I intended to write the story of a person writing an analysis of a non-existent story. The non-existent story isn’t non-existent in the technical sense, of course - it exists in my head - what’s more, it probably exists in the real world as well: I wrote the story, There once is a room, when I was fifteen and I lost the document the same year. It was the only copy.

I’ve lost dozens of stories since then, but There once is a room was the first story I ever wrote that I enjoyed, and the first story I wrote in an original voice. Prior to There once is a room, all of my writing possessed a semblance of at least one other author, the recognizable voice of at least one major influence. But not this particular story. I wrote this story, me, and it introduced me to my voice. I’ve been trying to find that voice ever since.

But it’s damn difficult. You keep reading books, you know? And every book influences you a little bit. Then there’s the whole sponge thing: You just soak up narrative voices. And because you’re young, it seems that every author you get interested in has at least half-a-dozen books in his or her past catalog, which means you’re reading strong narrative-voices for months at a time, plowing through each author, and all the while, trying to cultivate your own sense of authorial identity. It seems, for a few moments anyway, that the only way to create a unique voice is to stop reading the unique voices of others. Being an avid reader, however, makes this damn difficult. You don’t want to give up the pure joy of being lost in someone else’s words, in someone else’s world. You decide to trust in your own abilities, in your own qualities as an artist. You decide to trust in your self.

And yet, just to be on the safe side, I came up with a plan. I would read three, five, six books at a time, shrouding my mind in a blanket of distinct voices. I figured that having multiple voices in my mind at the same time would somehow allow me to hear my true voice.

The young writer hears it in Geometry class. The parallel lines, the isosceles triangles, the hexagons, and the Pythagorean theorem, they all make him wonder whose point of view makes these things real. The words are like a thunderclap going off in his head, and they repeat repeatedly. He can’t hear his teacher for the noise. He writes them down, if only to quiet them, and immediately: “…and angle CDE is x degrees, then what is the angle measure of angle BCD?”

The words I write down don’t belong to anyone else. They are mine and mine alone. They describe a square room without a door. There is a man in the room, and he sits at a table, which someone or something has set for him. The table also supports a plate of food. The narrator doesn’t describe the food. Everything else, however, everything else is described in intimate detail. It’s the voice of an omniscient narrator - it describes everything in a way that assumes the narrator has access to whatever is needed for the description - but the voice is biased, and its bias is plain to the reader; the narrator uses first-person pronouns throughout the text:

The wall doesn’t understand why it is painted the color of the sky on a cloudless day. I could tell it why. But the wall won’t listen to me…
- There once is a room, Me; par. 6

It begs the question: Who is describing the room for the reader?

I realize now that I simply wrote in the voice of an unreliable narrator, but you have to understand the significance. I had never read a book with an unreliable author; at least, I had never read a book where I consciously recognized that its narrator was unreliable. This means that my story was original to me. I had, essentially, created the very first unreliable narrator in the history of literature. The experience is analogous to the second creation of the wheel, which allows for the equal brilliance of both creators, regardless of who was first, because they both created it independently; i.e., ignorance of the existence of Shakespeare does not mean Hamlet’s second creator is less brilliant than its first; if someone appeared to the world today and walked on water, it wouldn’t be right to say, “What’s the big deal? Jesus did the same thing a couple of thousand years ago.”

This is a big moment in the life of a fifteen-year-old writer. It’s critical in the establishment of his self-worth. He has created something new. Everything that will come after, even if it is shit, will find its origin in this one story, in this one moment. He will continue to read, of course, and to adopt the voices of the writers he reads, but there will always be something inside him that knows he once created something new, something original, and in his voice, in the voice of a fifteen-year-old author in a suburb of small city, a small city that has long been known for its original voices, and most of all, a small city that has long been known for its contradictions.

Created by the Puritans, a religious sect fleeing persecution who later persecute any who don’t think like them, Boston is at once liberal and conservative. It is at once blue collar and academic; you can’t know Boston by talking to a worker on the Big Dig or by talking to a professor at Emerson. While all cities contain these contradictions, Boston seems to be defined by them. In New York City, for example, there exists both the Madison Avenue hip-ocrite and the reality-soaked black teenager; but in Boston, the future-leaders of Harvard sip coffee next to the single mother of six; the contradictions can be found contained in one room, more so in Boston than in other cities. In Boston, one gets a better understanding of the phrase, “It’s all relative.”

This notion of the world might be the most influential of all my influences. It forces my understanding of truth; rather, it reveals the lack of “truth” in my world. This influence is easy to see at the very beginning of my story:

This room is different from any other room in existence, so different that some have questioned whether it can even be called a room at all. But this room defines room-ness. I know the others are bad copies that were created in a copy machine that was about to run out of ink.
- There once is a room, Me; par. 1

I can see how I’m talking about the neo-platonic form of a room, attempting to describe what a room really is. It’s interesting to note, however, that I’m describing it in a language, and language, as we all know, is anything but able to describe a form. It’s very function as a language separates it from that ability; I can only arrange the shadows to give you an idea of what lies behind us. But my ability to arrange the shadows positions me outside the cave, and somehow in control of the forms that cast the shadows. The contradiction is inherent in the text, a contradiction that obviously intrigues me because of my upbringing in a contradictory community. Some readers might posit my desire to describe the room as the desire to describe my world, and my conscious failure to do either - “This room, which I’ve just described, looks nothing like you think.” (par. 23) - as a sign of my acceptance of the contradictions inherent in any one description of anything.

This story also has traces of the postmodern style of writing. Again, written before I knew what postmodernism was, its use hints at the presence of the author’s real and original talent. It’s simple postmodernism - a liberal use of apparent non-sequiturs; statements established in the interior; unattributed dialog; a conscious knowledge that it has all been said before; etc. - but it is there.

No one has been able to define postmodernism; to do so is to claim it is false, which goes against the idea of postmodernism (I assume, not being able to define postmodernism; to do so…and etc.). John Barth, the decidedly postmodernist author, once said (or wrote, I’m not sure which):

Postmodernism is tying your necktie while simultaneously explaining the step-by-step procedure of necktie-tying and chatting about the history of male neckwear - and managing a perfect full windsor anyhow.
- (http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/barth_interview.html)

Other writers have used other words to describe it. Umberto Eco, the renowned Italian novelist and semiotician, wrote:

“I think of the post-modern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, ‘I love you madly,’ because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, ‘As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.’ At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her, but loves her in an age of lost innocence…both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony…but both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love.”
- “Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable”; POSTSCRIPT TO THE NAME OF THE ROSE

One must understand that Umberto Eco did not write what I just told you he wrote; nevertheless, the words have an effect, and attaching his name to the words has an even greater effect.

The author of There once is a room uses the same recognition of the “already said” in his text. In paragraphs seven, eight, and nine, the reader comes across, respectively: a description of the room’s hardwood floor; the history of the wood that makes up the floorboard; and a detailed analysis of one of the three paintings on the wall. The narrator keeps the same tone throughout the paragraphs. It is not until later that narrator reveals to the reader that most of the words in those three paragraphs were cribbed:

The room, as unique as it is, has similarities with the rooms with which most people are familiar. Take the hardwood floor, the floorboard, and the Sunset painting, for example. The words used to describe those three elements of the room were stolen from existing descriptions; it is not that they were written to deceive, but that they were just as perfect for their uses here as they were for their original authors.
- There once is a room, Me; par. 19

That particular paragraph has even more interesting elements within it than the revelation of my crib; I’m talking about my passive sentences. My construction of the paragraph creates ambiguity. I can’t help but wonder who I’m having speak: is it the author or the narrator? This paragraph could be the narrator trying to tell the reader that all the words used to narrate the story do not originate in the “mind” of the narrator, but come from an external source, one outside the confines of the text; this paragraph may reveal the existence of an author. Then again, it could be the author telling the reader not to trust the words of the narrator, that the narrator has been deceiving the reader ever since the very first word of the text. The passive sentences don’t allow for a conclusion; it is impossible for the reader to distinguish who wrote the three paragraphs, and who, in turn, is revealing the paragraphs’ origin.

If the text actually existed, then it would be easier for me to conclude exactly what is going on within it. I might have crossed out certain sentences (I always write in pen, so there is no chance for full erasure of words), which would allow me to see why I made the decisions I made. I’d see the process in action. Such a decision is revealed on the title page of the original manuscript:

There once is a room, by Kyle Callahan Me
- There once is a room, Me; Title Page

Obviously, I didn’t want the reader to know that the story possessed an actual writer, somebody who was actually responsible for every word within the text. By changing the “author” of the text from “Kyle Callahan” to “Me,” I don’t allow the reader to understand exactly what the text is, whether it is meant to be:

• A “real” description of a “real” room
• A “fictional” description of “real” room
• A “fictional” description of a “fictional” room
• A “real” description of a “fictional” room
• Or any of the other combinations

Of course, there is another option for the reason the author changed his attribution from “Kyle Callahan” to “Me,” and the option is grounded in reception theory:

[Reception theory suggests that] [t]he reader makes implicit connections [in a text], fills in gaps, draws inferences[,] and tests out hunches; and to do this means drawing on a tacit knowledge of the world in general and of literary conventions in particular. The text itself is really no more than a series of ‘cues’ to the reader, invitations to construct a piece of language into meaning…[T]he literary work…is in itself no more than a chain of organized black marks on a page.
- Literary Theory: An Introduction, Eagleton, Terry; p. 76

I can speculate that I understood that my short story had no meaning unless a reader received it, and that, in fact, I wasn’t the author of the story but merely the organizer of the “black marks on the page,” and that the real author was the reader. Think for a moment on this scene: A person picks up There once is a room and reads the title page aloud in [his] head (this is how I read, so we’ll assume for argument’s sake that this is how this particular person reads). After reading the title, the next thing the person will say to [her]self is, “by Me.” Whether the person acknowledges it, [he] has just claimed authorship of the text. Is this little “trick” the reason behind my changing the “author’s” name?

We can’t forget, however, that the writer was only 15 when he scribbled down the “black marks.” As precocious as the writer might have been, it is doubtful that he had a keen grasp on reception theory, and that he would work its tenets into his text.

It might be better if I speculated on the self-confidence of the writer. Imagine being a 15-year-old writer, especially one, like the writer, who didn’t smoke marijuana. The writer is writing a story that, by all accounts, is a bit strange, and, if he is to be believed, has a style that “normal people” might mistake for the style of a pothead. Would it be outside the realm of possibility that the writer wouldn’t want his name on such a work? It happens all the time, especially in that particular age group, as a biography of Arthur Rimbaud, the infamous French poet who became semi-mythic when he stopped writing at 19, makes clear:

Unfortunately for his mind, [Rimbaud's] reading of occult and ‘immoral’ literature led to a natural rebellion against the bigoted, false, pretentious bourgeois life, then so popular in France. Obscenities and blasphemies in his poetry of the period define what scholars have called Rimbaud’s “anonymous year.”
- A Lifetime in Hell: The anguish of Arthur Rimbaud, McJibbots, Squibley; p. 86

The writer’s anguish in revealing his identity is also manifested in his description of the man who is sitting in the room. The man has no name, no discernible features, does not speak, and doesn’t react in any “normal” sense when the table collapses near the end of the story. While the debate is far from over, some critics have said that the man symbolizes the writer’s perception of himself. The man does not act upon the room; the room acts upon him, which is analogous to the manner in which the writer conceived the story:

The words [were] like a thunderclap going off in [my] head, and they repeat[ed] repeatedly. [I couldn't] hear [my] teacher for the noise. [I wrote] them down, if only to quiet them…
- This Is The Before The Beginning, Callahank, Kyle; para. 5

Furthermore, the man seems a victim of circumstance. The narrator never tells the reader exactly why the man is in the room. It’s safe to say that most readers assume someone invited him to the room: the table has been set specifically for him by some unknown person/entity, as is made clear by the narrator’s conversation with the saltshaker:

[The saltshaker] is angry with me, though I’d be remiss if I didn’t say he was angry at everything.
“I am not,” the saltshaker says.
“It’s okay,” I say, “I would be too if I were put in your position.”
“I was fine in the cabinet, but with the man here now, it wouldn’t be polite if I wasn’t on the table. That’s what I’ve heard anyway. I don’t care [if it's not polite]. It’s fucking cold out here. And I miss my lover.”
- There once is a room, Me; par. 11-14

Because the man is a victim, we can’t help but wonder if I thought myself a victim as well, a victim of my own imagination. The pain was tremendous: the words repeating themselves in my head, without stopping, growing louder and louder until I was deaf to the outside world. The physical pain - “The pain [of the words repeating themselves in his head, without stopping, growing louder and louder until he was deaf to the outside world] was tremendous.” (Callahan; para. 39) - was too great for me to ignore. After writing them down, I realized that the words had ceased their attack on me. The words used to describe the process when recalling the event - “ceased their attack” (Callahan; para. 39) - revealed the sense of being victimized. Some critics have said (though I disagree), that the man is nothing more than the embodiment of the victimization of my consciousness by my imagination.

Callahan goes on to argue against this point:

I can understand why some critics would suggest [the victimization paradigm], but I’m 92% positive that I wrote the story by the light of what Christopher Pearse Cranch [the Transcendentalist poet] calls, “the Gleam of the Mystery.”
- This Is The Before The Beginning, Callahan, Kyle; para. 41

For reasons that almost go without saying, I find it hard to accept this notion. If a writer claims he is able to give up control of his text to some unknown entity, how far off can we be from a “prophet” who claims his work is the very word of “God?” The violent history of misguided Moslems and Christians exemplifies what happens when such a claim is given too much credence in the real world. Callahan also found it hard to accept (it must have been a pretty strong argument by the 8% that wasn’t positive); in the paragraph following the excerpt above, he argues much of the same argument as I am arguing here.

This is where everything gets confusing for the critic and Callahan scholar. We must remember that There once is a room doesn’t exist. All we have of it is what the author critiques in his disjointed and complex piece, This Is The Before The Beginning. And anything we find there has to be taken as dubious. There are many points within the piece where the author quotes himself as an authority, and not other pieces he’s written, but the very same piece he is writing! There is even one example where the introduction to a quote is the quote itself:

There is even one example where the introduction to a quote is the quote itself:
There is even one…
- This Is The Before The Beginning, Callahan, Kyle; para. 43-44)

Along with quoting himself, the author even makes up a quote, attributing it to some non-existent biography of Rimbaud by some non-existent author with the nonsense name “Squibly McJibbots.” He also writes all of his attributions incorrectly, not including publishers or publishing years; whether he does this because he’s ignorant or because he has an immature hatred for learning the proper academic-rules is up for debate.

This is just the beginning of the author’s gibberish. At various points throughout This Is The Before The Beginning, Callahan assures us again and again that the piece he is talking about, There once is a room, does not exist - rather, he hints that it might exist in some sense, but that he is not in possession of a copy, which amounts to the same thing; if the text does not “exist” in any proper sense, how does Callahan quote the piece, even giving us paragraph numbers for his quotes? The whole argument is preposterous.

And on top of such ridiculousness, the piece includes at least one sentence - a non-non-sequitur - that we can only consider to be written sometime after Callahan finished the piece, probably by another author and not Callahan himself - this fact itself calls into question the validity of the entire work. And when we look at the actual content of the sentence - “I’m making this all up; not a bit of it is true.” (Callahan; para. 47) -, we can’t help but categorize This Is The Before The Beginning as anything but an examination of the “truthfulness” of a text, and therefore not valid to our investigation of There once is a room.

Then again, Callahan doesn’t agree with this critique, and so he doesn’t stop. Or maybe he’s having so much fun writing that he can’t bring himself to stop. No matter: He continues to write. It makes us want to refer back to the beginning of the piece to see exactly what it is Callahan is trying to accomplish:

I intended to write the story of a person writing an analysis of a non-existent story.
- This Is The Before The Beginning, Callahan, Kyle; para. 1

But with all the nonsense in his text, it’s obvious that we can’t trust anything Callahan has to say. The questions remain: What ever happened to the analysis of There once is a room, and what exactly is This Is The Before The Beginning? Unfortunately, it seems only the author can tell us, and he seems to refuse any acknowledgement of his role as the texts’ author. It is too bad. It would have made an interesting story about a person writing an analysis of a non-existent story.