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.