To read the opening of Purpura's "Autopsy Report" is to be audience to a jazz performance. Listen to the improvisations: "I shall begin...I shall stand...I shall touch...I shall note," all opening riffs of strangely archaic, willful language. And then we hit a segment in which the verbs suddenly disappear for a few sentences: "The twenty-eight year alcoholic before us, a businessman. All the prescriptions for his hypertension, bagged and unused near his black-socked, gold-toed foot." Next more conventional scene leading to a new segment, a report from inside her head: "What I thought before seeing it all: never again will I know the body as I do know. And how exactly is that?" With that question, the narrator signals her intention in the essay, and off she goes.
"Autopsy Report" is an example of a so-called "lyric essay," a species of the essay genre with a slippery definition. It is a form that might invoke lyric language, one in which ambiguities remain so that "the meaning must be completed by the reader," and one that often experiments with form. Phillip Lopate, whose collection The Art of the Personal Essay is required reading for any fan of the genre, is impatient with the lyric essay, complaining that it is a "license for vagueness."
I suppose we might lodge that complaint against Purpura in this essay, particularly on p. 174 in the passages that begins "If looking, though, is a practice..." and ending on the next page with "a gesture of ease." Here she tacks away from dead bodies to examine how, as a child growing up in a household with two parents who were artists, the "forms spoke" and that this was "the silent part of my life as a child." Then there is a reference to God, which might provide some explanation for the ineffability of what she saw in paintings, but seemed, finally, too "pushy." Purpura ends that paragraph this way: "A call to jettison the issue, the only issue as I understood it: the unknowable certainty of being alive, of being a body untethered from origin, untethered from end, but also so terribly here." What does this mean? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Then there is the matter of structure, which Root addresses in "What do the Spaces Say." Purpura's use of segments, the creation of a mosaic, seems exactly what Root was writing about. Does he provide a useful explanation for why it works (if it does)? What do the spaces say in "Autopsy Report?"
"Autopsy Report" is probably one of my favorite essays, ever, and it's one I return to sometimes when I want inspiration. Specifically, when I want inspiration in form and (especially) in language. Purpura is also a poet, which I think makes her prose read like fragments of poetry sometimes. This essay, I think, provides the reader a physical reaction -- I remember, vividly, the first time I read the part about the mass of organs as a cornucopia. I think often, too, about her musings on the way we bump into each other and our skins not really being the boundary we believe them to be.
ReplyDeleteIn the preface to Loitering, a collection of essays by Charles D'Ambrosio that I'm currently obsessed with, he says, "the rhythms of prose [come] from the body..." and I thought, "YES." He goes on to say, "although I still believe that, I still don't know what I mean." Which I totally agree with as well. But I think now that perhaps "Autopsy Report" is a perfect example of that idea. The spaces are movements, breaths maybe, of the body of prose. They are adjustments in the writer's reaction to the writing, and, thus, incite visceral and physical reactions from the reader. They are the movements from one part of the body to another, perhaps. Like D'Ambrosio, I don't really know what I mean by all of that, but I guess I would have to say I can feel what I mean.
"Autopsy Report," took me a few reads to digest, or wrangle a hold of, and it is still a very loose hold at that. I love the idea of a lyrical essay, it seems in theory an answer to my unanswerable struggles as a writer- you mean I can write like a poet, without being a poet, and write nonfiction, but not have to so concretely connect things for my reader? I'm in! Where do I sign up. But then in reading Autopsy Report, I feel it must be far more confusing than that. I suppose my main struggle is connecting these moments in a larger way than just the moments themselves. I do think the "key" kind of lies in the segment Bruce has mentioned this other and brief foray into her childhood, parents, and the taste of the word "God." But I do not know right now, to what means this ends serves. If I can take a stab at it (haha) I think she is after this feeling, of how unreliable our bodies are. Maybe unreliable isn't the word, but how temporary, how, yes unreliable. I think in the piecing off of these dead, she sees a mechanical nature to who we are, what we are made of. The moment she talks about the man who has on the sock with a hole in it, this stuck out to me. How he gave no thought to getting dressed, how much we do not give thought to, and how close we are not being here at all. Something like that I think.
ReplyDeleteA quick note on, "What The Spaces Say," and that is I love it. It kind of opened up some doors in my mind, because in fiction if you use a page break, then you best be damn sure there is reason for halting your reader. But I see in this the break itself is the very reason for the break, a purposeful waiting, holding, and thinking period before trying out the temperature in something, not really new, but less familiar than where you just were. I think in my last essay, this would have made perfect sense but I just didn't know it was a thing, a tool I could employ like anything else. This brings me joy. And in terms of it's use in Autopsy Report, I see it as necessary. I do not think we could move between bodies, or see the movement between them without these spaces, it draws together all these dead people, into one dead persons. Not sure if that makes sense. But do you see what I mean?
I've been thinking for the last week about your words: "You mean I can write like a poet, without being a poet, and write nonfiction, but not have to so concretely connect things for my reader." I've been reading a lot of poetry and I love that in poetry not everything needs to connect, or rather those connections are left for the reader to make...or not. Autopsy report has that same element. There are spaces to think and feel and sometimes just wonder.
DeleteThere are certain essays that are not simply read, they are experienced; and “Autopsy Report” is my kind of textual experience.
ReplyDeleteI have always been drawn to lyrical writing, the craft of turning a phrase or creating an image that is worthy of the title of prose, and how it taps into and animates emotion. It seems a most difficult endeavor: finding that sweet spot that exists between prose and melodrama. But when it’s done well it almost always leads me to see a side or a depth or a connection of human nature I had never before comprehended. I think this is due to the “vagueness” or ambiguity of the genre that Bruce mentions. To borrow a word from Purpura, lyrical essays such as this kind of catapult you up and out into a line of thought only to leave you hanging, “untethered” if you will, forced to examine your position and find a way home on your own.
It is this thought of untetheredness that I find so compelling in Purpura’s essay. Sandwiched between the strangely “familiar” experience of the opening of dead bodies at the beginning and the recognition of the same “milky blueness” of death (or is it life?) lingering at the grocery store at the end—“cut free and swaying, barest breath and tether”—is her childhood memory. In this memory Purpura moves freely among her parent’s art: odd and ends so “real, [so] hard, [so] stiff…scratched…and roughened” that it hurt, while at the same time being light as “air…softened…better than the bodies of clouds.” And she remembers playing in this paradoxal space “in their sight.” When taking into account Root’s concept of the authorial using of white space as a tool for presenting pieces as parts of a greater whole, I step back and look at Purpura’s images and see her thoughts on the inexplicable nature of life: a terrible, paradoxal, observed (?) untetheredness sandwiched between two layers of dust. In doing so, I second her call to “jettison the issue.”
I know I probably make no sense, but I sure have enjoyed the making of it. The vagueness of lyrical essays allow for such nonsensical thinking; it not only opens the door for it, it begs for it. And who am I to deny them such a grand purpose?
I did not enjoy reading Autopsy Report. I made myself read it for the assignment and to, of course, learn. I don't like reading about this topic, dead people described intimately - each person broken down into a graphic description of body parts, though I appreciated the "back story" that is implied in the descriptions of their clothes, the mud, the "stiffening sleeve". I don't watch medical shows or the violent crime shows on TV. They hold no appeal for me. Sometimes the graphic parts of such shows I think are gratuitous, for the audience to ogle, just like unnecessary nude scenes are put into a film. Reading about autopsies gives me no pleasure, though this essay had nothing gratuitous about it. There were parts that gave the piece meaning to me, like the section talking about God, tying this to a larger thought, perhaps trying to give all of this some significance was an important part of the whole. The very last paragraph, the one about the "stepping out into the street" I think was also meant to give perspective, perhaps some meaning, to the whole autopsy experience, though it didn't make a powerful connection for me. Another part that made me think was the sentence, "Have I thought of the body as sanctuary?" Now, that would be an interesting thought to pursue. Thinking about how these sons would never be fathers, how the woman had braided hair - these thoughts all made this invasion of the body touching and thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteIf one had to write about this or if one found this topic fascinating enough to study and to write about - both of which I think are worthy (just because I don't like the topic doesn't mean it doesn't have merit) - Purpura's piece would be a lovely way to do it. "I shall" write about trees growing in the middle of aging forests; I shall write about love lost as the ship left the harbor; I shall write about the lost innocence of an faltering nation; I shall write about dead people, and how one skins a body, how they open 'im up. This topic would not have been my idea of lyric poetry, certainly nothing I would write about. But that's what makes this lyric approach so perfect. It's unexpected. Purpura writes so descriptively and at the same time - you all have said it - poetically. The beginning structure is rhythmic, almost Whitman-y or Sandburg-ian. I like how it moved us forward, almost romantically, majestically in spirit. I suspected, though, that surely there would be a big thought, an important insight or summary or refrain before moving into the "Oh no" descriptive part, as one would see at the end of a poem, but there wasn't. In fact, it might have been very interesting to end the essay with the same kind of poetry, same kind of rhythm. "I end with a....", "I stood beside..." My soul was touched....", "I now believe.."
I never knew what a lyric essay was before reading this piece and about the form. It is so intriguing how Purpura did it, raising a macabre task to a higher level of significance via form, terrific descriptive skill, and most importantly for me anyway, finding the meaning in those bits and pieces. I don't think poets can write well formulaicly - their hearts have to be engaged. So too for this lyric form - I think Purpura's heart was engaged and that's what helped her get to the heart of this challenging story. Yes, the heart - with all it's veins and arteries and atria and ventricles - is more than the sum of its parts. So too the important essay.
Your post got me thinking about the differences between ambiguities and vagueness. Who determines whether a piece of writing is vague vs. ambiguous? Is it merely a matter of preference? How can a writer ensure their writing coveys a meaning/message, even when employing experimental forms and "vague" language? I remember writing a lengthy lyrical poem over a decade ago and submitting it for review with a collection of other poems. That specific lengthy lyrical poem received feedback, noting that it was buried with vagueness and that it sounded nonsensical at times. I had written that piece with the intent that it would convey a specific meaning, thinking that my lines were ambiguous, not vague, but I obviously didn't convey it well enough (at least to that reviewer).
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Purpura's piece, I believe my problem was that I had applied too much variety into one message--too many varying images, too many different thoughts, that were seemingly disconnected--that it became overwhelming for anybody reading it (other than me) as to what in the world I was trying to get at.
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