Hello! I recently finished listening to Prophet Song (Audible). Which, as a side note, may be a way around the density of text without losing the claustrophobic in-closing of the world. And I noticed something I want to hear thoughts on.
Often — if not always? – through this text, Lynch writes sentences where he inverts the subject-object relationship, which results in objects of “ours” (like our hands) having lives of their own. Hands are a great example and where I first noticed it. All of the sentences I use below are paraphrased from memory and I’d say 80% of the sentences structured this way in the book were about hands or fingers.
Right from the beginning there are sentences like “watching the hands graze the mouth for a cigarette” or “the face behind the face revealed itself”, “the flame grabbed the edge of the paper, turning it into a burning mouth”.
NOTE: this is different than the coining of new verbs, which Lynch also does frequently, e.g. “*sleeving* on his jacket”. To me the new-verb coining is more about expanding available imagery, whereas the subject inversion is about expanding who and what are actors in their own right.
It is no longer “Eilish wanted a cigarette and \[found her hands reaching for one\]”. Or, “Eilish \[reached for cigarettes even tho she wasn’t smoking\]'”. or “Marc \[burned the letter\]”. In these cases, the impetus comes from the named subject (Eilish, Mark) whose desire is clear (“I want a cigarette; I want to burn this letter), the body then taking action in pursuit.
However, Lynch writes as though the hands are the instigators, that they act on their own without direction from their owner, etc. This spreads desire and autonomy outwards, not solely something emanating from the known, named “I”. It also illustrates the degree that desire does NOT come from the known, named “I”, the concert of movement in the world in which the “known, named I” kicks it off is really an illusion. Fingers reach, flames grab, hands desire; not as command-following animals but as independent instigators.
As a listener I felt that Lynch was also a dancer or a painter, certainly a poet. Certainly there’s some science here, (waves hands, lol, pun not intended) about how decisions are first made in the body then rationalized in the mind, but I’m more interested from the literary standpoint in which actions come from outside the self.
Is this related to the breakdown of self in this world? Would he (does he) use the same stylistic trope in books about other subjects or is it special to the onset of fascism? In a world with fascism taking hold is this the corollary – a jungian alter-self also arising, that you as a “known, named I” find yourself following, whether you’re a “goodie or a baddie”? Does Lynch just fundamentally disagree that our minds are the control towers for our actions?
Did you notice this? What did you think???
by Odd_Visual7406