Scraps at Midnight

The cover has closed on Sing Sing Nights (for now), but my time in Keelerville (that London of the West) has only just begun. I am now set to begin Keeler's next opus, Thieves' Nights and my palms sweat with anticipation.  

What did I make of Sing Sing Nights, you ask?  In a word: dizzying.  If this is one of Keeler's more "conventional" works (as has been reported), I can only imagine what lies ahead.  While the book may not be as "off the rails" as his later works, there is certainly a peculiar/unique voice and vision at work that seems undeniably Keeler-esque (at least from what I, a recent initiate, can tell).  

Some of the emergent obsessions in SSN:

• Use of truncated/rearranged words and letters, and an abundant use of initialized monikers. (Question to self: Might some of this connect to the Oulipo?  Answer to self: Check it out).

• Pseudonyms and doubles (and triples?!?!) (e.g. Gryce/Cawthorne, Annesly/Grillo).

• Subset of above: A fixation with the construct of identity.  Identities often transplanted, transformed,  or confused via names, wardrobes, or brain surgery (!)

• Scraps, documents, pieces - more than just clues to the mystery?  All a part of Keeler's meta/self-reflexive narrative constructions.  Is he showing us the clues to more than just the riddle at hand?  Is he using these devices parodically, or perhaps just calling attention to his "tangled" narrative methods?  (see also: the latter discussions between Krenwiscz, Eastwood, McCaigh).

• The Race Question (more on this later --- for now one word: Confucius)

• Keeler constantly comments on the convoluted quality of his narratives (e.g. tangled, snarled, etc).  See also: duh  What Keeler might refer to as "some semblance of winkability" (pg. 206, Ward Lock & Co.).

• Annesly/Grillo might function as a kind of Keeler surrogate --- a beastly and extreme outsider figure ("The outcast was to be taken in, to be made a peer of his fellows"). There's something deeply sad about Eastwood's narrative of love lost and sort of found.  I could be reading too much into it, but it felt shot through with a kind of lived sorrow/loneliness.

• n + (?!?!?)