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Postface
to Maske: Thaery by Jacques Goimard (1981) (Translated
from the French by Patrick Dusoulier, Sept. 2002)
BEHIND THE FETISH, NOTHINGNESS
Maske:
Thaery is the story of a quest. From his initial
concept, Jack Vance could have easily built a mystery
novel: there is nothing missing, from the character
of the 'inspector' down to the final explanatory
chapter. Besides, we know that this author has also
written several mystery novels (in particular the
superb Bad Ronald) under his real name: John Holbrook
Vance.
He
has chosen instead, for Thaery, to give a free rein
to the full luxuriance of his imagination. The vocabulary,
the events, all things are streaming with the unexpected,
everything progresses by seisms, all is part of
the author's programme as defined by Jacques Chambon:
"The evocation of the most disconcerting 'possibles'.1"
The
contrast is so absolute between the theme and its
treatment that one is led to think of a question
asked by the same Jacques Chambon: "How can
you immerse yourself in the shimmerings of imagination
without losing yourself in them?2" Vance has
recognised the danger, especially in the past ten
years, and some of his more recent novels-Emphyrio
for instance-introduce the return of realism at
the heart of the dream.
This
is no minor issue being raised here. Can you penetrate
deeper into the real as you move farther away from
it? Can you express the contrary of what you seem
to be saying? Can you be what you are not? It is
clear that Chambon has read Parmenides and that,
contrary to so many modern critics, he is not obsessed
by the surface of the texts.
Such
dialectical boldness filled us with a noble desire
to emulate. To cross the vast expanses of formal
logic from the east to the west, and from yes to
no, what a cavalcade! Carried away by a warlike
fervour, we have dashed off to his pursuit. And
when the time came to read again Thaery, we did
it in a new light.
Naturally,
we do not intend to plagiarise Chambon, and since
we have stepped into his territory, we make it a
point of honour to explore it backwards. He shows
us how the real invades the imaginary? Very well,
we will show how the imaginary sets fire to the
real. This is war, sir, war!
It
must be said that Thaery happens to be a recent
novel (1976) and that it seems to have been written
for the very purposes of our demonstration. So many
ornaments, and in particular dress ornaments-festoons
and astragals galore-evoke fetishism, and the interpretation
that Freud gave for it in his time. Those multicoloured
frills are here not to represent elements of reality,
but elements that are lacking in reality. What
is actually wrapped up in the imaginary-with such
luxury and extravagance-is nothingness. And the
fetishist reacts as Jubal in Thaery: when Sune tells
him that one can do nothing, that one must bow to
reality, he replies that it is not his style, he
prefers denial, whatever the cost (chapter IX).
I
can hear the objection that fetishists are generally
obsessed by a specific object, and that Vance, on
the contrary, is a virtuoso when it comes to changes
of scenery. Diversity is his drug. This means that
the trinkets he uses for embellishment appear to
him in their futility the very moment he produces
them; occasionally, he plays at enhancing them with
"authenticating" details, the better to
show their artifice through a captious re-enforcement
of their consistency, but this never lasts very
long; soon he abandons them in search of new ones;
he is condemned to invent. In short, he is an intelligent
fetishist, who is aware of the hollowness of his
enterprise, but still a fetishist-at least in his
texts, since we make no judgement, needless to say,
about Mr. Vance's sexual life.
The
original title of the book-Maske: Thaery3-is a story
in itself. A first reading tells us that Maske is
a planet and Thaery a country on this planet; those
two points are classic with Vance, and denote the
link between the title of a series (Maske) and that
of a novel in the series (Thaery). But a second
reading is strongly urged by the author, who has
barely disguised the words. Maske requires no comment;
let us dwell a bit on Thaery.
We
know that Edmund Spenser, an English author of the
16th century, earned fame with a poem entitled "The
Faerie Queene". Thaery is primarily 'faerie',
and the colon is meant to establish an equivalence:
the masks-the fetishes-have as first objective to
produce wonder and pleasure in the text. But thaery
is also the theory, that is to say, in Greek, the
vision, the spectacle, the procession (we suspect
that Vance is not quite ignorant of Greek) and from
there, the intellectual's outlook on the things
of this world, the triumph over the world through
vast syntheses and globalising vistas, the certainty
that is not exempt of contempt, or at least not
without some distance from objects and people. Finally,
how can we omit theatre and theatricality, a word
used in this novel to pillory a rejected woman in
love (chapter XX)? It is true that the unfortunate
girl has fallen into this state of dereliction because
her lover has passed into a full state of immobility,
which unsurprisingly drives her into a state of
hysteria.
All
in all, Thaery is a portmanteau word, and we are
not confident that we have given it full justice
in our translation to French: 'Thaérie', necessarily
devoid of its Anglo-Saxon connotations. It is a
fact that Vance does not make it easy for us: as
soon as he has brought a fetish to bay, he immediately
rushes forth to flush another one out. A cursive
reading enabled us to spot a young girl named Theodel,
whose name evokes-among other things-faithfulness,
and a religious reformer answering to the name of
Eus Thario, which conjures up rather clearly the
concept of austerity.
We
wouldn't need to go much further to add to this
constellation several dozens, even hundreds of additional
words echoing this mysterious proper noun, and Vance's
joy is precisely in this game that he plays with
words, as far as the eye, and conscience, can see:
this explains, of course, the resistance that this
author opposes to reductionist interpretations,
and his current lack of recognition due to the fact
that he is not well identified. Inventor of non-stop
fetishes, Vance has not succeeded in applying to
his face one that would be stable enough to satisfy
some literary critics. He feels comfortable in a
fancy-dress ball, less so in the 14th of July military
parade.
Let
us go back to the colon in the title, and the equivalence
relation (or inclusion) that it creates: behind
the mask, there is the variable aspect-or if you
like, the portmanteau aspect-of Thaery. If we looked
closer at it, we would see nothing. But do we want
to look closer? Do we want to confront nonsense
face to face? Of course not. Not Jack Vance (nor
any other, with the notable exception of madmen).
He prefers to look elsewhere, and to believe that
others in his place will see sense-like those Waels
"all watching something beyond Jubal's range
of vision." (chapter XVII). Best, after all,
is not to see anything: to step too close to a masked
man is to run the risk of being blinded (chapter
XIII). The principal function of the fetish is not
to show, but to hide.
It
is easy then to understand that Maske is rife with
masks. The story begins-almost-with a man tugging
down the brim of his hat to hide his identity; later,
it is a woman who will pull her hood up to shadow
her face; many characters act like Ramus, who "is
taking pains not to be recognised" (chapter
XIV), like Nai the Hever, who makes himself inaccessible,
or his daughter, who is unapproachable and as if
absent from inside her own body. Those who hide
in shadows are traitors, as is normal, or aristocrats,
as we will see later (is the haughty Mieltrude;
once disguised as a ship's apprentice, still recognisable
by her peers? one wonders about that in chapter
XV), but the hero himself skips from identity to
identity, renting a wig (chapter XII) or rubbing
himself with mud and soot to darken his skin (chapter
XVII).
The
proper noun is no exception to the rule: is it not
a mask by itself? While the grandees travel "incognito"
(chapter IX), Jubal is an "anonymous hero"
(chapter XII) and uses a wide variety of pseudonyms,
the first of which was not of his own choice, at
least. It is a fact that he is only the second son:
he has almost no chance of becoming the Droad of
Droad House as Nai is the Hever, and he will not
cry over the dead of his family with profuse demonstrations
as required by custom. But he is not a bastard like
Cadmus-off-Droad4, who has no other course of action,
to gain possession of the proper name and other
fetishes, than murder and deceit-after which no
one can meet anything but failure. In short, Jubal
is an 'in-between' character, typical younger son
doomed to sit below the salt and pick up the crumbs:
a task he accomplishes with a lot of determination
and conviction. Identity is not his as a given,
he can have it only on a precarious basis and it
will always be left open to doubt. In chapter XIV
appears a nameless character, but when he looks
at himself in the mirror, no doubt can remain: this
is Jubal.
How
can a society operate, where individuals find it
so difficult to position themselves? It is mentioned
that the masks drive the primitive Djan mad (chapter
XIII) and that, even for the Thariots, there are
war masks (chapter XIII), which underlines the relationship
between aggressiveness and the inability to think
of oneself as subject, the need to destroy and the
inability to form a group. Still, this insufficiency
is at the basis of many social rules; it may well
be a foundation of society's cohesion. We learn
that "truth offends worse than falsehood"
(chapter VI) and that a good investigator "abandons
a line of inquiry rather than expose himself."
(chapter IX); the prosaic Eisels, haunted by a passion
for money, and the wise Waels, who communicate with
the beyond, have a point in common: they never tell
the truth (chapter XVI). The problem is not to be
sincere and a man of integrity, but to introduce
oneself to strangers with a music called "Sincere
Integrity" (chapter XII). In short, fetishism
is not a Vance sickness, it is a historical sickness.
This
is the moment to wonder whether the 'real' is coming
back to Thaery; we rather feel that it has never
stopped being there, that it has been freshly daubed
with paint to make it invisible, and that all Vance's
efforts, all his writing work, all that makes Thaery
a book, consisted in this camouflage.
What
to say about the Thaery country? From the beginning,
Vance lays his cards on the table: its founders
were immigrants with religious motivations. They
rooted themselves in a long and narrow land by the
ocean, separated by a mountain range from the back
country, where primitives, the Djan, live (some
of whom were used, in the first days of the colonisation,
as perrupters in the internecine fights of the Thariots,
and some still survive in Thaery, confined to reserves).
They established thirteen States, initially independent,
then united, although their socio-religious plan
tends to reproduce the ideal of the twelve tribes
of Israel, which casts a shadow upon the metaphysical
legitimacy of the Thirteenth State. They began as
farmers, then some of them, in the far North, became
pirates, and soon merchants. In their main harbour,
one still sees shops that are three of four hundred
years old, which seems to correspond to the first
period of colonisation (chapter IV).
The
paragraph that you have just read had no other purpose
than to describe Thaery; still, it can be applied,
word for word, to 18th century America. The analogy
is of course not so detailed (we have to render
unto the imaginary what belongs to imagination),
but the name of the main harbour, Wysrod, matches
'New-York' on four letters, and we also come upon
magnates' names (chapter III) with a somewhat Dutch
consonance: Hever mentions Hoover, Setrevant and
Istvant (chapter VII) evoke Stuyvesant. As for the
currency, the toldeck, it combines dollar and kopeck
with a secret wink (as always with Vance).
If
Thaery looks so much like America, the book that
is dedicated to it might very well address-tangentially,
of course-some of the central problems that America
has always had to deal with. All societies are xenophobic,
even the wise Waels who proclaim that "An outsider
is pain to us all" (chapter XVII). All societies
have their 'inside outsiders', identified as such
by ambient paranoia and who, in this capacity, eventually
have to choose between death and flight. Emigration,
we are reminded, is a "tragic and irreversible
process" (Prologue); it leads to a land where
there are only immigrants, former scapegoats who
want to forget (and have others forget) the past
nightmare. This explains the extreme politeness
which characterises Thariots as well as Americans,
even if Vance adds to it a ceremonial dimension
borrowed from Japan, which has no other effect than
to re-enforce the fetishism that is inherent to
all rituals; more generally, immigrants do everything
in reverse from their country of origin, which becomes
"an exemplar of everything to be avoided"
(Prologue); if they have kept an inferiority complex,
they vigorously deny it ("We are sadly provincial
here in Thaery, probably to our great advantage"
chapter VI).
But
what has been repressed soon comes back to the surface,
and the Thariots re-invent scapegoats: first the
Djan, the Indians ("They follow. They never
lead" chapter XII); then the Glints, too easily
recognisable and despised; finally, the underprivileged
social classes ("The brain is a remarkable
organ which junior and assistant grades never use
to best capacity" chapter VIII). Will those
unfortunates ever be able at least to get on the
road again? Impossible; Thaery is by definition
the land of scapegoats, and its own scapegoats have
no business elsewhere. Elsewhere is "outward"
(not even worthy of a capital initial), and "The
Alien Influences Act [...]proscribes the return
of emigrants." (chapter I). It is rather easy
to see that there is something political underneath;
emigration is a crime, full stop.
Thus
does the Thariot society set some of its members
on the fringes, members who are granted neither
the right to be within, or to be without. This society
has solidified into castes; the grandees are naturally
quietly ensconced in their privileges, and opposed
to any change. Of their contempt for others, Vance
draws his own rather contemptuous portrait: "Nothing
anyone says can be taken at face value" (chapter
III), "Each of us must, so to speak, play a
dozen instruments together, in this magnificent
concert which is our contemporary life" (chapter
III); " Are not [...]intricacy or elaboration
[...] our first line of defence against low-caste
parvenus?" (chapter III); one cannot talk to
them: "Expostulation, irony, any sort of vehemence:
all were equally pointless" (chapter V); one
cannot even blame them for being wrong: "Her
errors have taught her wisdom" (chapter VIII).
Such a society might have been described by Frank
Herbert (who is, incidentally, a friend of Jack).
There are laws, but the essence of power belongs
to justice-as in the United States-and its procedural
nature barely conceals its arbitrariness: law is
here to accommodate people's desires, especially
when they are powerful. Vance gives us a few examples
of the purest water (chapter VII).
This
arthrosis of the social body coincides with overpopulation;
it is now impossible for the young people to become
heroes through the old virtues, will, "energy,
forthrightness, and candor" (chapter II). They
manage with utmost difficulty to get an ill-paid
job (chapter VI) and bitterly realise that their
time "is of the least possible value"
(chapter VII): "Already I feel an old man"
moans Jubal (chapter VI), even if Vance adds humorous
quote marks to indicate that he does not really
believe what his character is telling him. This
illness seems general even if it is little mentioned
in the text, and the strollers in Wysrod appear
as "dark shapes, musing upon their private
affairs" (chapter VI) behind the masks, Narcissus-like.
Those who, like Jubal, want to be allowed to "work
out [their] rage" (chapter II) seem to be in
better health than the others, even if it is likely
that trouble is awaiting them.
Where
to find an exit door? The book suggests several,
all outside of Thaery. Jubal's trip among the Eisels
suggests an analogy. A blazing sun, palm trees,
blinds, a life turned to music, sex and good food,
an economy centred upon tourism, fleecing the passing
guest being turned into an art, a dedication to
selling souvenirs and sports cars (sorry: space
yachts!), all this reminds of Italy. Jubal arrives
in a ship after a stopover at Frinsse (France?);
he stays at the Hotel Gandolfo which looks like
Castelgandolfo, and which incidentally is a "
seven-smiles hotel", the most luxurious in
the Galaxy; there, he looks for a certain Ramus,
evocative of Rome, and who has many affinities with
Eiselbar, even if he is not native to the planet.
Still,
we know that Italy, from the American point of view,
is not only reminiscent of tourism, but also evokes
the American Italians, and particularly some of
them, the highly mythical ones. Some of the "mechanical
game-rooms" (chapter X) remind us of Las Vegas,
and therefore the Mafia and Sicily, which evokes
also the name of the inhabitants: the Eisels. We
notice their gregarious character and their attachment
to the patriarchal family: "A child born into
an Eisel family incurs a birth-debt, which eventually
must be paid to his parents" (chapter IX).
They are in love with money: according to them,
a stranger's quality is gauged "only by the
depth of his pocketbook" (chapter XII) and
their capital city is built around a "Boulevard
of Mercantic Visions" (chapter XI), visions
that we could call both mercantic and ecstatic.
Vance also specifies that they have replaced handicraft
with industrial processes (chapter XII), which does
not match our idea of Italy, but goes well with
the Mafia evolution since 1950. Their alienation,
less novel than it seems, can be summed up with
one statement: " Property is life" (chapter
IX). Their methods to industrialise tourism remind
us of Las Vegas, indeed, but also of Disneyland
and the whole American concept of organised leisure.
Eiselbar is one of the provinces of an ideal America,
less complete than Thaery but as similar, whatever
Vance may think. A real fetishist like him cannot
be insensitive to the theatrical sense that is being
displayed there; nevertheless, he criticises fairly
clearly the Eisels for alienating people in their
leisure time, that is to say in whatever remains
of their freedom, and for standardising art to make
it contribute to this alienation. Such an escapism
is in fact hard labour.
Second
journey, second exit door: Wellas. We don't really
know where the Waels come from: they might originate
from an ancient crossbreeding between Thariots and
Djan, but those are distinct species and all known
couplings have been sterile; some even say that
a crossbreeding of men and trees is at the root
of their existence. We may well think that those
mysterious Waels will be explored in a more methodical
fashion in a future novel. In the meanwhile, they
despise worldly goods and spend their time growing
jin trees and dancing in the groves. What for? "To
assert Now, and work it into the same substance
as Then"5 (chapter XVII). It is not unlikely
that the most advanced among them may acquire the
power to change themselves into trees, to attain
a sort of nirvana: such would be the characteristic
of those that Jack calls the Sen, a name that echoes
Zen Buddhism. The whole is evocative of Asian spirituality,
more specifically the Indian one, but the undersigned
has not found as obvious and solid a network of
correspondences as that found for America and Italy.
Another province of ideal America, perhaps, located
in South California, may have been intended. In
any case, the message is clear: the exit through
Wellas is not possible because the Waels do not
want you. They could not care less about your agitation
and your desires. If you go and disturb them, they
throw you out quick and proper, and if you have
really exceeded the limits, they will inflict upon
you an apotheosis that will be a torture for you.
The
third exit is the journey itself. Shrack, the old
sailor, reminds us of a certain Jack Vance, who
was a sailor before his marriage. Maske's sailors
are exclusively traders; each one lives alone aboard
his ship, torn between a feeling of "futility"
and the certainty that "trade is profitable"
(chapter XV). On Maske, the current flows in one
direction only, and the sailor can only leave: when
he feels tired of Wysrod, he heads south and sails
around the world. Nothing to do with the rigidity
of life in Thaery: "variety is the more typical
situation" (chapter XV). This programme is
precisely that of Jack Vance's œuvre; it does not
prevent the journey from ending, since Maske is
round and we find Wysrod at the end of the "Long
Ocean". There is a sort of stability in the
unstable: life at sea is a real life, and the sailors
form a sort of nation-they are called the Nationals-which
claims a monopoly of the sea, with Taery's tacit
agreement. These "Nationals" are at the
same time inside and outside; they may well be the
staunchest support of an imperial aspiration, to
which no one else but them subscribes. We also see
here an aspect of ideal America, well known since
Melville and familiar to Vance. The sailors are
Nationals without a nation, who take their nothingness
out on a boundless fetish: the sea. Ramus uses them
as a means of transport without realising that the
transport is more than a means-let us say: the medium
is the message. Vance will inflict upon Ramus what
is to him the utmost punishment: immobility (chapter
XX). It is true that you cannot really be mobile
until you have achieved perpetual motion, by sailing
round the Long Ocean.
In
summary, Vance takes us across a dual imaginary
geography: Earth and America. At the same time,
he takes us through political and geographical 'possibles'.
He never stops digging further and further into
the painful secret that makes America languish.
He is so unpretentious that he mentions, in passing,
about two-thirds of the book, and without coming
back to it later, what seems to be his personal
solution. But are there personal solutions to a
historical issue? In this domain, we all look like
this Ramus whose "desires exceed his capabilities"
(chapter XI) because what he desires, as a good
fetishist, is to give existence to nothingness.
The only true solution is yet to dream of fetishes,
and write about them. Ramus' first punishment is
to be unmasked and to remain silent (chapter XVIII).
Let us hope that this situation, which is that of
death, may long be spared to Vance. As to his books,
we have no concern whatsoever: they are not likely
to fall silent for a very long time.
1
Le Livre d'Or de !a Science-fiction: Jack Vance.
Presses Pocket, 1981, p. 13
2
Ibid., p. 29
3
The French title is not an exact translation, which
explains this remark by Jacques Goimard. The French
title is "Un Tour en Thaérie", which literally
means "A Trip around Thaery." (Translator's
Note)
4
This bastard happens to be the cousin of a genealogist,
Zochrey Cargus. With Vance, humour is ever present-a
humour based on contradiction and which thereby
reflects the author's position: genealogies are
always a fetish of bastardy.
5
This declaration of faith is in complete opposition
to that of the Thariots: "The past is never
real, [...] the flux of events is the present"
(chapter XIII)
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