Episodic Obstructions

            There are a few similarities in If on a Winter’s Night, The Five Obstructions, and A Void, including direct reference to audience (in Vowel’s diary, in Lars Von Trier’s written monologue at end of the film, and throughout Calvino’s work) and  ekphrastic descriptions of works of art within each work (including Leth’s cinematic quotation of his own film). The one that struck me as being essential, as I mentioned last class, was the episodic nature of each.

            However, “episodic” is not quite the correct word, since episodes in the truest since can be arranged in any order without impacting the overall narrative structure of the work. The “episodes” in all three works do have a specific order that must be maintained as the story builds. For example, in The Five Obstructions we couldn’t have the Brussels segment occurring before the India segment (the punishment must necessarily follow the crime), while in If on a Winter's Night… we must have the chapter before the “anti-chapter,” with each chapter building toward a conclusion at the end of the novel. Perec’s novel is the least episodic, with each chapter feeling more like scenes from a play sprinkled with diary entries.

            We might conclude that the obstruction in each work is not leading to destruction of all order, but generating new systems within an older, necessary order. In that sense, understanding each work as episodic reveals how the function of each obstruction slightly changes the function of each episode while always fostering a structure that builds toward narrative closure of some sort. Of course, one wonders how these texts might be different if these episodes were re-arranged out of chronological order.