holes & etc

There are three main types of holes in _Hush_. The first type encompasses many would-be holes that can be figured out if read attentively enough and/or read more than once. These holes vary in their subtlety, hence are subject to different levels of difficulty. The next type of hole consists of the nucleus of trauma that affects Roses, Loralie and Maddie, though she's not as important a character as far as holes are concerned. These holes are never said but always ever pointed at. In the life of Roses and Loralie, these holes are the fountainhead from which the other holes spew. This trauma-hole has caused, primarily, psychical scaring in Roses and physical scaring on Loralie. The next type would be Love, Roses's aborted monsterhead twin whose existence in the narrative punctures it, causing a hole in what we're reading.

I haven't looked at _Nightwood_ in a while, but my sense is that its holes are much more covered up - or rather, the violence and trauma that exist in the narrative are covered up in speech rather than hidden in the gaps of language & structure, making it more difficult to overread. Barnes hides her holes deep in the night and though she might bring it up at times, might allow Nora to speak of it, she never lets us guess at it. It dare not speak, and it dare not abstain from speech. It sits in a no-man's-land.

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I met with Lianne today. Of my pee there remains 50 pages to do. After that I will do an "exercise" that Lianne has suggested: to write ten pages for each novel on what I find abject in it. It's to help me focus, and to start writing. It should be done by mid-July, so in two weeks. I'll forward it to her and Andrew, see what they think and take it from there.

I figure that there are three ways to look at abjection in a novel. The first is to do what I've already done with Barnes and that is to analyse the characters and to elaborate each of their psychoanalytical make-up, unveiling how they are, as "people," abject. The second way is to study the psychoanalytical make-up of the novel as its own identity, incorporating that of the characters in a limited way. The third way is to concentrate on themes in the novel that portray border, ambiguity and the essence of what is abject. Of these three ways, I prefer the second, leaning towards the novel's structure and syntax to explain its abjection. I would also incorporate a thematic element in order to enter into discussion with theorists who have previously examined these same themes, especially with regards to Barnes.

I realize as I go that the process of writing a long piece, be it a novel or an MA thesis, consists of writing a lot of stuff that will end up as excess, stored away with the other things you seem to think you know. A hundred page thesis involves much more writing than 100 pages, which most people don't seem to realize and which you do only when you're doing it. Up until now, I must have written down at least four times that in notes and unusable "chapters" and I'm nowhere near finishing...