Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)
Studies - Zoltán Abádi-Nagy: Conversations with Raymod Federman: Take It or Leave It and The Voice in the Closet
taught me that writing fiction is not only what can be expressed but also what cannot be expressed. Writing fiction is always about the necessity and the impossibility of doing it. Q: Could you point out aspects of your prose where you depart from Beckett? FEDERMAN: In Molloy, you remember, there is a remarkable passage, totally gratuitous in terms of the structure of the book, where Molloy is trying to work out a way to suck sixteen stones in order, without sucking the same stone twice. He shuffles them in four pockets, he calculates, tries out other systems, goes through incredible mental gymnastics. It's a most amazing piece of fiction —beautiful, moving, disturbing, funny, sad. And yet one could remove that passage from the book and it would not alter its form in the least. It does not seem essential to the whole, and yet it is the whole of Molloy , the book, and Molloy, the character. And when eventually Molloy throws away his stones just when he is on the verge of finding the solution, he erases the whole passage. As one reads this, one goes through an amazing kind of acrobatics —linguistic and intellectual gymnastics. And then it is erased as if nothing happened. The whole thing was for nothing. It's like watching a circus act where an acrobat does difficult and dangerous somersaults but always falls back on his feet, and we have seen perfection. Or same thing with a beautiful ballerina who goes through all the pirouettes and when she stops there is nothing left but the image of perfection. That's how Beckett works. In my own Double or Nothing there is a passage towards the end of the book where the narrator (the writer-to-be who wants to lock himself in a room to write the book that you are reading) calculates how many packs of chewing gum he will need in the room in order to survive for a year, and beyond that calculates how many times and how long one can chew a stick of gum, and so on. And he too, like Molloy (and this was, of course, deliberate on my part) goes through an incredible mental gymnastics, but unlike Molloy who leaves us with the image of perfection when he throws away his stones, my acrobat falls flat on his face after he has completed his linguistic somersaults and leaves us with the image of failure. In other words, if you go to the circus or to the ballet, and in the course of the program 105
