What does it mean for a piece of fiction to be itself an object of art?
In the spirit of approaching this question, I read John the Posthumous as if the novella were, indeed, an object of art, comparable to, say, a Joseph Cornell Box (a number of other reviews have likened Schwartz's work to a Cornell Box), with each section contributing a batch of elements, each chapter a cluster of objects.
So, with this vision in mind, think of the following headings, ten in number, as among the drawers or cubbyholes or shelves that house the contents of JS's unique J the P:
BIBLICAL
"The Devil's animal, in the storybooks, is found at the father's house, sometimes composed of white rope." "In Deuteronomy and Isaiah: the husband writes the wife a "letter of divorce." "In our family Bible: the flyleaf is inscribed in blue ink." These three direct quotes are examples of the biblical tone and content of the book, bringing to mind Cormac McCarthy.
Many were the times while reading John the Posthumous, I envisioned the narrator living in the years immediately preceding global catastrophe chronicled in McCarthy's The Road. Is the narrator documenting his "Pre-Road" age? That was the distinct impression I was given.
ROOMS
As much as or even more than characters (women, men, children), the narrator places focus on objects (houses, rooms, objects within rooms, bridges, outside objects) along with animals of all varieties. "Termites prefer timbers such as these. Fire sometimes traps rats in their galleries or behind an attic door."
Rats behind doors, rats behind walls reminds me of the H.P. Lovecraft tale, The Rats in the Walls. More generally, this Jason Schwartz fiction echoes Lovecraftian horror lurking just under the skin of objects. "The bed recurs as a figure in certain burnings - the torches fixed to boards, for skeletons, and the boiling oil in pots, in urns, in bowls."
POSITION OF WORDS AND SENTENCES ON PAGE
"The lake is named for the town, or for an animal, and is shaped like an ax-blade." In the 2013 OR Books edition, this sentence appears on page 26 toward the top of the page, after a short paragraph ending with "Certain of the words resemble ants in distress." and preceding another paragraph beginning with the word Adulterium in italics.
The exact positioning of the sentence on the page along with its relation to other sentences and paragraphs contributes to "book as object of art." In this way, John the Posthumous shares much in common with concrete poetry, a form of poetry where the arrangement of words and their appearance on the page is of primary importance.
POSITION OF OBJECTS AND PEOPLE IN RELATION TO ONE ANOTHER
"The bedpost, from a more sensible angle, might obscure a portion of the wardrobe, and divide the room in two." Much of J the P measuring, angling, bending, dividing, cutting can be likened to Alain Robbe-Grillet and the French Nouveau Roman, one novel in particular: The Mise-en-Scène by Claude Ollier since Ollier, an engineer by training, continually emphasizes the precise dimensions and angles of objects in space.
"The man stands in the corridor, the woman at the top of the stairs." A reader would be wise to attend to the shifting spacial relationships between one person and another, between people and objects, between object and object. "A balcony gallows may help dignify things a bit, despite the maulings in the courtyard.
A roadside gibbet, for its part, makes little accommodation for the sounds in a house." Do you sense a powerful emotional charge?
MINIMALISM
Curiously, with all the resonances and associations a reader can make on every page, there is also strong thread of minimalist art. To take one example of many: gallows and a gibbet bring to mind a wide assortment of ghoulish, ghastly images. However, on another level, in this work of fiction, they serve as objects in themselves a la Carl Andre and his bricks.
Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII - what you see is what you get
VIOLENCE, BRUTALITY, TORTURE
"At the time of murder, reader, a knife might display the victim's name. This was less the habit later in the century." Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but as I was reading, I could almost hear screams of victims and feel their agony and pain.
ENTWINING ETYMOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY
Abiding theme: the origins and meaning of words along with a continual reference to insects. "The gap in the banister is dreadfully evident, at any rate, despite the embarrassment of the pattern, hornets and all."
CHILD'S FRIGHT
"I count again the number of nails, up and down." --- "As a child, as a boy, I was distracted, shall we say, by several forms on the wall." --- "My nightshirt was white - the color, perhaps, of your own childhood attire." How much does the narrator's memory of terror coat his story as if with a layer of red powder?
REPETITION, REPETITION
Keep an eye out for the reappearance of cuckoldry, punishments of adulterers, the importance of the marriage bed, skulls, bones, corpses. "Organ knives were designed for the windpipe, the lungs, the intestines, and so on."
MACABRE MACGUFFIN
John the Posthumous was a French king who lived and ruled for five day in 1316. No explanation is provided as to why Jason Schwartz chose the title or how John the P relates to any of the happenings and writings in the book. This absence sets the tone for the entire work.
"The wife burns the husband's clothing. The husband stands at the end of the corridor, on every floor. We do embrace our examples, sometimes, with undue devotion. The town - it had been founded by a benedict. Commencing with burnt posts on a lawn. Our house was quite plain, I am afraid. Pause here, at the door. Present yourself at the window, as she had, and now remove yourself from view."
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