The Soft Machine Cybernetic Fiction by David Porush (review)

Frank Coppay

L'Esprit Créateur, Volume 26, Number 4, Winter 1986, pp. 103-104 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/esp.1986.0042

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/526314/summary

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reader o f literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis finds a “ textual m em ory . . . a series of

intertextual constructions” (12).
The most striking characteristic o f this work is its breadth o f scope. Lukacher skillfully
intermeshes a m ultitude o f texts exemplifying m ajor currents in W estern thought. In laying
the foundation for his theory that the ground o f m em ory “ inheres in the act o f reading and
interpretation” (12), the author discusses, for example, not only Freud and Heidegger, but
also the form er and the latter in relation to Lacan and Derrida and all o f these in relation to
Nietzsche. Other prom inent intertextual analyses include L ukacher’s readings o f the
“ m em ory” of Shakespeare in Hegel, o f Balzac in M arx, and o f Dickens in Freud. M ore­
over, most o f L ukacher’s com m entary is forged o f his own memories o f a huge body of
critical texts. The a u th o r’s voice is difficult to locate behind or beside those o f Barthes,
Benjam in, De M an, Derrida and others whose terms and concepts Lukacher alm ost always
cites in advancing the im portant elements o f his theory. As one of the a u th o r’s main themes
is prosopopoeia—the m asking or fading o f the voice—his apparent reticence to assume the
role o f self-sufficient speaker seems appropriate. While the reader can at times experience a
kind o f vertigo in this intertextual m aze, one cannot help but recognize th a t it is ingeniously
constructed. Lukacher is a sensitive reader—this in my view is particularly evident in his
analyses o f H enry Jam es’s The Turn o f the Screw and H am let,—but he excels above all as a
powerful organizing force, a com m anding m aster o f ceremonies.
In the opening chapters Lukacher argues that having recognized the role o f “ tem poral
difference” in the fundam ental concealm ent o f the origin, Freud and Heidegger should not
necessarily be understood as Derrida has presented them —as the last great thinkers com ­
m itted to ontology or the m etaphysics o f presence. Rather, Lukacher suggests Freud and
Heidegger in m any ways anticipate the writings o f such radical thinkers as Lacan and
Derrida himself and remain our contem poraries insofar as they belong to the epoch o f “ the
beginning o f the ending o f the history o f m etaphysics” (64). Lukacher often returns to this
provocative phrase, and in so doing it is unfortunately unclear whether he wishes to m ain­
tain the notion o f a rupture between Freud and Heidegger and their intellectual heritage or
whether he wishes conversely to stress (as he elsewhere points out) that “ since Plato the end
has always already begun” (111). I suspect that this last principle is actually L ukacher’s
general point as in the later chapters his focus is primarily on what precedes Freud and
Heidegger: the traces o f P lato, Heraclitus, and Kant in Heidegger, o f H am let “ in the ear o f
H egel,” o f the m odern crisis o f the subject in Oedipus; the unconscious reconstruction of
Balzac’s political novels in M arx’s The Cologne C om m unist Trial, and finally the “ primal
scene o f psychoanalysis itself” (276) in Dickens’s texts.
Lukacher presents P rim al Scenes as an effort to balance the “ irrepressible dem ands of
both a form alist and historical criticism ” (336). The effort is highly successful and by virtue
o f its profoundly interdisciplinary approach the study should appeal to scholars in m any
fields.
M ary L e w is S h a w
C olum bia University

D avid Porush. T h e So ft M a c h in e : C y b e r n e t ic F ic t io n . New York: M ethuen, Inc., 1985.

Pp. 244.

Quite clearly, Porush has succeeded in isolating a specific literary sub-genre, tracing
its sources in technology, and form ulating a deductive gram m ar o f its behavior. In his
efforts to form ulate an inductive theory o f existing texts, however, P o ru sh ’s model neces­

V o l . X X V I, N o. 4 103
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sarily sacrifices detail to synthesis. P o ru sh ’s propositional contribution can be paraphrased

as follows: a) “ Cybernetic fiction” is a discernible and potent force in m odernist literature,
b) The defining characteristic o f the genre is that its texts must exhibit both the form al and
them atic properties o f a “ soft m achine.” c) The m etaphor o f the soft m achine, named after
the Burroughs volume o f the sam e title, refers broadly to any hypothetical m ating o f an
intelligent organism and a logical system, d) The vehicle of the m etaphor varies from work
to work (writing contraptions, sentient satellites, cyborgs), but the tenor remains the same:
determinism, or a comm ent on determinism , e) The evolution o f the genre parallels the
development o f m odern physics from certainty to uncertainty, and expresses itself in the
narrative as a rise in self-reflexivity.
Porush’s overriding concern with synthesis gives this reader pause to question whether
his grouping principle is sufficiently complex to accom m odate the works he treats. On p.
34, Porush argues that Roussel celebrates the marvelous paving machine o f L ocus Solus
“ w ithout irony.” But C anterel’s estate also houses a m adm an who incessantly recreates the
death o f his daughter through pathological m otions analogous to those o f the paver. Thus
the machine has been hum anized just as the hum an has been mechanized. Porush says (p.
86) that Vonnegut’s early novels “ do not resist the m etaphor o f cybernetics internally.” Yet
the very name o f the supercom puter in Player Piano (EPIC A C XIV) sounds like a well-
known emetic. Porush (pp. 102-3) characterizes B urroughs’ “ O peration Re-W rite” as a
resistance to order through injection o f entropy. This cybernetic description, in its abstrac­
tion, seems to disregard completely the seediness o f Burroughs’ worlds. Since the control
machine in “ The M ayan Caper” is explicitly said to have a sound and image track, and since
m urder is cathected with sodom y throughout B urroughs’ The S o ft M achine, a m uch more
specific m etaphor is called for: som ething like "snuffing the sn u ff m ovie.” Porush writes
(p. 149) that B arth “ identifies his authorship with the operations o f a com puter.” The
minimum unit o f narrative presence for B arth, however, is not narrator + computer, but
narrator + companion, where the com panion can be, e.g., a w riter’s m anual, a wife, a
com puter, an intelligent sperm, the story audience, or the tale itself. Porush’s account of
Barthelem e’s “ The E xplanation” is problem atic too. W hat does ■ mean? A cybernetic
black box? Si vous voulez. But the overall figure-ground relation in this story places the
m eaning o f the symbol as close to Tzara, Epimenides, Orwell or Rorschach as it does to
N orbert Wiener.
Porush has indeed struck a blow for interdisciplinarity in this book. The S o ft M achine
complements Jerem y C am pbell’s Grammatical M an in this respect, and distinguishes itself
from J.-P . C hangeux’s N euronal M an—a contrasting theory o f the “ hard m achine.”
Porush is a clear com m entator o f cybernetics, and the scope o f his literary reading is
impressive, although his interpretations seem to be subordinated to his overriding argu­
ment. It would have been interesting to see him convincingly disprove strong competing
accounts (e.g., the cylinder-habitat as allegory o f the hum an condition in Beckett’s The
L o st Ones). M ore allowance for complexity would have established his concept o f the soft
m achine as a necessary and constitutive structure, rather than a m etaphor of convenience.
F rank C o ppa y
Union College, Schenectady, N Y

Linda Klieger Stillman. A lfred J arry. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983. Pp. 166.

During the past several years, the term “ ubuesque” has infiltrated popular French and
become a household word; a recent Parisian revival o f Ubu R o i set the play in a contem ­

104 W in t e r 1986