Anticlimax

On Anne Carson’s “Poor Houdini”

Deception and its attendant modes of concealment (elision, withheld information, exclusion, secrecy) form the basis of fictional tension. These things lead to what’s sometimes referred to as “plot,” but often means simply “story.” The classic example, by way of E.M. Forster is a king died and then the queen died is a story, while the king died and then the queen died of grief is a plot. Both are a narrative sequence of events. They can be inverted to change effect or affect, philosophical or cultural intention, or just plain old interest. The exclusion in the E.M. Forster example is how the king died, and thus the question guiding the supposed plot is there, whereas we know why the queen died. If one inverts this, the plot can take on a new register; the questions can change.

These questions remain occluded to the reader for the most part and can be surmised by following the words on the page. If I were to write a sequence of nonsense, the question might be “what’s the point” or “what does it mean?” Just as if I were to write something completely explicable and clear one could ask the same questions from the opposite angle: “what’s the point of being so legible?” A plot thrives on the tensions held within and outside these questions. It grows from the desire to understand, the long journey towards legibility that often accompanies a “rising action” and leads to a “climax” in prose, or in poetry, the space of Anne Carson, to a volta.