Final: Aimee Bender's Ultimate Truth

Stephan Topf
English 436
Prof Wexler

Final: Aimee Bender's Ultimate Truth

Aimee Bender is known, at least in her circle, as an experimental writer known for her fresh reinterpretation of language. Yet where she leaves off and the reader picks up becomes somewhat of an ambiguous struggle at times. Running motifs, floating symbols and loose metaphors string together a highly colorful narrative of various short story's. Though meaning, at times, may be apparent, there exists below the surface more then what is overtly stated. Even when a reader has 'nailed down' the meaning of her stories, there lies a wealth of possibilities if one were to delve even deeper. Her use of Viktor Shklovsky's idea of 'defamiliarization' and seeing meaning through the lens of Sartre and Derrida, the potential for 'lips' in the short story "What You Left in The Ditch" allows it to both simultaneously exist as an external metaphor for loss as well as being an internal objective correlative for PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). More specifically, this is how Sartre's idea of freedom of the reader exists within the Reader Response theory and how it's bound directly to Derrida's deconstruction principle of signifier/signified.

Lips as an external metaphor for loss is immediately seen in Aimee Bender's story as the reader is told that the main character "Steven [had] returned from the war without lips" (Bender 21). He had returned from the war less then he had been when he had left. Mary (his wife) explains it as though "that bomb... took the last real kiss" (Bender 21) and compares it to the young man at the local market that "had always had lips but now they seemed twice a large" (Bender 22). Bender amplifies the sense of loss through juxtapositioning the focus of Mary's infatuation and his 'lack' of loss. Equally she uses words like "so young, so new" and constant highlighting of grinning and smiling immediately with ways that Steven has changed since he came back: the clacking of his now alien disc/lips when he talks through the use of dashed speech. not only does she use these overt markers, she uses overt character reactions that show how the metaphor should be taken. Mary states out right that she "really really miss[es] lips" (Bender 27) and her specific reaction is to "tr[y] not to shatter" (Bender 24). There is even a moment of double loss where Mary digs a hole (symbolic of emptiness) only to fill it with Stevens sweaters that she knitted and then bury those (also indicative of personal loss in an attempt to fill the emptiness). All these have a sense of loss that is pervasive through the text. Aimee Bender threads cause and effect through out side by side with specific details associative of this idea.

Yet she goes one step further with her version of "lips". Where most stories are about the person directly involved in the war and their experiences surrounding the issue of war and then a return, Aimee Bender takes an objective view through the point of view of another character. Instead of using direct interiority through Steve, we get traces of what is going on through Mary. Bender even takes a step back, dropping the typical bat used to beat the reader over the head with the trauma's associated with active duty in war and especial for someone involved in a military related injury. She elects not to force it down the readers throat but instead uses subtlety and Viktor Shklovsky's "defamiliarization" technique in order to present this possibility. It is in this way that Bender "makes the familiar seem strange by not naming the familiar object" (Shklovsky 1). Here the familiar is PTSD, instead she uses lips as the objective correlative signaling the emotional connection linked with the psychological aspect. To those unfamiliar with PTSD in any form whether military trauma or other forms, this disorder may be unfamiliar at the start but those who are familiar with it would only see traces and the skirting of details associated with and the thing itself viewed from a fresh perspective. First it would be sensible to look at the familiar way of looking at this disorder before seeing how it becomes defamiliarized. DSM-IV-TR describes in detail the many aspects of PTSD, yet the main focus of familiar traits would be summarized as being "exposed to a traumatic event...[and] is persistently re-experienced in one of the following ways: (2) recurrent distressing dreams of the event..." (DSM 219). Bender does weave moments in that point towards this exact definition. Steve, upon returning from the war, "twitch[es] with nightmares. He never used to" (Bender 25). As well as times when Mary comes home only to "watch him twitch [while] taking a nap...want[ing] to...enter the nightmare and be in there with him, to fight the demons...[but] all she saw...were sweaters" (Bender 30). Now it may be argued that these are almost too specific, that there is no need for an objective correlative within 'lips', however this is not the case. Bender's metaphor of loss within 'lips' is tied directly to the association with PTSD. How she does this is quite simple, in fact the key is in the final part of each specific moment. Tying in the previous discussion of the metaphor it is clearly seen that "he never used to" and "all she saw..were sweaters" are both linking the traits of PTSD with the metaphor contained within 'lips' both to what he came back differently as (lack of lips/ having nightmares) and to the example of the hole and the sweaters. Once this connection is established, every 'defamiliar' description of lips and the surrounding metaphors all serve to build into the objective correlative itself without her ever having to mention anything beyond these two exact moments. She essentially binds an external metaphor for loss with negative capability to that of the internal objective correlative of PTSD.

With the specifics out of the way and the 'how' of the dual layer explained, theory is able to be injected into the 'why' of it's ability to exist in this fashion. This allows from the shift from Aimee Bender to that of the reader. Sartre argues that in the Reader Response theory two freedoms exist: that of the writer and that of the reader. Yet this freedom is not 100% but a type of freedom. Limitations on freedom can still be freedom. For instance freedom can be defined as free will yet this free will, in the aspect of writing, can be limited by multiple factor that may in fact only be self imposed (ie: society, success etc..).
This limitation for writers and reader comes through the double bind shared between them and comes down mostly to that of responsibility and consequences. This is how freedom works for Sartre. Even if you chose to limit yourself, it is through your freedom that you chose this. How does this relate to the potential of 'lips' to be interpreted in abstract ways with multiple meanings? The one idea shared directly between Sartre and Derrida is that there is "no fixed meaning" (Sartre 1196) in language, written or otherwise and that "it is our presence in the world which multiplies relations" (Sartre 1199). This multiple existence comes from the freedom allowed in Reader Response and is furthered through Deconstruction who's existence as a theory is bound to the prior. Writers can write anything they want and mean specifically what they intend but because there is both a "distinguishability that does not exist within the word" (Derrida 1684) and a "malleable unity of this concept... by difficulty of translation (Derrida 1703), there exists an arbitrary element within language that allows reader to make their own meaning. Signifier/signified is distorted further through translation and isn't language nothing but a constant translation of strings of morphemes? Just as Reader Response is bound in a dialectic dualism with Deconstruction so is the freedom within reader/writer. The writer creates and the freedom they have is in the way they present. The readers freedom is in the experience. Sartre argues that a writers text "even if it appears finished... can always change" (Sartre 1200) in much the same way that reader looks at words that 'appears finished' but can have multiple meanings. Literally, for the writer "the future is then a blank page, whereas the future of the reader is two hundred pages filled with words" (Sarte1201) which again comes down to double binds, in this case infinite vs limited and reader vs writer. Again it isn't that there ARE multiple meanings, more that there is a POSSIBILITY of multiple meanings that exist. One can arbitrarily define something but even Derrida, who bases his signifier/signified idea on the basis of the concept 'arbitrary' sets out limits to trim down the 'randomness' through other ideas such as traces and sufferance. So freedom exists through readers response but 'meaning' or lack thereof exists through Deconstruction. As previously noted, Derrida has the idea that signifiers and signified are, as Sauccer states, arbitrary but on top of that because language is in a constant shift, no actual meaning can be forced on any words. Also because language is shifting, many words have multiple context or meanings and that through translating or even speaking, these loose meaning. Therefore you're not able to fully explain the meaning of anything, you can only attempt to persuade meaning similar to rhetoric. These fluctuations make it so binary opposition can exist. An easy example can be seen in the Japanese language in the specifics of arbitrary. If a single Kanji character is taken as the base, at any given time it can have anywhere from an average of two to five meanings by itself. Yet when put next to another Kanji character the two for a binding that likewise take on multiple possibilities just through those two. Further meaning is then extrapolated only in conjunction to other surrounding Kanji combination around that bound pair. Meaning here is ever shifting much in the same way that Derrida show that Pharmakons multiple meanings has similar shifts and that ""the translation by "remedy" can thus be neither accepted nor simply rejected" (Derrida 1716). These example are present in all language. What Sartre begins Derrida finishes and is apparent in Aimee Benders writing. Meaning is like the word "lips" in the story, its meaning is lost and can only be explained through persuasion and possibility.

So now that the word 'lips' has thoroughly been exhausted, so what? It's just one word. What is the importance? On the simple level, using this logic, one can extrapolate from her book untold layers. Each word blooms into a flower, each petal giving the whole even more color then before. Whole story's take on new depth. This is the simple answer. But on a far more extreme scale, ultimately it comes down to freedom: freedom to interpret, freedom to envision what possibilities exist that may not have been intended, freedom to translate.... because these freedoms exist it allows all literature to have a life more complex than can be thought of. It isn't giving the power to the reader, in fact It is still limited... it does not mean that there is meaning, it simply postulates that there are layers that may exist beyond the surface of the words. What it does is remove power from both the reader and the writer and places it between the two interstitially so that the threads woven between the two bind them. This bind, like the possibilities of multiple meanings being woven into one word, elevates rather then destroys. Though Derrida believes meaning does not exist, it isn't that words are being destroyed, rather they are given untold potential to go beyond the boundaries that scholars have tied to them over the centuries.

Bender, Aimee "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: What You Left in the Ditch" New York: Anchor Books, 1998. Print

Sartre, Jean-Paul "Why Write "Ed. Vincent Leitch. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Second Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2010, 2001. Print.

Derrida, Jacques "Dissemination "Ed. Vincent Leitch. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Second Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2010, 2001. Print.

Shklovsky, Viktor "Art as Technique" http://www.vahidnab.com/defam.htm Webprint.

American Psychiatric Association:("Quick Reference to the Diagnostic Criteria" DSM-IV-TR) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC, American Psychiatric Association, 2000.