Multiple and Cornell

From left to right, the faces pasted in:

Jasper Fforde, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, shadow of Charlotte Bronte. To me these pasted heads remind me of my childhood when I had collaging parties with my siblings. The placement of the heads indicates a conversation going on between the group. Everybody is engaged, and the universe is being served on a platter.

Actually, this blox had the most pasting and layering than any other one. I decided to make this blox an homage to the old 19^th century novels that had the same etchings and the part of the story pasted under. I chose everything purposefully: the etching is a dinner from Martin Chuzzlewit, every pasted head is a related author, and the only color object (the universe) symbolizes the vastness of interaction between all four.

Fforde likes to use conversation as his main vehicle for exposition so I decided to make my ideal conversational setting: a dinner party. Part of the reason I love to eat is because it usually means a good conversation for me. In my household, dinner means eating and interacting at the dining table. I am the youngest of five children so there was always something worth digesting – physically and and literally.

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be

swallowed, and some few to be chewed and

digested: that is, some books are to be read

only in parts, others to be read, but not

curiously, and some few to be read wholly,

and with diligence and attention.”

— Francis Bacon

 

The inclusion of the universe was a personal and adaptive decision. Hence why it is in color; all other objects are solely literary allusions. When a close friend and I have spent hours discussing anything and everything, upside down and right side up, we call it “solving the universe.” The conversations within the Eyre Affair possess a similar quality. The difference though between my conversations and the novel’s conversations, is that the Eyre Affair is more successful in gaining answers to unanswered questions.

It’s transparency indicates the transient nature of “solving the universe.” Obviously, not every conversation that will be had WILL be “solving the universe.” There are certain situations or conversations in which this occurs. I have provided one such ongoing conversation found throughout the Eyre Affair: the great Shakespeare debate. Who wrote the plays?

Multiple and Krevolin

This most likely would the hardest part for me to adapt if I wanted to adapt the Eyre Affair a la Krevolin because one of his dictates in writing screenplays is that “your dialogue must not be overwritten” (p. 24). While I’m always 100% pro-action than pro-talking, I feel like we’d lose so much of the world if we had to cut the conversations. In fact, the conversations give the “encyclopedic feel” that Calvino waxes on about. Films are action based, and while there is plenitudes of action within the novel…the conversation is highly important, and would most likely get cut out. The closest I could get to adapt the Eyre Affair into a visual medium was my blox, a more contemporary rendering of picture etchings found within old novels.

Perhaps we could create one large conversation the same way that Krevolin points out that the Shawshank Redemption movie gets all the wardens of the book and turns them into one terribly evil bad guy. Or these conversations could appear as Easter eggs within the movies in visual forms.

Today, it is hard to include communicative devices. The reason we don’t see many cell phones in movies is because nobody wants to hear a phone conversation, or read a text fight. Anybody could do that… I envision Thursday Next holding a copy of today’s Swindon Globe with a commentary from Bowden Cable about Edward de Vere being the true Shakespeare. It could only be seen for a glimpse but that’s what the DVD release would be for. …Well now I’m sad, because the Thursday Next world is TOO interesting for the movies.

Multiple: Blox

Multiple and Calvino

If you read The Eyre Affair, you’ll soon learn that EVERYONE has something to say about who was Shakespeare. It’s an ongoing argument throughout the book about who truly was the Bard. Some believe it’s Marlowe…Bowden Cable, Thursday Next’s partner, is convinced that Edward de Vere is the true Bard and from time to time, a Baconian might knock on your door (like an evangelist) and try to persuade you why Francis Bacon is the real Shakespeare. It’s this encompassing that gives the novel it’s multiplicity. Everybody in England, 1985 has something to give to the Shakespeare debate; it’s the dinner table conversation of the century. While the question of “Who wrote the plays” is answered by the end of the novel (nobody did! It’s a long story), The Eyre Affair opens up a lot of discussions like this throughout the story.

According to Calvino, multiplicity acts in

“…the contemporary novel as an encyclopedia, as a method of knowledge, and above all as a network of connections between the events, the people, and the things of the world.” (pg.105)

These dinner conversations/debates act as a wealth of information for us to learn about the world around us (and secretly become subplots). Other dinner conversations/debates include:

-bringing back extinct animals/beings such as the Neanderthals, dodos, and sabretooths

-illegal cheese matters

-the Crimean War

-the growing power of the unsavory Goliath Corp.

Because the Eyre Affair turns into a series, these subplots might span a book or two…and sometimes becomes the overall plot (such as the growing power of Goliath Corp.)

 

“Good. Well, I found out what you wanted to know. I went to London in 1610 and found that Shakespeare was only an actor with a potentially embarrassing sideline as a purveyor of bagged commodities in Stratford. No wonder he kept it quiet – wouldn’t you?”

This was interesting indeed.

“So who wrote them? Marlowe? Bacon?”

“No; there was a bit of a problem. You see, no one had even heard of the plays, much less written them.”

I didn’t understand.

“What are you saying? There aren’t any?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. They don’t exist. They were never written. Not by him, not by anyone.”