Martin Nakell; Two Fields That Face and Mirror Each Other
Series No.: EL-E-PHANT 52
ISBN: 1-892295-97-0, Pages: 287
In this innovative novel, urban and rural, male and female, spiritual and material, knowledge and ignorance, and the explosive violence of the extreme right- and extreme left-wing of American politics face and mirror each other. As Two Fields reweaves certain ancient myths and customs, it inscribes the cultural landscape of recent history inside the minds of its characters. A kind of collective consciousness is born as characters speak each other's minds and discover the thoughts of other beings. That monologue intérieur however creates a dislocation which is never recovered; characters may speak each other’s minds or discover the thoughts of other characters in odd places. A kind of collective consciousness, akin in many respects to the writing of Virginia Woolf, is born among a disparate group of highly defined individuals. However, Two Fields is written in several different modes, utilizing in one book the history of fiction from traditional narrative to disjunctive narrative to poetic narrative to poem itself, the novel’s origin. As the reader reads, it increasingly becomes insignificant what something this novel is about, and is increasingly important that the novel itself is something.
Martin Nakell is a professor of literature at Chapman College in California. He is the author of several books of poetry and the novel The Library of Thomas Rivka, published by Sun & Moon Press.