Linguistic and mathematical
foray stuns/stumps reader (3/5)
I can’t remember the impetus
which impelled me to buy the hardback novel named Dream of Glass (1993)
because taking one look at the cover, I should have instantly been repelled by
the irksome Trapper Keeper-like cover. Regardless, I knew it contained some
elements of cyberpunk, so after reading William Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive
(1988), I was eager to explore a bit more in that blossoming sub-genre. However,
the plot and/or meaning of Dream of Glass was hidden under an opaque
dome of its own glass; Gawron’s attempt at a cyberpunk novel was lost is a
menagerie of unfathomable digressions. I couldn’t even muster enough will to
read it again, it was just so convoluted.
Dream of Glass is Gawron’s third novel, which has been just
as unsuccessful as his first two: An Apology for Rain (1974) and Algorithm
(1978). I decided to give the author another shot, but I had an uneasy
feeling about the cover of his 1978 paperback novel—way too kitsch. I was in
the mood for a challenging read and this certainly tested the limits of taxed
neurons.
It’s pertinent to know that Gawron is a linguist in the scientific
sense (with a Ph.D. in linguistics from UC Berkeley). Thankfully, I have some
experience in the science of linguistics because of the research I did from my
graduate thesis (“Analyzing mission statements in Thailand’s international
schools: A mixed methodology”) earlier
this year. The 120-page snore-fest included a few citations for the linguistic
content I analyzed, namely, Readings for Applied Linguistics:
Vol. 1. The Edinburgh Course in Applied Linguistics
(1966) and Language and Learning: Vol. 3. Language, Context, and Text:
Aspects of Language in a Social-semiotic Perspective (1985). You may
understand the words “context” and “grammar” until to read the two words in a
linguistic sense. Your head will spin. Mine has been spun, and re-spun thanks
to Gawron.
Rear cover synopsis:
“The Novak Transformation had
altered the very shape of the universe and left proud Earth an outcast, a
sleazy pleasure-colony at the outer edge of the Federation of planets ‘Way Up
There.’ But the Federation must expand or die: first came the starship jammed
with mercenaries from seven worlds; then came the Assassin…”
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It’s impossible to paraphrase a novel which resides at the precipice of
one’s understanding. I may not be able to fully describe the background/foreground
elemtns of the novel, but I can sense the chasm off the cliff, the ideas
causing gusts of wind which buffet my awareness of the themes therein. I rely
on a number of excerpts which reflect my understanding of the montage of
themes, diversity, and subtleties.
Algorithm has a very similar feel as Delany's Dhalgren (1975) and The Fall of the Towers (1970), which isn't much of a surprise because Gawron is known to be an expert in Delany's work. Algorithm is just as finicky, just as detailed, and as nebulous as Delany's work.
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The first half is undoubtedly difficult to follow because there’s no
foundation for the reader to build comprehension; there’s a weak scaffolding of
a literal or metaphorical assassin, a system of mathematics several levels
beyond calculus known as the Novak Transformations, and noir society of
poets/bikers that have an affiliation with the ex-mercenary protagonist and his
motley crew. So, the central focus of the reader rests on what the
assassin is, what implications the assassin has on society, and how
the assassin manifests itself. Everything is relevant to the assassin’s agenda,
but like a kaleidoscope, it’s impossible to see each color individually without
losing focus of the fractal whole; while the blue-hued facets are unrelated to
the yellow-hued features, the actually form a larger, more complex picture. The
mosaic in Algorithm is complicated, but still fathomable.
Contrariwise to the possibly understandable plot is the author’s
incoherent rambling of linguistics:
[A]
grammar is only a grammar is only a grammar when traced through the framework
of its home system. Failure to recognize a change of systems leads to
apprehension by an old and inadequate grammar, to systematically produced
nonsense. This is the grammar of the paranoid, who performs the same transformations
on linguistic input that we all do on sensory, translating words into feeling of words, making every image of
the outside world an image of that image. This reinvents semantics; this leaves
the paranoid mute and afraid in a nightmare world of nothing but meaning.
Frequently, common-sense logic, with its propositions, its names for sentences
and ideas, leaves us in the same world, the name of the nightmare being,
paradox. (16)
If you understand that linguistic tirade on a more fundamental basis that
I, then you might be interested in the other tidbits of academia which dot this
mosaic. The excerpt above is part of Gawron’s fictional set of Novak’s
Equations which “lay bare our logical systems” (16) and impels new truths from
them: “the equations integrate two systems in to a third system with new
axioms. This process of stressing one system with another was later called
abstraction. Now, in abstraction, contradiction is defined as an operation;
perform it and contradiction is clear” (123).
This is the best synopses of the fictional equations that I could glean
from the text. If you don’t understand yet, perhaps Gawron’s gratuitous offerings
of explanation will finally set firm the deciphering of his
linguistic/mathematic madness:
In a sense
one of the major tasks of Novakian Theory is to bridge this strange gap between
micro and macro systems, to understand that transformations that make the small
so elusive. One example of an important microsystem is an individual in a
society, and here we are at home base. For all his impact, the assassin is only
a particle ... Such momentary links between the fearfully large and the
frightfully small may be more common than we think, may be built into the
scheme of a redundant universe. (125)
Therein lies the Equation’s link to the Assassin—a nameless entity, a
rouge individual—within the larger context of society, who have to abide by the
madman’s game with their own individual emotion and, also, their collection
emotion. The awareness of the assassin’s existence sets everyone into either a
frenzy or calm anticipation, each unknown of the assassin’s movement bringing
together a climax which no one can predict: “Would the assassin strike as per
instructions? Is, as some seemed to think, he was a mathematical entity, an
alternate syntax, an indeterminate component in a suddenly altered system, then
we would” (65). And while the twenty-five faces of the assassin’s possible
victims are known to all, now one exactly know who the assassin is: “The assassin
might be anyone … After anyone, for any reason” (106). This set of unknowns in
each anticipating individual results in an isomorphic result: an electric
uneasiness which unsettles the individual so much that it upsets the whole of
society.
For some reason, the existence of the assassin was foretold by the
Novakian Equations which seem to predict the course of social history in terms
more definite than percentages of probability. The crisis with the assassin
“was determined predictable … the most extreme act of manipulation ever, the
most visible, the most definite, the one that put manipulation into our
thoughts for all time … he [the assassin] looks exactly like the future that is
coming to us” (154-155). So, because the assassin has mathematic origins and
physical repercussions, the citizens of the otherworldly city of Monotony must
decide whether the assassin is a figment of their imagination, a figment of
their collective imagination, or a realized fear manifested as a madman bent on
social disorder. The essence of the victim selection is actually
“crystallizations of the fluid state of victimhood” (186) or a seemingly random
selection based on the ignorance of the population’s preconceptions of what
victimhood entails. For those who are chosen, the stigmata of haven been
selected for possible assassination stymies their sense of self-importance or
self-worth: “Perhaps I am only another victim of the assassination syndrome …
Voices? Yes, there were voices, but with me there are always voices, and only
voices, and nothing but voices” (188). Doubt infiltrates the assigned targets,
a craziness sets firm in the reason for their selection.
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I’m the first to admit I have a peripheral understanding of the novel.
Much may have been lost on my unreceptive mind, but I think the linguistic and
mathematical themes are supposed to affect the individual and social elements…
that being a generalization which needs validation from the oft-quoted section
above. If a reader, aside from Gawron himself, could grasp the intricacies of
Gawron’s brainchild of a novel, I’m sure there is something more to savor than
the cursory enjoyment I experienced at times. Also, if the reader can
stubbornly trudge through the first half in suspended ignorance, the last half
of the novel offers more illuminating matters.
Whereas Dream of Glass found its way to the secondhand
bookstore, Algorithm finds a place on my shelves and may actually be
read a second time later this year. If I could just peer over that precipice of
understanding/ignorance…
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