Who Can Speak Out of The Net

(this post was written by Kyle on March 6, 2007, and it concerns & & & & )

Katin shook the nets again. “From star to star…imagine, a great web that spreads across the galaxy, as far as man. That’s the matrix in which history happens today. Don’t you see? That’s it. That’s my theory. Each individual is a junction in that net, and the strands between are the cultural, the economic, the psychological threads that hold individual to individual. Any historical event is like a ripple through the net.” He rattled the links again. “It passes over and through the web, stretching or shrinking those cultural bonds that involve each man with each man. If the event is catastrophic enough, the bonds break. The net is torn awhile. … I want to catch the throw and scope of this web in my…my novel, Mouse. I want it to spread about the whole web. But I have to find that central subject, the great event which shakes history and makes the links strike and glitter for me. … That’s what I want. But the subject won’t come!”

…

“I was born,” the Mouse said. “I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you.” (174-175)

In his novel Nova, Samuel R. Delaney’s central subject and historical event is the attempt of one of the universe’s richest men, Captain Lorq Von Ray, to overturn the economic status quo by flying into the heart of a dying sun and collecting enough Illyrion (think: oil) to become the universe’s premiere energy supplier. This would overturn the status quo because Von Ray’s galaxy competes with another galaxy, and if Von Ray is successful, then it would be like Russia winning the Cold War: the prevailing economic system in the universe will be reversed. It is a single event, with a beginning, middle, and end, and upon its results, the entire political and economic makeup of the universe depends. It is an event worthy of a novel.

But before he could write it, Delaney needed a perspective to tell it from; he needed a single character to show how the event effects not only the universal abstractions of politics and economics, but also individuals who hold opinions and work for food. He makes great show of selecting a character named Mouse as his central character:

“I’ve been out hunting a subject for my book with both historical import and humanity as well. You’re it, Mouse. My book should be your biography. My novel should be your life story…There’s my social significance, my historical sweep, the spark among the links that illuminate the breadth of the net—” (220-221)

In fact, however, there are two other major characters from whose perspectives the reader also gets to know the universe: Katin and Von Ray. Katin is a wannabe novelist (not a stand-in for Delaney) and Von Ray is an Ahab-like giant. While Delaney wants his novel to “spread about the whole web” by riding the “ripples” of an “historic” and “catastrophic” event, he chooses to position his reader’s perspective on (or near) the very center of the event — Mouse and Katin help pilot Von Ray’s spaceship and often serve as his observers. The choice prevents much of the web from ever being seen.

For my own novel, I too have selected a central event that shakes the fabric of history: the secession of Vermont from the United States. But where Delaney chooses to place Nova in the heart of his event (the grail in this book lies at the core of a dying sun), I am choosing to place my readers far from anything that can be considered a central event. In my novel, an historic event will happen, it is happening, and it has happened, but the only thing that proves it is the ways in which the web will shift, is shifting, and has shifted.

I believe that Delaney has written a fine book, but it is not the book that I would want to write. He still draws the web into the event; he doesn’t bring the event out and onto the web. Delaney’s desire to see the web is compromised by his need to reduce the web into a single and central event. In a sense, he is unable to see the web because he is looking directly into the sun.

But Delaney is not a person who does things without being aware of it.

“—centered on the dark, a light! It reached out, grabbed our eyes as we lay in the projection chambers and wouldn’t let them go. It was like the universe was torn and all day raging through. … I wouldn’t look away. All the colors you could think of were there, blotting the night. And finally the shock waves: the walls sang! Magnetic inductance oscillated over our ship, nearly ripping us apart. But then it was too late. I was blind. … But with a funny kind of blindness: I can see you. … Old Dan is blind in a funny way.” (4)

Delaney’s book is Von Ray’s quest to reach the center of a dying sun. Delaney wants to see the web, but he is blinded by the light of the central event, and he knows it. But instead of running away, instead of averting his eyes, instead of choosing to tell some other story, Delaney…

“My God, it’s—”
“—Lord, it’s diving toward—”
“—falling into the—”
“—the sun!” (232)

And does he regret it?

Mouse, Katin, you who can speak out of the net, which one of you is the blinder for not having watched me win under the sun? I can feel fire churn by me. Like you, Dead Dan, I will grasp at dawn and evening, but I will win the noon. (234)