“Did Jason Actually Write Black Swan Green?”
“Metafiction” is the word used to describe literature that intentionally references its own creation and fictionality. It has become increasingly popular for stories to admit to you that they aren’t real and to carry that notion with them as they progress. But like all things, metafiction comes in different tiers. On the one hand, you have stories that don’t take themselves seriously at all, where the prospect of realistic immersion is completely nullified by the absence of a fourth, third, second, and first wall. On the other hand, there are some stories that function, for the most part, as totally self-contained narratives, but that have a couple cheeky pointers sprinkled between their pages. Authors tend to get very creative when inserting these small metafictional nods into their stories. The nods themselves may not even be fourth wall breaks in the traditional sense. In fact, I have found that there are many more interesting implications to be explored when they aren’t.
David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green is, for the most
part, a totally self-contained narrative. On the surface, it simply looks like
a regular narration of a teenager’s feelings and experiences over the course of
one year. The “one month per chapter” structure is noteworthy in its own right,
but there’s nothing to suggest any metafictional business, at least not initially.
In order to proceed, we need to ask ourselves one simple question: “How was Black
Swan Green written?” And no, the answer is not just that David Mitchell thought
it up and typed it out. This question goes a layer deeper, for Black Swan
Green is one of those novels that actually exists in the world it describes.
This is a trope that we’ve seen in previous books from this class. The
Catcher in the Rye is presented as a conversation between two in-universe
characters, and Fun Home, being a nonfiction work, is as “in-universe” as
a story can ever get.
In the case of Black Swan Green, however, the
actual nature of the novel’s existence in-universe is up for debate. We get our
first clue in the chapter “Hangman” where Jason Taylor writes a poem about an experience
he has in the previous chapter “January Man”: “I got sucked in by a poem about
a skater on a frozen lake who wants to know what it’s like to be dead so much,
he’s persuaded himself that a drowned kid’s talking to him” (33-34). Up until
this point we had assumed that Jason’s thoughts were exclusive to us, the
readers. But now we’re discovering that through poetry they have become visible
to other characters in the world of Black Swan Green.
At this point, we might be inclined to say that the text
of Black Swan Green actually exists somewhere in the world of Black
Swan Green, which is something we wouldn’t be able to say about, for instance,
the text of The Bell Jar. This is made more convincing by the fact that
the titles and subjects of Jason’s poems all match the chapters of Black
Swan Green. We can assume that the poem about the drowned kid at the lake
in the woods is titled “January Man.” Also, the poems “Hangman,” “Rocks,” and “Back
Gardens” (a.k.a. “Spooks”), corresponding to the chapters of the same titles,
are mentioned by Madame Crommelynck at the vicarage in the chapter “Solarium” (145-146,
156). Finally, the poem “Maggot” is mentioned much later in the book during the
chapter “Knife Grinder” (224). There is, of course, one glaring issue with this
theory, which is that the text we read in the novel Black Swan Green is
definitely not poetry, although some of the more poetic lines from Jason’s
prose do appear in the poem versions of the chapters (i.e., “Venus swung bright
from the ear of the moon.”) (147).
So maybe the text of Black Swan Green exists in
the world of Black Swan Green in poem form instead of prose form. For
most of the book, this is the only assumption that the reader is given enough
information to make. However, something happens near the very end of the book
during the chapter “Disco” that changes everything. While Jason is waiting
around in the stationary room, he begins writing the prose version of the
chapter “Goose Fair” verbatim (261). This is the only definitive evidence of
the text we read in the book existing in-universe. There are a few interpretations
we could make from here. Did Jason continue writing in prose after this point? (We
know that he stopped publishing his poems, which may suggest a switch in
writing style.) Did he go back and write the earlier chapters in prose form as
well? We have no way of knowing. In the end, this is a very minor part of the plot
of Black Swan Green, so there aren’t many details to go off. But I still
think it’s interesting to consider how the physical text we read fits in with
the greater narrative. Let me know what you think.
Page numbers taken from the 2007
Random House Trade Paperback Edition of Black Swan Green.
Hi Michael, this was a very thorough blog post and I enjoyed it a lot. I agree that there seems to be a "metafiction" sense about "Black Swan Green", and I too noticed that many chapters correspond to the different poetry works that Jason writes. I liked that your blog introduced this concept of us, as readers, peering into Jason's world as a result of the "link" that is the book, "Black Swan Green". I also thought it was interesting that when you search the book up, it describes itself as a semi-autobiographical novel, furthering the "metafiction" aspect of it. Great job!
ReplyDeleteDid you catch the metafictional jokes in the final "January Man" chapter? First of all, the entire structure of this chapter is an extended deja-vu of the first chapter, and the whole novel, with Jason revisiting sites from the book to say "goodbye." There are too many such echoes to list here, and they nicely capture the strong feelings Jason is weathering in this chapter, the melancholy of leaving and saying goodbye, alongside the fact that some of these memories aren't so pleasant.
ReplyDeleteBut there are a few specifically metafictional moments in that last chapter, as when Gwendolyn Bendicks (the vicar's nosy/gossipy wife) refers to Jason as saying "au revoir to Black Swan Green." Indeed this is what he is doing, but since this is the *last chapter of a novel titled "Black Swan Green," this is also what the reader is doing in this chapter!* We too are saying "au revoir to Black Swan Green" in the second "January Man," and we're feeling the ambivalent memories along with Jason. I always get a little emotional when I read this chapter, and endings are often sad in ways we can't fully rationalize.
There's also some metafictional fun with Julia at the very end, when she indeed "gets the last word" in the book (as Uncle Brian had predicted back in "Relatives"--"She insists on the last word"). But then the actual "last words" in the book are, appropriately enough, "the end." Which is how novels (and old movies) have traditionally signaled their ending, so haha that's a pretty good one. The book ends with "the end." But then Julia is also insisting that the end is "not the end."
There are other aspects that would probably tilt us in a metafictional direction in this last chapter--like the actual sighting of a swan on the lake, when we've been told throughout that there are no swans in Black Swan Green. Or Mr. Gretton telling Jason that what he perceives as "the woods" at the start of the book is not "Sherwood Forest," and the old woman in the "house in the woods" is not a fairy-tale figure who puts children in ovens. And let's not forget the literal metafiction of "importing" Eva von Outryve de Crommelynck from *David Mitchell's previous novel,* including the fictional recording of the sextet called "Cloud Atlas," which is also the title of the novel these characters have been lifted from.
I have to be honest, the first time reading these passages, I wasn’t particularly thinking about ‘Metafiction’, but now that you mention it, this idea of a greater narrative is definitely present throughout the novel. The one passage that stuck out to me while I was reading it was Jason beginning to write about the carnival in Goose Fair. For me, it creates a reference that this novel is really a sort of confession/reflection kind of story; it’s a historical document that aims at breaking down a series of crazy events throughout a year. I do think that this novel is attempting to take itself seriously, but at the same time, Jason is only 13. He’s living through a year where he is turning from spending time in his imagination to facing his fears and confronting his enemies.
ReplyDeleteI think Black Swan Green is definitely an outlier when it comes to its narrative voice. Catcher, Bell Jar, and Fun Home all make it pretty clear the distance between the author and their story. Black Swan Green appears to be written around the time the events are happening, but Jason never speaks about writing the events of the book into a story. My personal theory is that Jason is going back and transcribing the contents of his poems into book form.
ReplyDeleteHello! The title of your blog "Did Jason actually write black swan green? " Initially had me thinking, well of course, that's what stands out about this book, does it not? But your argument about the metafiction element and the idea that he's going back and editing or transcribing his past poems is intriguing. You make a very compelling and thoughtful blog, great job!
ReplyDeleteI really like how you dig deep into the true metaphysical nature of Black Swan Green. While many blogs are on the content of the book, I enjoy the fact that you went further and actually did research on it!
ReplyDeleteHey Michael, I like your idea that Black Swan Green quietly plays with metafiction instead of breaking immersion outright. The poem-to-prose shift is especially interesting, it almost feels like Jason is moving from experiencing things in fragments to shaping them into a full narrative. That makes the “Goose Fair” moment feel less like a twist and more like a subtle hint that the story we’re reading could be a later version of his own writing. Great Job!
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