Author: Rachel Sharpe

A Koch curve is predictable but repetitive in a way that creates new designs in which the initial concept is often lost. Finding a seed shape is often explanatory of the larger image, but not intuitive. In the spiraling mishmash of a text that is Percival Everett’s The Water Cure, The search for a seed shape and the trace back outward reveals Kidder’s grief after losing his daughter Lane to a rapist and his subsequent increased desire for control. However, analysis of the work alongside course material and discussion also reveals the broader importance of contradiction and the care with which it is created, as well as reconciliation with limitations/bounds inherent one’s control over art.

My initial impression of The Water Cure was of its complexity. At the time, most of Kidder’s tangents, drawings, and jumbled words seemed meaningless, a drawn out indication of a man spiraling out of control after a tragic loss. Further reading and class discussion made me able to identify the reasoning behind what had felt useless days earlier. Even if I personally do not consider all elements of the novel necessary, I am now able to identify how these elements are purposeful. Herein lies the predictable expansion of a Koch curve. Kidder is preoccupied with possession and control born from his grief. His anecdotes and even chunks of seemingly random and nearly incomprehensible thought are purposeful and, to some end, predictable. 

Class discussions were integral in my understanding of The Water Cure, as I found it easy to get lost in. In a small group, unpacking the role restraint plays in the water cure, my classmates and I talked at length about containers. The desire to control, to contain, runs through the novel, and with it comes the entrapment of beetles, men, and art. The possible meaning of Kidder’s anecdote about Lane securing a beetle in a box with tape sparked discussion. Through containment, she hopes that he, the beetle, might “mean something” (Everett 91). We spoke of Schrodinger’s cat – the creature in the box, the cat, beetle, man – which adopts a simultaneously ambiguous and unambiguous role, that of the maybe dead, maybe alive, but ultimately neither until the box is opened. Here the beetle sits in the nebulous space of significance as William sits in the basement of Kidder’s mountain home as the maybe culprit, the maybe not culprit, and therefore both. Kidder gives William a series of titles one of which is Art. A name itself is constraining and puts boundaries and/or assumptions on identity (James is a boy, Jasmine is a girl). The name Art has implications of a change in physicality, framing the man as a project to “work on…everyday, nudging clay here, tempering hue there, chipping at a corner, changing tense, altering key” (141). Art also brings to mind physical possessions, paintings kept in museums. In renaming the man in the basement Kidder expresses control over Art. The fact that this switch is made quickly, “Just like that” (110) emphasizes Art’s complete loss of autonomy in Kidder’s hands. 

While Kidder as a character exercises control over his a(A)rt with tape, a burlap sack, and manipulation, curators and authors like Charles Henry Rowell and the many contributors to Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition, as well as the course itself use containers of their own – epitaphs, forwards, introductions, afterwords – in efforts to frame works. They attempt to control interpretation, guide the conversation, or leave breadcrumbs for connection. Charles Henry Rowell, for instance, uses the introduction to Angles of Ascent, a collection of contemporary African American Poetry, to express his opinion that poets are and should continue to move  away from the Black Arts Movement, thus framing the collection as one counter to the movement. In Rowell’s mind, abandoning the movement would mean abandoning the “fetters of narrow political and social demands that have nothing to do with the production of artistic texts” (xli). As a testament to an artist’s lack of control over the reception of their work, Amiri Baraka criticizes this framing in his essay “A Post-Racial Anthology?” The structure of this course reflects the same desire to steer the conversation through pictures and epitaphs. Each time a student accesses resources from Module 4, for example, they encounter an image of a tree, which serves as a reminder of the Lucille Clifton poem beneath it that asks “why//is there under that poem always//an other poem?” This prompts the student to consider context and deeper meaning in the module’s readings and discussions. Interestingly, following the poem is a H.L. Mencken’s poem which expresses a need for critical thinking that avoids the “neat, plausible, and wrong” interpretation of any given text. Containers as a means to control, whether forcefully or gently, are found throughout the course. 

Although Kidder’s choices of what to share with the reader shape his narrative in our eyes, he cannot avoid his seed shape, his desire for control as a central theme. In an attempt to create a recursive mirroring of Art, he physically cannot leave himself out of the man’s view. He desires control as an artist has over their painting, a precise manipulation of every detail in a space in which he himself is not visible, emphasized in his reference to the Venus Effect when purchasing the mirrors. In kidnapping Art, Kidder desires to become the god of Art; he wants to be out of his sight, yet in complete control, “the cop and the judge and the jury and the executioner and god, and god” (196). Kidder tapes Art’s eyes and “leaves no marks” (45), only a “a vague recollection…like the face of god” (251). The desire for control over the perception of one’s art is not unique to Kidder. The individual being integral to the creative process makes full separation of art and artist nearly impossible, even as, or maybe especially as, one seeks that distance. Most noticeably through marginalization, the personal becomes political. In the eyes of creation, this can be either negative or positive. Octavia Butler clarifies in the afterword of “Bloodchild” that the story is not about slavery, and that the interpretation “amazes” her. Audiences assume that a story related to captivity written by a Black woman must be about slavery, and refuse to investigate other avenues of thought. On the other hand, as highlighted in our in-class discussion of New Critical Formalism, the idea that “works of literature are self-contained (autotelic) art ‘objects’ that exist independently of the world around them…no link…to the historical context” (handout), is flawed. Not only does the method stem from an avoidance of social and political trends, but the experiences of the author, the artist, are often integral to the text itself. Reading Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Lager Beer” without understanding the pressure from white critics and publishers on Black authors to write in the Plantation Tradition would miss the significance of the exaggeration of stereotypes and accent. The nature of an author’s interactions with their environment and how it is or is not reflected in their work has been a prevailing course concept, ultimately challenging students to consider historical context and biographical information, but to apply it thoughtfully while remaining vigilant against their own cultural script.

Artists work along tension lines of control, taking great care to create thoughtful contradiction. The constraint of structure designed by a white academic elite has long plagued the Black author. In Slave Narratives in particular, authors are only expected to share facts, and only through plain narration, the rest is to be left to white audiences. Internal and external conflict as narrative beats in freytag’s pyramid have long been part of Western literary tradition. However, Black authors are simultaneously barred from particular traditions and bound tightly to others. Pushback against texts that are complex or unexpected reveals how Black people are often not allowed the “privilege of multifacetedness.” The Water Cure takes this restrictive area, the challenge of remaining “credible” through sense, and pushes back against it. Kidder, and by extension Everett, ask “ when would form and structure not confine me, not constrain me?” (Everett 77). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, which was considered fiction for over 100 years, illustrates the choice Black writers often had to and continue to have to make: Will I tell my story, even when I am not believed? The unimaginable conditions of Jacobs’ 9 by 7 foot hideout in which she “suffered for air even more than for light…was tormented by hundreds of little red insects” (Jacobs 453) and could see her children only through a small hole, was the primary reason it was declared in the white academic world to be fiction, having not remained confined to the criteria placed on Black writers to be believable, even in telling the truth. Responses to contradictions and experimentation in writing reflect literary and analytical bias, which many artists challenge through their work. 

The Water Cure seems an unlikely course bookend – a fictional novel mostly taking place in a man’s notebook as he grieves. Within the novel, however, there emerges a discussion of the complex relationship between an author or artist and their work stemming from Kidder’s intense desire for control. Control serves as the seed shape for the novel’s recursive fractal. In recursion, the result of one round becomes the starting point for the next, and so on. Recursion used to create fractals results in a shape with a length that cannot be measured (Eglash 13), but can be quantified, reduced to an origin. In this way the necessity of complexity and the discussion revolving around control over one’s art has infinite applications, branching far beyond The Water Cure, beyond the course, especially when it brings one back to a search for the seed shape. 

When thinking of a seed, plants are likely to come to mind; all genetic material needed to form a plant nestled into one tiny tear. The same principle applies to seed shapes of mathematical fractals which are “characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever diminishing scales” (Eglash 4). Just as seeds contain the genetic material of the plant, but one could not, at a glance, identify said plant by its As, Ts, Cs, and Gs, the seed shape of a fractal is often lost in its progression. By looking at the smaller elements and perhaps digging a little, however, one may identify the starting point, the connections, and the central movement. The nature of a course containing a wide variety of materials spanning hundreds of years is that there is no singular, central seed shape like the triangle of a Koch Curve; thus recursion also becomes more complex. Ironically, course materials are defined by this tension between simplicity and complexity, the “Twoness of things’” expressed by W.E.B Du Bois, or the threeness and fourness of things as expressed by Bernice Johnson Reagon. 

Tension in this instance is used somewhat loosely. The identification of tension between movements, ideas, and themes is driven by a notion of homogeneousness of culture, which often can be traced back to a white American and European cultural script. Several texts we have reviewed in class reflect this idea, even those well-intentioned such as James A. Snead’s “On Repetition in Black Culture,” which sets a strict line between all of Africa and all of Europe. The idea that difference exists within a cultural framework challenges absolutism and employs the reader to identify context, as well as recognize the misuse of “authenticity,” as a singular way of “performing” culture. Class discussion gave rise to the idea that minority groups are often “not allowed the privilege of multifacetedness” as a result. Evaluation of what first appears to be tension yields complexity and offers deeper insight. 

A small contradiction between texts, and also the first discussed in class, is an aesthetic difference. “African-American Women’s Quilting” focuses on the cultural aesthetic of asymmetry in quilting, of “unpredictability and movement” (Brown 922). She describes “A people’s cultural aesthetic [as] not different from their economic or political aesthetic” (Brown 926), which adds a tremendous amount of weight to the aforementioned aesthetic leanings in African American quilt making. However in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” quilts are described as having a Lone Star pattern and a Walk Around the Mountain pattern. Both patterns are symmetrical, raising a question of authenticity and presenting a false tension. Although the pattern choices may be commentary on assimilation, a central theme in the story, they may also be a contradiction that is not a contradiction at all, but rather a result of differences that occur inside of every group, whether that be aesthetic or contextual, natural or forced. 

Much larger tensions between cultural ideals crop up in Bernice Johnson Reagon’s “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See,” which seems in conversation with Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” The tension lies not between the texts themselves, but in the ideals which are addressed. The struggle between assimilation and community and comfort, which Reagon describes as a matter of survival, and “sanity threatening for the elders and the children” (Reagon 113), is addressed in both texts. “Everyday Use” sets a dichotomy between the two, between returning college student Dee’s (or, rather, Wangero’s) views of her childhood home as full of potential decor, and her mother’s view that such items are meant for everyday use. Walker’s description of a churn Dee is determined to take as still being full, still being put to practical use, emphasizes this difference. Reagan, however, also highlights how some may be able to “straddle” this line between cultures that Walker sets as diametrically opposed. Those who straddle “don’t move totally from one place to the other place, but we construct a new network of rules, regulations, and standards that are a shifting blend” (Reagon 115). This presents a new space not addressed in “Everyday Use,” a space in which there is no singular choice between worlds, but instead a third space between. Though the difference between a “home” space and an “other” space remains, the apparent dichotomy becomes more nuanced. 

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself are often compared. Incidents narrates an experience of slavery unlike Douglass’; Harriet Jacobs contends with sexual violence and the jealousy of her enslaver’s wife, and several chapters and a number of years are spent hiding, (441) compared to Douglass’ more rivoting escape, something which readers lean into. The unimaginable conditions of Jacobs’ 9 by 7 foot hideout in which she “suffered for air even more than for light…was tormented by hundreds of little red insects” (Jacobs 453) and could see her children only through a small hole, was the primary reason it was declared in the white academic world to be fiction. The tension between the narratives, and the differences that lead Doughlass’ narrative to be generally favored, do not delegitimize Jacobs’ experiences, but instead speak to the diversity of horrors of enslavement.  

Both narratives required a preface by a white person, and Incidents was accepted as a true narrative only after the research of a white historian, Jean Fagan Yelliln, was completed, demonstrating how white people must attest to the validity of Black struggles in order for them to be taken seriously. This “looming” that we discussed in class prevented full stories from being told overtly. It prevents both Douglass and Jacobs from naming many individuals in their stories, as they “deemed it kind and considerate towards others” (Jacobs 435). On one occasion, Douglass omits the names of children who helped him learn to read, as “it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offense to teach slaves to read in this Christian country” (Douglass 289). The protection of the reputations of people, particularly white people involved in the lives of Douglass and Jacobs, reflects the constant pressure of white publishers, scholars, and a general white audience. 

This looming also leads to a number of creative decisions in regards to audience. Upper class white women were the particular audience for many slave narratives, in the hopes that they might be moved to speak to their power-holding husbands. This can be seen in many places throughout the narratives, such as in how Douglass opens his narrative by telling his audience about how mothers and children were separated, and Jacobs speaks of how her children do not know she is so close to them when she is hiding out in the same house, how she “longed to tell them [she] was there” (Jacobs 452). Targeted also was the fear that they, too, might become like Dr. Flint’s wife, like Mrs. Auld, a “woman of the kindest heart…changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon” (Douglass 287). Decisions made directly to cater to a certain audience demonstrate the friction between author and audience in the case of slave narratives and adds layers to said narratives. 

Module 4’s epigraph is a Lucille Clifton poem asking the question “is there under that poem always//an other poem?” This begs the question: what layers lie beneath surface tension? From questions of aesthetic to assimilation to narrative, beneath tension lies difference, lies context, suffering, and joy. Beneath tension lies a seed shape that is, in and of itself, based in variation. The fractal emerging from such a shape reflects the same purposeful disorder. Questions generated from complexity are new with each text, discussion, and revelation, and, as the fractal continues to grow, it becomes more important to remember the root idea. Taking the next step past the initial cultural script of inauthenticity or confusion is essential in learning within a community of students, where conversation is fruitful above argument.