Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Descent of Alette review

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In her introduction, Notley explains the quotation marks as both intended to slow the reader down and to distance herself from the character of Alette as storyteller versus protagonist.  Yet, this punctuation has a tertiary effect of “air quoting” the text enclosed, suggesting a degree of irony (and sometimes thinly veiled innuendo) in presumably unintended locations.  Incidentally, the reader may find herself laughing at points that would otherwise be, well, depressing.  Example: “Yes, these woods are” “full of beings,” “primal beings.”  Does Notley mean to say that there are actual primal beings in the forest or “primal beings,” possibly alluding to toddlers or mothers-in-law?

Yet it is perhaps this ambiguity that helps one bear out the otherwise exhausting persistent presence of quotation marks.  The Descent of Alette is a text driven by the ambiguous.

Early in the work, Alette comes across a young veteran who falls asleep on the train.  This soldier speaks in his sleep, saying, “’I need a dolor” “a few more dolors.”’  The use of the word “dolor” may simply be the pronunciation of “dollar” with a seeming Latin@ accent, yet may instead or additionally be the word “dolor,” meaning pain, in Spanish.  The narrator consistently makes use of the word “disappeared” to refer to the manner in which people leave the scene.  In the context of a place beneath the ground ruled by a male tyrant, the entire piece suggests a Latin or South American nation domineered by a vicious ruler who “disappears” his political opponents and leads his people to die in war, either civil or abroad.

As with all aspects of the text, no explanation or background is given.  It is this openness to multiple interpretations and symbolism that makes The Descent of Alette an epic, an almost biblical text.  Even Joseph Campbell’s monomyth can be applied to the text, the journey originating in a call to adventure (to kill the tyrant) and concluding with the death of the tyrant and return to the upper world.

Notley’s work may be intended as a comment upon the monomyth and the patriarchal nature of the hero’s journey.  In fact, The Descent of Alette seems to act as a response to Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey and the need to focus more on female heroes and their journeys both in traditional literature and the need to write more of such tales in the contemporary age.

Alette’s journey is just as confusing and steeped in metaphor as Odysseus’.  Even more importantly, the tale doesn’t tell of men going to wars with men, but Alette’s work to destroy a wicked, male tyrant, who may even represent a death of the monomyth’s misogynistic nature.  The male-based hero’s journey may appear as entwined with literature as the tyrant’s body is interlaced with the subway system and upper world, but in the same manner it can be destroyed and the world, epic literature, lives on.  In destroying the monomyth, Notley has freed the literary epic from its male-dominated origin story, and allowed women’s to rightfully take their place as the protagonists of the hero-based myth.


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