We Have a Title
The title of this novel which is not about Jason or the global fleece is explained through reference and metaphor. Both are power tools for the writer of fiction, but they are only as powerful as the ability of the reader to recognize them. So, anyone unfamiliar with the works of social critic Barthes or the actual story of Jason chasing the golden fleece is likely to still be scratching their heads:
“A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase `I love you” is like “the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.’”
Trans
A good deal of the narrative is taken up with the issue that has now pretty much officially been boiled down to the simplistic descriptive half-word, “trans.” Maybe the most poignant metaphor to be found in the book—or, at the very least, as applies to this issue—is one suggestive of the only external reaction to gender transformation that really does matter:
“A transgender child brings a parent face to face with death,” the mother laments. “The daughter I had known and loved was gone; a stranger with facial hair and a deep voice had taken her place.”
Literary Introspection
Everyone gets a little introspective at times. Well, everyone who doesn’t enjoy seventy-something years of pure luck and privilege and so is never given pause to think deeply even about themselves. Aside from certain freaks, then, introspection is a natural human trait. Writers, however, have a certain propensity for indulging in metaphorical fantasia when describing their moments of extreme inner-looking. For everyone not a writer, just enjoy the words, you really aren’t being asked for full understanding:
“And now, after living beside you all these years, and watching your wheel of a mind bring forth an art of pure wildness—as I labor grimly on these sentences, wondering all the while if prose is but the gravestone marking the forsaking of wildness.”
“A writer is someone who plays with the body of his mother.”
The author is here returning to the work of Barthes. Actually, it is a slight misquote of the original. What Roland Barthes actually wrote was “The writer is someone who plays with his mother’s body.” Not that the word arrangement matters much, perhaps, but then again perhaps it matters a great deal. After all, neither Barthes in “The Pleasure of the Text” or the author who slightly misquotes it to serve her own purposes adequately explains what the metaphor is supply to imply. Barthes comes closer with the additional information that playing with the mother’s body is done for the purposes of glorifying or embellishing or dismembering it. But in the end what we have here is an example of a metaphor without any real meaning. It is imagery designed expressly for the purposes of interpretation. And no matter where it leads you, you can’t be wrong.
The Long Arm of Jonestown
For the record, it was not actually Kool-Aid that the poor deluded cultists drank at the behest of psychopathic leader Jim Jones which brought the Jonestown story to its tragic end. It was Flavor Aid. Essentially the same thing—unless you own stock in Kool-Aid. Nevertheless, the metaphor has taken on a life of its own that will probably never be fact-corrected. Such is the nature of figurative language:
“I had liked Gallop’s heady, disobedient books on Lacan (such as The Daughter’s Seduction); they evidenced a deep investment in Lacanian thought without seeming to have drunk the Kool-Aid.”
