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Annals & Orals
Douglas Isaac's new novel Annals & Orals is the second installment of The Altered Biography Quartet, the first volume of which, Altered Biography: The Womb Years, I reviewed here seven years ago (TAR121). (Isaac's epic poem Past, Present: Tense... I reviewed more recently in TAR 143.) The writing in this series is on the outer fringes of the experimental, so I wasn't totally shocked by the opinion anonymously offered on the back cover of Annals and Orals that the work "satirically debunks psychotherapy, derails postmodernism and redefines the narrative 'I'." Though these words may indeed have a peculiar aptness in reference to Isaac's novel, I would like to consider how all three works under review feature first-person narrators subversively resistant to "definitive" analyses.
I return, finally, to the notion that Isaac's work "derails postmodernism." Unlike Altered Biography: The Womb Years, Annals and Orals is self-published, so the anonymous words on the back cover may be seen as part of the work - something that Isaac wrote himself or at least with which he agrees. To me, it seems an open question whether or not the novel entirely lives up to the claim, though it definitely is heading in the appropriate direction. While it may not be more unsettling to a postmodern sensibility than the work of, say, Krukoff or Brown, it is unsettling in a different way, overtly challenging the structures that underlie both life and art. And even if some of these, such as psychoanalysis or New Criticism, may seem more modern than postmodern, that does not mean that they are not still with us, and still fair game.
-- John Fell, The Antigonish Review
I return, finally, to the notion that Isaac's work "derails postmodernism." Unlike Altered Biography: The Womb Years, Annals and Orals is self-published, so the anonymous words on the back cover may be seen as part of the work - something that Isaac wrote himself or at least with which he agrees. To me, it seems an open question whether or not the novel entirely lives up to the claim, though it definitely is heading in the appropriate direction. While it may not be more unsettling to a postmodern sensibility than the work of, say, Krukoff or Brown, it is unsettling in a different way, overtly challenging the structures that underlie both life and art. And even if some of these, such as psychoanalysis or New Criticism, may seem more modern than postmodern, that does not mean that they are not still with us, and still fair game.
-- John Fell, The Antigonish Review
Submitted on January 30, 2012 in By David.
