstructing the novel in order to expose the deceits of realism .sx Beckett's characters " begin and end their fictional journey at the same place , in the same condition , and without having learned , discovered , or acquired the least knowledge about themselves and the world in which they exist " ( Federman 1965 :sx 4) .sx Federman has fully digested Beckett's influence on him to the point of formulating carefully thought-out positions on the new direction fiction will take .sx His view of the American situation follows out the formal consequences of earlier complaints by such writers as Nathanael West and Philip Roth , that the American novel can no longer keep up with contemporary reality .sx Federman sees the post - modern period as one in which the media have taken over the informational role of fiction , drastically reducing its status .sx The works which are aware of this predicament Federman has called " surfiction " whose primary purpose " will be to unmask its own fictionality , to expose the metaphor of its own fraudulence " .sx Among other casualties in this process will be plot :sx " the plot having disappeared , it is no longer necessary to have the events of fiction follow a logical , sequential pattern ( in time and in space ) " ( Federman 1975 :sx 810) .sx