Just as Geoffrey Chaucer was beginning The Canterbury Tales, he wrote a long poem entitled "The Legend of Good Women." By 14th-century standards it sucks. By today's standards it sucks. Critics and Chaucerians look for ways around it. There are numerous suggestions that even Chaucer got bored with it, and for that reason, it got worse and worse until he gave up on the project entirely. It was literature's first black eye — a colossal bomb created by the greatest English writer as he was writing the greatest work of English literature.
Aaron Miles and I are on a Southwest Boeing 737, the Hyundai Accent of the airline world, traveling 300 miles to see Mark Z. Danielewski. Four years ago, Danielewski wrote a book called The House of Leaves, a quasi-encyclopedic work that is more of a labyrinth than a novel. Aaron is reading his copy of it, trying to think of questions that will make him sound smart.
Aaron is nothing like me.
I don't even like him most of the time.
In "The Legend," Chaucer writes about a character named "Chaucer." They both write the same poems, and they were both dreamers. But Chaucer the character is not Chaucer the author. Chaucer the author was an aristocratic kiss-up. Chaucer the character spends all day gazing at wildflowers. Six hundred years before scientists cloned sheep, Chaucer the author cloned himself, and in the process he showed how the person on the page runs from the person with the pen.
Danielewski created a character named Johnny Truant. They both traveled to Europe, they both wrote the same poems and they both share some insight into the instability of telling "true" stories. Johnny Truant is not Mark Danielewski, but every once in a while Danielewski signs a book "JT."
Who cares about dreams anymore? Hippies and stoners. The rest of us see them as your mind screwing off while you're trying to get some rest. For Chaucer dreams were a way for him to write about everything without taking blame. How could you hold someone accountable for a dream? When Chaucer dreamt in "The Legend," he dreamt of gods that had read his stories. In his dream, these gods don't like what they've read, and they don't like him.
This is where it gets good:
The gods in "The Legend" are Chaucer's creations, acting at his whim. And yet, they have the audacity to boss Chaucer around. They tell him to write stories that reflect their values.
So he does.
Here, in what was possibly Chaucer's worst work, he redefines the role of literature. He agrees to his character's request and lets the text tell him what to do.
At that moment, when Chaucer threw his hands in the air and gave up control of the text, he became the first postmodernist writer — six hundred years before the term was invented.
Before the signing, Danielewski does a Q & A with Larry McCaffrey's college English class. The students want answers; they want to know why there are so many ambiguities in his text. They want things nailed down. Danielewski almost always replies the same way: what is it about you that wants to know? He relinquished control of his book before it was finished. Aaron has been practicing his inane questions so they sound like they just flew off the top of his head, and I look away when he asks them. I too have questions, but I keep quiet. At that moment, I don't want to know what he thinks. Even worse, I don't want him to ask: what is it about you that wants to know?
Almost every critical piece on Chaucer's "Legend" begins with a kind of apology: "For years, this work has been overlooked, forgotten amongst the greats..." I'm convinced the recent interest in the poem is due to the fact that scholars have prodded over all of Chaucer's other poems for centuries. American explorers faced the same dilemma when they reached the West Coast. What the hell do we do now? North, lads, to the untamed north. Chaucer's "Legend" is a literary Alaska.
It took Danielewski ten years to write The House of Leaves and it's as dense as an encyclopedia. He said he just wanted something he could be proud of.
Chaucer's characters in "The Legend" command him to write "true" stories that glorify love. They ask for the literal translations of the classics, and but Chaucer's stories are nothing like the originals. He changes the focus in some, and the point of view in others. It's his little way of saying authors can do what they're told and still not do what they're told.
Danielewski finishes his reading and people line up to have their books signed. Aaron, always shameless, gets Danielewski to sign 3 books, and then gets in line again to have him sign two more. How could he. Danielewski signs every one, with fierce scribbled lines and various abstract comments. Aaron is thrilled. Of course he is.
Once, Aaron was a pawn, a minor character in the first story I ever wrote. He was going to be the protagonist, but he never listened to me. So I swapped everything around and made him a nobody. But when the story ended, he stuck around, and now he never leaves my side. He's always there to do the things I'll never admit to doing. He's not me, but most people can't tell the difference.
Chaucer seems to earnestly attempt to comply with the wishes of his characters, but as he translates, the stories gain a breath of their own. Chaucer is commanded by his characters to write twenty thousand stories. He finishes nine short ones.
It is the most basic question there is.
Who is master?
It must be the author, the one who creates the words.
It must be the characters, the ones that live in the words.
It must be the words, the ones that create the author.
Title artwork by G. Scott Robinson