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Richard Martin
In
interviews, James Sallis has commented on how he sees an overarching unity
to his various writings; dominant themes and motifs surfacing not only
in his novels, poems, and short stories but also evident in his essays
and forays into literary criticism and review work. This section of the
James Sallis Web Pages endeavours to identify some of the most recurrent
of these.
Many
of these themes and motifs have percolated throughout Jim's literary output
since the late 1960s, from the short story Récits
to the avant-garde novel Renderings.
Such works' playful self-reflexivity, allusiveness, surrealism, existentialism,
temporal elisions, occasional violence, and critical surveillance of human
interaction and modes of communication, mark Jim out as a potent literary
voice continuing the traditions of such masters of the medium as Cervantes,
Joyce, Camus, and Pynchon. That he has lent his extraordinary writing
qualities to crime and science fiction has been to the benefit of each
of the genres; respecting the traditions of both, he has injected new
life into each by hybridizing them with his own modernist motifs.
BLURRINGS
There
are three dominant forms of blurring in Jim's work:
1.
The
notion of temporal, spatial, and personal elisions;
the modernist conception, epitomized in Borgesian fiction, that all time
is one time (the eternal present), all places one place, all people one
person. This comes across clearly in the Griffin novels, especially if
we accept that their narrator is an elderly Lew, his fallible memory eliding
events from his life's history, flashing back, foreshadowing, blurring,
failing completely.
Some
examples:
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The
whole of the essay, Making
Up America.
The
discussion of time and ritual in the essay, Circles. (Note
that ritual is also a key motif in Jim's essays, American Solitude
and Civility.)
Doo-Wop,
the Griffin novels' equivalent of T. S. Eliot's Tiresias in The
Wasteland; symbol of elision; collector of fragments of other
people's lives; storyteller.
Does
Lew Griffin, in an example of multiple elision, meet a future
version of himself (perhaps the Lew of Cricket's Nighttown
sequence) in Black Hornet (86-87)?
When
Lew is in hospital injured or coming out of a drunk, he often
sees a whir of faces – friends, family, historical figures, the
people he seeks out, the criminals he encounters. See Fly
(96, 183), Moth (202), Hornet (61), Bluebottle
(27-31).
Title
of Ray Amano's book, Verge, in Bluebottle. The title
of Jim's own poem, Borders. The frequent references to
the rim or the edge of the world in Jim's poetry (see, for example,
To a Friend with Good Counsel or In My Solitude).
The
motif of Venn diagrams in Jim's work (see below for references).
References
to Hopi Mean Time (see below for references).
The
many references in the Griffin books, the other novels, the short
stories, and the poems, to time, memory, guilt, nostalgia, and
loss reinforce this notion of temporal blurring; the past rendered
immediate and accessible, the time of the narration and that of
the narrated events blurred into one.
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Some
quotations about blurrings:
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"All
my faces had run together like cheap watercolor." From the
short story, The History Makers.
"Our
cities and their malls have become indistinguishable, another
blur like the blur of noise that assails us endlessly." From
the essay, Living Without History.
"These
are men / with yellow eyes, men / who admit no borders."
From the poem, Harbor.
"Always
the past events of his life elude him. A face, dragged out of
memory, will float away in the sift of present sensations. This
woman he is with becomes every woman he's been with. And
for the future he holds no great expectations. Things will go
on happening, and will be largely like the things that have already
happened." Renderings, 26-27.
"He
sits looking out at the southwestern sky, his life now made up
of small rituals and repetitions, yesterday's indistinguishable
from today's, today's preparing tomorrow's." Renderings,
83.
"Walsh
and I walked out of the bar into streets suspended timelessly
somewhere between dark and light. Everything was either blinding
white or dead black, edges leached away by gray – like in old
movies. For a moment I didn't know if it was morning or evening.
And for another terrifying moment I had no idea where I was."
Black Hornet, 85.
"Things
gone gray, beginning to lose edges." Black Hornet,
170.
"I
remember a December, unseasonably warm – it might have been June.
Sometime in the late sixties. Cataclysms everywhere: social, racial,
personal. The whole period's kind of a blur. Not a good time for
me, as they say." Eye of the Cricket, 18.
"I
drifted as though on a raft: asleep, awake and somewhere in between,
sounds around me settling in half-acknowledged, setting off sparks
that caught at the dream-tinder." Eye of the Cricket,
126.
"Most
of it's a kind of blur, you understand, what happened when, the
order of things." Robert Lee/Lew Griffin2 in Eye
of the Cricket, 178.
"I
became vaguely aware of evening settling in again outside my window,
borders of one nap blurring into the next, no checkpoints or crossing
guards." Bluebottle, 135.
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2.
Allusions, quotation, and intertextuality;
the notion that all art belongs to the same cultural pool, everything
overlapping and intersecting with everything else. All of Jim's texts
are heavily allusive, from the shortest of poems to the novel, Death
Will Have Your Eyes.
3.
Passing; racial blurrings.
This recurs throughout the Griffin books: the characters of Corene Davis
and Frankie DeNoux, for example, or the allusions to George Schuyler's
book, Black No More. It also features in the Winner section
of Jim's short story, Occasions.
COMMUNICATION
Communication is a dominant motif in Jim's work. It is tied in to the
recurrent depiction of failed relationships and the exploration of the
breakdown of meaningful human interaction that permeates all of Jim's
fiction and poetry. His work abounds with references to the mechanical
modes by which people now interact with one another, suggesting man's
increasing alienation from his fellow man. There are many instances in
his work, too, where characters in one-on-one situations are incapable
of conveying their thoughts and emotions to their companions. See, for
example, the account of the end of Verne's and Lew's relationship in Bluebottle
(129-32).
Also,
as in the work of Thomas Pynchon, there is this notion of signs and meaning
– everything communicating something – leading to information
overload and paranoia. Note, for example, the overt references to semiology
and the reading of "signs" in the poem Temptation
of Silence, and the many allusions in Jim's
work to his friend David Lunde's poem, An
Interesting Signal/A Very Dull Movie. See also the short story,
The Invasion of Dallas, in which an alien attempts to come to terms
with mankind's communication systems.
Signs, semiology, and modes of communication are important ingredients
in Jim's novel, Death Will Have Your Eyes, a key work in his oeuvre
that shares the "on the road" setting and paranoia of such books
as Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo's Running
Dog, Theodore Roszak's Flicker, and Geoff Dyer's The Search.
["The road gives us release, reaffirms the discontinuity of our lives,
whispers to us that we are after all free, that (around this curve, when
we reach the next town, if we can only make it to California) things will
change. Twain and Kerouac both knew the great American novel would have
to be a book of the road. So did James Fenimore Cooper, before there were
roads." James Sallis, Death Will Have Your Eyes, 62.]
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Technology
(both as an aid and hindrance to communication)
- In
the Griffin books LaVerne often has to be tracked down with
a series of phone calls (e.g. Fly, 29).
- In
the Griffin books, Don Walsh is always having to break off from
his telephone conversations with Lew to talk to/shout at someone
in the squad room; broken circuits, communication breakdown.
- Lew's
comments on technological means of communication in Eye of
the Cricket (54).
- Zeke's
reaction to the answer machine in Eye of the Cricket
(143).
- Crossed
telephone lines in the short story How's
Death?
- The
computer as a mode of communication in the short story Becoming.
- The
numerous coded telephone calls of Death Will Have Your Eyes.
- Numerous
references to television, often as a companion, in Death
Will Have Your Eyes. See, for example, pages 124, 126, 151,
& 169.
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Mail/Letters/Telegrams
(as recurrent motif)
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (7, 45, 161), Eye
of the Cricket (1, 185), Bluebottle (98)
- Other
novels: Renderings (22-25, 27, 33, 36, 41, 49, 62,
77), Death Will Have Your Eyes (118-20)
- Short
stories: And then the dark—, Bubbles, Changes, Delta
Flight 281, Doucement S'il Vous Plaît, The First Few Kinds of
Truth, The History Makers, Jeremiad, Jim and Mary G, Letter
to a Young Poet, Only the Words Are Different (Part 3), Others,
Pure Reason, Récits
- Poetry:
Among the Missing, Apostrophe, Celebration, Country Music, Evolution
of the Day,For David (aka And My Poor Fool Is Hanged?), Installments,
In the Realm, Last Best Friend, P.S., The Surrealist's Vacation,
To a Friend with Good Counsel
- Essays:
Accounts Due, Literary Life, Poetry: A Beginner's Manual, Pushing
Envelopes, Temporary Life, Wounds of Waiting
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"I
moved my hand to activate the dampers. All sound outside the booth sank
to a dull, low murmur like the sea far off, while motion continued, bringing
as it always did a strange sense of isolation and unreality."
James Sallis, 'Faces, Hands: Kettle of Stars'.
"Communication
then has again proved impossible o well."
James Sallis, 'Insect Men of Boston'.
"To
survive, to go on and to give birth to civilization, cities and civil
suits, we learned to communicate, and now we've become compulsive communicators,
unable to stop even when there's no more to say, unable to acknowledge
silence.
"And
perhaps that, communication, is finally but another avatar of our compulsive
pattern-making – of the art, music, literature and philosophy through
which we impose temporizing form on the chaos we see all about us, because
we cannot do otherwise."
James Sallis, Renderings, 48.
"Signs again. Hidden meanings, messages."
James Sallis, Death Will Have Your Eyes, 125.
"Increasingly
I come to the notion of all human activity — speech, music, the theory
of relativity — as metaphor."
James Sallis, 'Circles'.
"We're
afloat each day in a lashing sea of noise, bodies, automobiles, information.
Our children learn their language, and thus their dreams and desires,
from television, popular songs and movies."
James Sallis, 'American Solitude'.
"There
is so much to say, the world / has so many messages for us."
James Sallis, 'Installments'.
"Words
have no knowledge; / only our fear / knows the names of things."
James Sallis, 'Principles of Aesthetics'.
ENTROPY
entropy
1. a measure of the unavailability of
a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. 2.
a measure of the disorganization or degradation of the universe. 3.
a measure of the rate of transfer of information in a message.
From the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
Cf. Thomas Pynchon's short story 'Entropy' (collected in Slow Learner)
and his novella The Crying of Lot 49, both of them acknowledged
influences on Jim and his work. The former is cited in Jim's short story
Others.
"He
lies on the floor, overcome / by entropy"
James Sallis, 'Eft'.
"Entropy,
information theory, stuff like that... I think."
James Sallis, 'Enclave'.
"The
chaos, he knew, was apparent. An illusion. The real problem was over-organization,
entropy, the seeming confusion only the final struggle against its imposition.
Fact and metaphysics were, finally, the same thing."
James Sallis, 'The Anxiety in the Eyes of the Cricket'.
"An
object at rest stays at rest, and I was very much at rest."
James Sallis, 'Faces, Hands: Kettle of Stars'.
"No
one cares. No one, frankly, gives a damn. Anomie and entropy. The birthrate
still declines, the city collapses into itself."
James Sallis, 'Only the Words Are Different' (Part 5).
"I
boiled too much water on the stove, raising the level of entropy in the
world."
James Sallis, Renderings, 96. (The line echoes the poem 'Living
with you', which was featured in Jim's short story, 'Jeremiad', and is
reprinted in Sorrow's Kitchen.)
"Meanwhile
connections between myself and the world were faltering, as though tiny
men with hatchets hacked away at cables linking us, cables that carried
information, images, energy, power. The world, what I could see of it,
had contracted to a round tunnel, through which I sighted. On the rim,
just our of sight, images sparked and fell away into darkness. Beautiful
in the way only lost things can be. Then darkness closed its hand."
James Sallis, Bluebottle, 10.
"Everything
connects in Goodis' world; everything circles back, all streets bear one
down to the same dead end. One's past, chopped away like a rotting limb,
returns in a chance encounter, a woman's face at the window, an opening
door. A man's entire life comes down to a stain on the street, to the
wrong choice he had to make, to a few safe, seductively shadowed places....
Virtually every Goodis novel is cut to this pattern. The books, and the
lives they describe, are closed circuits. Something gives the protagonist's
life a nudge, lends it new momentum, and for a time, set in motion, it
remains in motion; but then inertia's other side rolls up and the life
comes back to rest, to full stop. It's a repose for which the protagonist
has paid dearly, giving up everything else, and it may well be all he
values now."
James Sallis, Difficult Lives, 50-51.
LITERARY
CREATION, SELF-REFLEXIVITY, & PLAYFULNESS
Throughout Jim's work there appears the figure of the writer (the protagonist
of Renderings, for example, or the
poets who proliferate in the early short stories), as well as numerous
other figures involved in publishing (editor Lee Gardner in Bluebottle),
education (Lew Griffin as lecturer in Moth
and Eye of the Cricket), or artistic
creation (David before the start of his adventure in Death
Will Have Your Eyes, the artist partners of short story protagonists,
the sculptors of early short pieces, and the theatrical performers of
Enclave and Eye
of the Cricket). Jim's novels, short stories, and poems, as
we keep reiterating, are also packed with allusion and quotation, referencing
both works by Jim and the wider cultural pool filled by other authors,
filmmakers, artists, and musicians. Such elements serve to underline the
self-reflexivity and playfulness that characterizes much of Jim's writing.
This playfulness is also conveyed in the Griffin books, for example, by
Lew's musings on literary creation, his roles as novelist and university
lecturer, and his (or another's?) occasional interjections into the narrative
from the viewpoint of an elderly narrator in the 1990s (well illustrated
in Black Hornet, 60 & 77, and
Bluebottle, 103). Possibly the most
overtly self-referential of all Jim's texts are the two hors
série novels, Renderings
and Death Will Have Your Eyes; the
former, in particular, serves as a repository for all the concepts and
ideas that circulate through Jim's novels, short stories, poems, and book
reviews.
Some
examples:
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Reconstructing
the facts, reportage, etc. From Black Hornet, 81: "What
follows is not what Walsh and I heard then, a stuttering, inchoate
tale in which the narrator seemed at times a participant, and
which seemed somehow still to be going on, but a version pieced
together from Doo-Wop's story and a subsequent telephone conversation
with Frankie DeNoux." This reconstruction by the narrator
of reported events is a stylistic device also frequently employed
by James Lee Burke in his Dave Robicheaux books.
Storytelling
as a form of reconstruction and, in Bluebottle, even detection.
See, for example, comment on page 61 of Bluebottle.
Writing
notes about hunting down Carl Joseph in Black Hornet (173-74)
and then using them later – "I began playing with it, improvising,
letting the piece go where it would."
Eye
of the Cricket: the narrative pauses temporarily as Lew/the
narrator browses through his notes (112).
Review
of Lew Griffin'sBlack Hornet in Moth (30), before
Jim Sallis's Black Hornet has even been written.
The
writing process and self-conscious commentary on it: Eye of
the Cricket, 146 & 188.
Playfulness
in Moth (44): A repeated, lengthy description interrupted
with the parenthetical comment "(see above)."
Playfulness
in Bluebottle (56): the narrator comments on the complexity
of the previous sentence.
The short story, Notes.
Like T. S. Eliot's appended notes to The Waste Land, these
serve as artefact, drawing attention to the process of literary
creation itself.
Throughout
Jim's work, there is the recurrent figure of the artist wife and/or
partner. See, for example, Renderings (7, 72, 96), or the
figure of Deborah in Eye of the Cricket. This figure also
appears frequently in Jim's short stories and essays.
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There
is also the playfulness of Jim alluding to his own work. In Eye of
the Cricket (83 & 85), for example, he alludes to his novel Renderings.
In Moth (54) there is a brief allusion to his short story Alaska.
In Death Will Have Your Eyes(87) he alludes to the same Voznesensky
poem, Family Graveyard,
that he translated from the Russian. In the same novel (178), he also
alludes to his short story, Potato Tree. Renderings, throughout,
has many echoes and mirrors of his poems and short stories (most notably,
the poem, "Guage," which was featured in the story, Occasions,
on page 21; The Creation of Bennie Good on page 36; I Saw Robert
Johnson on page 77; and the poem, Living with you, which was
featured in his story, Jeremiad, on page 96). The novel also alludes
to the Griffin novels (Vicky from The Long-Legged Fly, for example,
appears on page 81).
ENTOMOLOGY
& ARACHNOLOGY
If
Sallis chooses bugs, there's a reason for it. What he wants to taste is
the otherness of insects, their fast-burn and utterly alien sense of time.
Iain Sinclair, 'Hopi Mean Time'.
Insects
(general)
- Other
novels: Renderings (21)
- Short
stories: And then the dark—, Faces, Hands: The Floors of His Heart,
A Few last Words, Insect Men of Boston, Intimations, Occasions (in the
poem, 'Guage')
- Poetry:
Grammars, Twilight
- Note
that insects are not the only creatures that proliferate in Jim's work.
His poetry and short stories, in particular, are filled with references
to birds, fish, wolves, frogs, lizards, geckos, jaguars.
Ant
- Griffin
novels: Moth (95)
- Other
novels: Renderings (20)
- Short
stories: Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Joyride, Occasions
(in the poem, 'Guage')
- Essays:
Forward, Bravely, Into the Anthills
Bee
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (23), Black Hornet (46)
- Short
stories: Occasions (31 December 3 A.M. section)
- Poetry:
Some Years into It, The Surrealist's Vacation
Beetle
- Short
stories: The History Makers, Occassions (in the poem, 'A vid')
Butterfly
- Short
stories: 53rd American Dream
- Poetry:
Dawn
Caterpillar
- Short
stories: Ansley's Dreams
Cockroach
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (13-14, 163), Moth (45),
Black Hornet (173, 179), Cricket (1)
- Short
stories: Blue Lab, Breakfast With Ralph, Enclave, I Saw Robert Johnson,
Kazoo (as a nickname), Only the Words Are Different (Part 5), Récits
- Essays:
Arizona Evenings, One Sunday
Colorado
beetle
- Short
stories: The Anxiety in the Eyes of the Cricket
Crane-fly
- Short
stories: I Saw Robert Johnson
Cricket
- Griffin
novels: Moth (151), Eye of the Cricket (title, epigraph)
- Other
novels: Renderings (78, 104); Death Will Have Your Eyes
(114)
- Short
stories: The Anxiety in the Eyes of the Cricket, Bleak Bay, The
Creation of Bennie Good, Hazards of Autobiography, Impossible Things
Before Breakfast
- Essays:
Making Up America
- From
Enrique Anderson Imbert: "Then I felt within me the desperate /
rebelliousness of things that did not / want to die, the thirst of mosses,
the / anxiety in the eyes of the cricket...."
- Note
the association of the cricket with death in Cornell Woolrich's short
story, 'Rear Window'
Dragonfly
- Short
stories: Intimations
Firefly
- Griffin
novels: Eye of the Cricket (174)
- Short
Stories: Récits
Flea
- Griffin
novels: The Ghost of a Flea, title of the sixth Griffin novel,
taken from the painting by William Blake
- Other
novels: Renderings (96; also an allusion to Blake's painting)
Fly
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (title, 6-7, 17, 20, 68), Moth
(68, 95), Black Hornet (77), Bluebottle (title)
- Other
novels: Renderings (7, 20), Death Will Have Your Eyes
(61)
- Short
stories: 53rd American Dream, Blue Devils, Front & Centaur,
Jeremiad, Kazoo, Occasions (in the poem, 'Guage'), Only the Words Are
Different (Part 5), Récits
- Poetry:
Installments, New York Poems, Pastoral
- From
W. B. Yeats: "Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind
moves upon silence."
Grasshopper
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (164-65)
- Poetry:
Yellow
Hornet
- Griffin
novels: Black Hornet (title)
- Short
stories: The Leveller
Inchworm
- Short
stories: Occasions (in the poem, 'Guage')
Leech
- Short
stories: Kazoo (as a nickname)
Locust
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (90)
- Other
novels: Death Will Have Your Eyes (114)
- Short
stories: Récits
- Poetry:
Among the Missing, They Who Have No King
- Essays:
Standing by Death
Moth
- Griffin
novels: Moth (title, epigraph at start of novel quoting James
Wright), Black Hornet (139), Eye of the Cricket (17),
Bluebottle (130; page also includes a repetition of the epigraph
from James Wright used at the start of Moth)
- Other
novels: Renderings (7, 20)
- Short
stories: Hows Death?, Jeremiad, Occasions (in the poem, 'Guage')
- Poetry:
Alone, Evolutions of the Day, For Blaise Cendrars, In Memory, Three
Women, Tucson
- Essays:
Arizona Evenings, Increments, One Sunday
- From
James Wright: "Father, the dark moths / Crouch at the sills of
the earth, waiting."
Slug
- Griffin
novels: Cricket (95)
Snail
- Griffin
novels: Moth (127)
- Other
novels: Renderings (37)
- Short
stories: Only the Words Are Different (Part 1)
- Poetry:
Eft
Spiders
- Short
stories: Becoming, Bubbles, Finger and Flame, I Saw Robert Johnson
- Essays:
Circles
Tapeworm
- Poetry:
Among the Missing
Wasp
- Griffin
novels: Black Hornet (43), Bluebottle (112)
- Other
novels: Death Will Have Your Eyes (36, 110)
- Short
stories: Notes
- Poetry: The Surrealist Travels by Train
Waterbugs
- Short
stories: Front & Centaur
Worm
- Other
novels: Renderings (20)
- Short
stories: Dogs in the Nighttime, The First Few Kinds of Truth, Intimations
- Poetry:
Among the Missing, Pastoral
MISCELLANEOUS
SELECTION OF MOTIFS
Alcoholism
- Griffin
novels: throughout, in the characters of Lew, Don, Hosie, Doo-Wop,
etc. See, for example, Moth (98-99)
-
Short stories: Alaska
- Poetry:
Country Music, Foreign Policy
- Essays:
Old Story At Airport, Wounds of Waiting
America
as a Museum
- Poetry:
Last Best Friend
-
Essays: Making
Up America
Birds
on powerlines
-
Short stories: Saguaro
Arms
- Poetry:
Chemin
-
Essays: Accounts
Due, Circles, Hearts of the City
Bodily
mutilation
- Griffin
novels: Black Hornet (86), Bluebottle (85-86)
- Other
novels: Renderings, 31
- Short
stories: 53rd American Dream, And then the dark—, The Anxiety
in the Eyes of the Cricket, Blue Devils, Dawn Over Doldrums, I Saw Robert
Johnson, Jeremiad, Moments of Personal Adventure, Wolf
- Poetry:
Halfway House, In Potato's Bed, Prayer
- Essays:
Taking the Stage
- Note
also the theme of cannibalism (53rd American Dream, D.C. al FINE,
Delta Flight 281, Wolf)
- A
series of poems in Jim's unpublished Saguaro Arms and Leaning
into the Electric Day collections centre on body parts (Heidegger's
Body Parts, Ordinary Mornings, Ordinary Nights, In Potato's Bed, Tenderness).This
motif also features in Sorrow's Kitchen (A Marriage, New York
Poems).
City
quest
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly, Black Hornet, Eye
of the Cricket, Bluebottle
- Short
stories: Bubbles
"Convenience
Kills" slogan
- Griffin
novels: Moth (122), Eye of the Cricket (163), Bluebottle
(153)
- Essays:
Living Without History
Denying/hiding
that one is a writer
- Essays:
Hearts of the City, Literary Life, Poetry: A Beginner's Manual
Diminutive
fires of the planet (reference to Pablo Neruda)
- Griffin
novels: Bluebottle (23, 110)
- Other
novels: Death Will Have Your Eyes (25)
- Short
stories: Vocalities
Dismemberment
- Other
novels: Renderings (36)
- Short
stories: 53rd American Dream, The Creation of Bennie Good, Occasions
(Dédicaces section)
Dreams
- Griffin
novels: Black Hornet (113); often, across the books, Lew
dreams when he's in hospital (e.g. Bluebottle,27-31)
- Other
novels: Renderings (26, 45, 47, 79), Death Will Have Your
Eyes (42-43, 139, 147)
- Short
stories: A Few Last Words, Blue Lab, I Saw Robert Johnson, Wolf
- Poetry: Ordinary Nights
Duality
- Griffin
novels: Black Hornet (86–87), Eye of the Cricket (29-33,
86-87, 172-79)
- Other
novels: Death Will Have Your Eyes, Renderings
- Short
stories: The Creation of Bennie Good, Jeremiad, Others, Walls of
Affection, Wolf (suggestion of the man/beast dichotomy embodied in the
figure of the werewolf)
-
Poetry: After
a Poem by Wat,
How It Started, Meeting Myself, Some Years into It
- Essays:
Accounts Due
Fish
- Other
novels: Renderings (37, 55-58, 61, 63, 79, 106)
- Short
stories: Bubbles, Kazoo, Hazards of Autobiography, The History Makers,
Occasions (Negotiation section and the poem, 'A marriage'), Pure
Reason, Récits, Shutting Darkness Down, Walls of Affection
- Poetry: Adrift, Boston, Eft, For
David (aka And My Poor Fool Is Hanged?), Installments, A Marriage, Negotiation,
The Plan Behind Improvisation, Rain, Reading the World
- There
is a recurrent motif of fish swimming into stone and fossilisation in
Jim's recent Arizonan work (see also theme of turning to stone below)
Hopi
people and their conception of time
- Griffin
novels: Black Hornet (80), Eye of the Cricket (97,
160), Bluebottle (38)
- Other
novels: Renderings (67, 83-84)
- Poetry:
Temptation of Silence
Hospitals
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (11-12, 38-43, 83-85, 95-99),
Moth (1-8, 53-54, 99-100, 105, 111-12, 137-41, 164, 202-5), Black
Hornet (61-67, 133-34, 170-75), Eye of the Cricket (7-8,
29-33, 47, 62-63, 73-76, 126), Bluebottle (9-25, 31-40, 47-52)
- Other
novels: Renderings (38)
- Short
stories: Alaska, Becoming, Bubbles, Echo, Jeremiad, Occasions (Winner
section), Potato Tree
- Essays:
Gently Into the Land of Meateaters, Increments, Standing by Death, Temporary
Life, Wounds of Waiting
Incidental
traffic accidents
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (151)
- Short
stories: Delta Flight 281, A Few Last Words, I Saw Robert Johnson,
The Leveller
Insomnia
- Griffin
novels: repeatedly throughout the Griffin novels, especially with
Lew resorting to alcohol or reading to fill the night (e.g. Cricket,
18-21, 83)
- Other
novels: Renderings (27, 59, 71)
- Short
stories: Alaska, And then the dark—, A Few Last Words, D.C.
al FINE, I Saw Robert Johnson, Memory, My Friend Zarathustra,
Vocalities
- Poetry:
In Memory, Memory at 3 A.M., Principles of Aesthetics
- Essays:
Temporary Life
- From
Principles of Aesthetics: "Insomnia, / an old friend, collects
me from sleep."
- Note
the frequent references to 2, 3 and 4 a.m. in essays (The Book Not Written,
Circles, Intelligent Life in Duncanville, Temporary Life), book introductions
(It's Three O'Clock), poetry (Memory at 3 A.M., New York at 3 A.M.),
and stories (31 December 3 A.M., And then the dark—, Memory, Pure
Reason, Wolf)
Jumping
out of windows
- Short
stories: D.C. al FINE, Kazoo, Only the Words Are Different
(Parts 1 & 3)
Man
with no more past (reference to Blaise Cendrars)
- Other
novels: Renderings (27), Death Will Have Your Eyes
(171)
- Short
stories: Occasions (Dédicaces section)
Masks
- Griffin
novels: Eye of the Cricket (89-90)
- Other
novels: Renderings (9-11, 33, 36), Death Will Have Your
Eyes (164)
- Short
stories: Blue Lab, Others
- Poetry:
Memory at 3 A.M., Second Generation, To a Friend with Good Counsel
- Essays:
American Solitude
Memory
is a hunting horn & Je me retournerai souvent (reference to Guillaume
Apollinaire)
- Other
novels: Death Will Have Your Eyes (137-38)
- Short
stories: Occasions (31 December 3 A.M. section), Récits
Putting
distress signals in code (reference to David Lunde)
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (36), Moth (169), Eye
of the Cricket (88)
- Poetry:
For Blaise Cendrars
Salvation
between the legs of a woman (reference to Blaise Cendrars)
- Other
novels: Renderings (81)
- Poetry:
For Blaise Cendrars, To a Friend with Good Counsel
Shark
fins, knives, jagged edges and mirrors (reference to W. S. Merwin)
- Other
novels: Renderings (27)
- Short
stories: Occasions (Procés section), Récits
- Poetry:
Intelligent Life in Duncanville, Recovery, Temptation of Silence
Trees
bent over like old men
- Essays:
Hearts of the City, Wounds of Waiting
- See
also comments on tree motif in the note on page 129 of Bluebottle
in this site's Griffin's Cross-References
page
- Particularly
in Jim's later work, there is a frequent association between trees,
the process of ageing and death. Most commonly this is conveyed through
seasonal (Autumn/Fall, Winter) imagery. See, for example, the poem Winter
Afternoons
Train
travel as life journey
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (91), Moth (121), Eye
of the Cricket (15-16)
- Other
novels: Renderings (13-18)
Turning
into stone
- Griffin
novels: The Long-Legged Fly (90), Eye of the Cricket
(15)
- Short
stories: Becoming
- Poetry:
Temptation of Silence
Unwanted/abandoned/unknown
child
- Griffin
novels: Baby Girl McTell in Moth, Carl Joseph in Black
Hornet
- Short
stories: Intimations, Jim and Mary G, Need, Saguaro Arms
Venn
diagrams
- Other
novels: Renderings (18)
- Short
stories: Dawn Over Doldrums
- Book
reviews: Getting in Touch with Your Demons, Journey to the Heart
of Céline
Watching
women take children to school/daycare
- Other
novels: Renderings (77)
- Short
stories: I Saw Robert Johnson
- Poetry:
Poems
- Essays:
One Sunday
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