Clark Gifford's Body (New York Review Books Classics)

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Clark Gifford’s Body ---- Kenneth Fearing‘Clark Gifford’s Body’ by American novelist and poet Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961) is a forgotten classic of postmodernism, a novel not well received at the time of publication (1942) and not well known at any point in the last 60+ years. However, if you are interested in reading political noir in an experimental fictional style, this is your one-of-a-kind book. As a way of underscoring ‘postmodern’ and ‘experimental’ here are several features of this novel whose subject revolves around, hovers over and surrounds one central event: the attack and takeover of a series of radio stations by Clark Gifford and his anti-government-in-charge followers, a takeover leading to 20 years of war:Reaction against established formsRather than telling the story in conventional, start-at-the-beginning-and-move-forward linear progression, the novel hops and shifts back and forth in time, covering reflections, reports and events before to the attack, during the attack, and after the attack, ranging from 30 years prior to 30 years after and including more than two dozen first-person narrators: military executives, officials, town residents, actual participants in the attack and others.Incorporates many varieties of texts directlyAmong the novel’s 30 chapters, there are separate chapters devoted to a written proclamation, a letter, a monthly magazine article, a series of press service flashes and three single chapters from three different newspaper articles: five years before the attack, the day of the attack and three years after the attack. For example, here are a couple of lines from a monthly magazine, "What sort of man was he, this Clark Gifford who plunged a continent for twelve long hours into the abyss of terror and despair? What lay behind the philosophy that waked children screaming in their beds, set housewives to shuddering, and caused even strong men to falter -- and as casually as you or I would push the button of a light switch secure in the safety and sanctity of our own home?"Erosion of boundaries between subjects usually studied separatelyOne would find it nearly impossible to approach “Clark Gifford’s Body” from distinct, self-contained perspectives, since, when it comes to such headings as history, social theory, philosophy or political science, the novel is an undifferentiated jumble. Here is a bit of philosophy from a General F. Johan Esteven: "I have no sympathy whatsoever with the terrorist methods employed by "Colonel" Gifford. . . . In my opinion, Gifford should be tried by court martial and shot." Very generous of the General. Why not save the state some money and simply shoot Gifford?Postmodern experience of space and time and the leveling of differencesWith all the shifting back and forth through time and place, a reader has the sense the people and events of this novel are coated with a layer of hazy gray fog; there is a buzz of sameness about it all. Where are we? What was the year of the attack? Certainly, there are a couple of sports references, a general is out playing golf, someone muses how fall is the season for football, but there is nothing more specific. Welcome to postmodern country: a bland-land and flatland, to be sure; we could be anywhere at any time, since, after all, no one location is any different from all the others.Pastiche rather than parodyHere is literary critic Fredric Jameson on the use of pastiche in postmodernism: “Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language, but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody’s ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic.” This description fits Fearing’s novel like a custom made suit, a novel both humorless and free of satire, a novel that does anything but suggests there is an alternative, more normal culture and society somewhere else in the world.Yet, there was something strangely compelling about this novel that made me want to keep turning the pages. Perhaps it was the constant freshness of perspectives, each chapter offering a new voice, a different mode of communication, a new narrator with new expectations and challenges, challenges on some level interlacing with all the other characters, but, whatever the reasons, this was an intriguing read, one with its own unique flare and a book I would certainly recommend.Kenneth Fearing was a novelist ahead of his time. He was also a sensitive artist who suffered difficulty both as a child and then as an adult who eventually turned to alcohol. Other than his crime noir novel, ‘The Big Clock’, also republished by New York Review Books (NYRB), Fearing’s fiction and poetry are all but forgotten. Here is a fine essay of his life and times: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/fearing/life.htm*I have principally drawn my observations on postmodernism from Fredric Jameson’s essay “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.”