Making connections--and lots of coffee

I still have a bit of the Burroughs to read before class (I went to the Cowboys game last night! Not a huge football freak, but it was AMAZING!), but I wanted to say a few words about the connections between polyphony and this engaging narrative first.
First, as far as Vice is concerned, I finally had a reading "experience." Armed with this perspective on polyphony as a "democratic" way to perceive literature, I can make some meaningful connections with Burroughs. Because characters are "subjects, on an equal footing with the narrator" (Vice 114), I can let go of my hang-ups when it comes to my perception that Burroughs' narrative is dependent on the historical veracity of his account, as if the value of the text were dependent on truth. It's Burroughs' narrative, so he can say what he wants and my job as a reader is to take his words at face value. As an English grad student, my other job is to see what is not said and formulate unique and creative theories and perspectives.
Back to polyphony and the freedom of the characters / narrating characters: Polyphony for characters is like giving birth to teenagers. Although each character is "free," they are still chained to the dialogic "author." These issues of independence, chains and teenager/parent relations is all very pertinent to the fact that this narrative can be construed as a much larger piece of history, being in such approximation to the American Revolution.
Another interesting area of thought is the idea posed in Vice that "the hero is a 'particular point of view on the world and on oneself'; fixed images of the hero and his/her world from the outside are not what appear in the polyphonic novel, which concentrates instead on 'how the world appears' to the hero, and 'how the hero appears to himself'" (Vice 116). Burroughs thinks himself a hero, perhaps a tragic one, and so the reader must acknowledge this perception, even if an examination (in psychoanalytic theory perhaps?) would prove otherwise. The genre of the narrative is the perfect playing ground for a polyphonic examination because of this natural autonomy in the character.
A seeming contradiction in the power of the narrator occurs when Burroughs fails to mention or elaborate certain events. For example, we discussed last class period that Burroughs is light on further mentioning his relationship with the married woman. Further, he does not elaborate on his domestic life after he is married. This absence of commentary is blatant to the reader considering he elaborately spins certain situations to make himself the victor (saving Richards from being pushed overboard), and reveals others that make him look like a pitiable fool (charging the prison guards alone), using vivid detail. However, it seems as if Burroughs is almost asking the reader to infer. So, the "holes" in the text do not (to me) take away from the polyphonic elements, but rather contribute to the dialogic implicit in the polyphonic.
My favorite part of the reading was the cut to the chase examination of the Menippean satire. This is Burroughs--cut out. I can't wait to talk about this in class because it would be too extensive to detail here.
One complaint:Another knock on poetry!
So, Bakhtin agrees with some other Russian guy that "novels 'do not spring from poetic creativity but are purely rhetorical compositions'" (Vice 135).
!!!
Further, "literary works come about through following generic and linguistic norms, not through genius; but that an 'author's' intention may be transparently expressed...While the prose author may 'distance himself' from the work's language, and speak (his intention) 'through language' rather than in it, the poet identifies himself with his language.
Sure sure sure.
Really, how can you write a novel without poetry? Is novel writing really some kind of science, or something so practical? Maybe if you're an old Russian guy.
My question is How can you speak "through" language without once having been "in" it? And if you haven't been "in" it, how can you send characters "through" it? Unless you're Dickens and you hallucinate all of your characters, but that's a different class, day and rant.

Let's set it on Fire!

Dialogism: Introducing Bakhtin...Poetry is nothing. The novel is everything. Ancient forms have no meaning. All is relative and subject to vague criticism. I do not have to use specific evidence to back up my claims unless I feel like it.
Did I get it right?
No. I confess. I just picked out the parts where I scribbled insulted question marks in the text.
I mentioned in the last class that I was glad Vice uses examples of Dostoevsky's works. I was actually happy to read the section 'Dostoevsky could hear dialogic relationships everywhere.' These words especially spoke to me as a reader: "Not a single element in [the novel's] atmosphere can be neutral: everything must touch the character to the quick, provoke him, interrogate him, even polemicize with him and taunt him; everything must be directed toward the hero himself, turned toward him" (56). Dostoevsky's character Raskolnikov so perfectly illustrates this perspective, because he is vain. The text is vain. This aspect of fiction is what draws me to the art of writing, and also to reading.
This kind of character spotlight makes the Burroughs narrative so utterly compelling. We, as readers, want to experience the accute slant the author, or narrative voice, has given to select inhabitants of the world. We are drawn in--and subjected. So, would it be fair to say that all authors are Confidence Men?
Overall, I think Stephen Burroughs, as a character, has displayed more corruption while confined than he ever did while walking the world as a "free" man. Obviously. But more specifically, "flaws" in the narrative begin to show as he tries to break out of jail more often. He has it down to an art. Well, not really--considering I'm 1/3 through the narrative and he so far is unsuccessful. Look on page 140. He breaks through the wall, conviently just under a "covered way." And this he measures by way of a "geometrical operation." With a penknife. And then he tells all the other prisoners exactly how he did it! Really? Up until this point, I "liked" the character.I am beginning to sense a kind of madness in the character of Burroughs not felt in the first third of the narrative. Although the narrator is presenting the story post-adventure, change is taking place. He describes his own appearance near the scene in the jail when he is deprived of food for 32 days (which, by the way, seems unlikely. wouldn't a person perish after that long?). His hair is sticking all over the place. Who knows when he last bathed or even cleaned himself. And his clothes were probably less than rags. Quite possibly he didn't have all of his teeth and he is probably covered in sores. That image really jumped out at me more than any other. This interaction with the reader is especially evident when Burroughs encounters a group of Pelhamites (133). Perhaps as further evidence for his affected state of mind, Burroughs is elated to find that "they pitied me! They offered me, as a token of their benovolent feelings, as much punch as I would drink" (133). And here is where I think I can interject some Bakhtinian concepts: The reader is "listening" to the voice of a present narrator speaking about the character Stephen Burroughs in the past. The thoughts and words of each are seperate concepts. Burroughs is "looking" at Burroughs who is being looked at by Pelhamites and all are being looked at by readers. Am I getting closer?