Literary Pointillism

Literary Pointillism

Pyra Intihar

“Thirty years are compressed into a dozen sentences…”

—“Tell Me a Riddle,” Tillie Olsen

Throughout the cold, Cleveland winter when I was in first grade my father would

gather my brother and me to the good reading corner on the end of the couch next to my

mother’s ornate lamp. This is the same lamp that broke the next summer as my brother

and I ran through the house in a wild chase. But this story is not about the lamp. Rather,

it is about the art history book my father would read to us. It was his college textbook

and he enjoyed introducing us to the world of art. He didn’t read to us. Instead, we

would discuss the photographs of each work. We counted about Warhol’s soup cans; we

gasped at Dali’s flaming giraffe; our little fingers traced the swirls of Van Gogh’s Starry

Night. But the picture I remember most is Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of

La Grande Jatte. My father told us that the painting was made up of many, many tiny

dots. I would pull the book close to my nose in an attempt to isolate each fleck of color.

Then, I would move the book away from my face and watch the picture take shape as

each dot became part of the whole and gave the picture meaning.

Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Defining Literary Pointillism

Intihar / 2

Pointillism is a term derived from the visual arts for a type of painting made

famous by Georges Seurat during the Impressionist era. His most famous piece, A

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, is on display in the Chicago Institute

of Art. This piece is magnificent because instead of using brushstrokes to apply the

paint, Seurat used oil paints in a precise manner by applying dots of color to the canvas.

Seurat “worked with only pure colors (straight from the tube) to develop his method of

producing pictures with only dots of color. White, which he considered to be of no color,

was the only paint that he mixed; this was crucial to his work as he felt that it increased

the reflected powers of the other colors and evoked a feeling of natural light” (Monahan

378).

Likewise, author Tillie Olsen uses pure color in the words and phrases that make

up her short story, “Tell Me a Riddle.” Consider the following phrases as images that

depict pure points of color:

“the nights a long embrace” (484)

“little gnome grandmother” (488)

“mumbo words and magic lights to scare away ghosts” (490)

“never held a baby before, only seen them in glass cases” (491)

“the round thatched hut roofs of Olshana” (491)

“millions of years on a boy’s mouth” (494)

“earth’s fire jetting” (497)

“benches were encrusted with old people” (499)

“shore that nurtured life as it first crawled toward consciousness” (500)

“the pulsing red flower, the yellow skull face” (507)

“crablike hands crawling over the covers” (511)

“78,000 in one minute” (512)

“The thread, hah, the thread breaks” (516)

Each image is powerful because the words as signifiers can point to a multiplicity of

signifieds. Thus, the actual words are like pulses of pure color, but the white paint or

illumination is derived from the deeper meaning within each phrase or point of color.

Because there seems to be such a connection between the pointillism of the visual

arts and the pointillism of literature, I wondered if a label such as “literary pointillism”

was a valid description. This curiosity led me to the internet where I queried the term.

My research found that while it appears that the term “literary pointillism” is

loosely flung about to describe a text, the term itself has never been defined according to

specific characteristics. As of this writing, an internet search on Google yielded 336

results with the exact phrase “literary pointillism.” However, a search for the definition

of literary pointillism yielded twenty results. But, of those twenty results, not one

specifically defined the qualities or characteristics of literary pointillism. There were

allusions to Seurat’s work on several blogs. One blog even goes so far as to quote


Intihar / 3

Stanley Walker’s review of A Night to Remember, saying that it is “a kind of literary

pointillism, the arrangement of contrasting bits of fact and emotion in such a fashion that

a vividly real impression of an event is conveyed to the reader” (Judd). Another blog,

The Sheila Variations, contained a post by Sheila and she describes her own written

work, which a friend of hers dubbed “literary pointillism.” Sheila equates her work with

La Grande Jatte:

All you are really seeing are a bunch of dots of color. Your eye blends the

dots into a whole picture. So that was my goal with this piece. To never

tell the story straight out, to let the dots stand as they are. I have forced

myself not to interpret, not to editorialize, not to go off on tangents. Just

the facts, ma’am. (Sheila)

However, while bloggers on the internet loosely fling about the term, “literary

pointillism,” academia has not embraced the term as a definitive classification of

literature. A search on the MLA database yielded only one result, an article entitled

“Literary Pointillism” written by David Shields. In this article, Shields reviews three

books, Bernard Cooper’s Maps to Anywhere, Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, and

Brian Fawcett’s Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow. In his

review of each book, he mentions characteristics specific to the text. These three books,

Shields notes, “tend toward the pointillistic and fragmentary, undermine genre in order to

emphasize the destabilized nature of identity at the end of the twentieth century” (239).

The texts he reviews are characterized by the fragmentary. Of Cooper’s book he notes

that it moves from “mini-section to mini-section” (239). Coupland’s book defies a

definitive genre. Shields asks, “Is the book a collection of stories or a novel, nonfiction

or fiction” (239). And, of Fawcett’s book, Shields notes that the page is bifurcated with a

book-length footnote (230).

Because this term is being bandied about, I propose that an academic definition of

literary pointillism should be created. Further, I have identified several characteristics

that are crucial to a text if it is to be labeled “literary pointillism:”

1) Instead of a visual work of art with paints defining each point that

makes up the whole, words are arranged in such a manner that,

while seemingly incongruous, they fit together to form a text with

depth and richness. That is, the text contains a series of moments

or experiences that do not necessarily relate directly to the

preceding or following “moment,” but are woven together in such

a way that vibrancy of text is being developed through the used of

these interrelated textual moments.

2) Each moment can stand on its own and has impact. Further, each

moment, however contradictory to the rest of the text, contributes

to the total effect of the entire text.

This is the first step in defining literary pointillism. However, now we must move on and

examine the basic characteristics of artistic pointillism and determine how they relate to

the above characteristics. This paper will use Tillie Olsen’s Tell Me a Riddle as a starting


Intihar / 4

point because it is an excellent textual example to which these characteristics can be

applied. However, as the paper progresses, several longer texts will be examined in light

of specific characteristics relating to literary pointillism.

In regards to Seurat’s painting and other pointillist paintings, certain techniques

were utilized. The process was not an arbitrary application of paint, instead there was a

precision and a plan involved with the process itself. “Instead of a haphazard, variable

brushstroke, there was a fairly uniform dot of paint. Instead of mixing colors on the

palette, they were juxtaposed on the canvas: optical mixture gave much greater

luminosity and vibration” (Pickvance 806).

Likewise, Tell Me a Riddle is not a haphazard throwing together of words. Like

Seurat’s careful planning of his most famous piece, Sunday Afternoon on le Grande Jatte,

Olsen’s work is carefully organized to achieve the maximum effect. The short story is

broken into four sections, or chapters. This gives the story a type of frame that allows the

literary pointillism to occur. Only in this frame can the points come together to form a

particular image, whether visual or mental (literary). Further, each chapter is broken

down into smaller chunks of text. But, Olsen doesn’t stop there. As the text progresses,

each of these smaller sections is fragmented and distilled even more to mere sentence

fragments that structurally cling together on the page. It is as though the textual entropy

is a picture of Eva’s physical breakdown as the cancer ravages her body. In this sense,

the text is also grammatically a work of literary pointillism. In artistic pointillism, broad

brush strokes give way to tiny droplets of paint; in literary pointillism, grammatical

wholeness gives way to fragmentation.

Although the story hinges upon the physical demise of Eva, Olsen presents the

story from many different perspectives. Like the dabbing of an artist’s brush on the

canvas, the omniscient narrator jumps from one person to the next. Each perspective

adds a new color to the text. Each perspective is, in itself, complete; but, like a pointillist

masterpiece, it is only when the reader takes a step backwards from the text that the

individual points (sections, breaks, fragments) fuse together to create the whole and the

overall picture emerges.

Right from the start, Olsen establishes the multitudinousness of the narrative

voice. The first section of chapter one is a rough omniscient perspective of Eva and

David’s marriage. Just the bare facts are presented: married for forty-seven years; their

quarrels reach back into the past; and, now that the children are out of the house, they

face each other as the individuals they have become. But the next section jumps right

into Olsen’s use of literary pointillism and the reader is expected to keep up. Notice that

the words seem to be hung in space:

Why now, why now? Wailed Hannah.

As if when we grew up weren’t enough, said Paul.

Poor Ma. Poor Dad. It hurts so for both of them, said Vivi. They

never had much; at leas in old age they should be happy.


Intihar / 5

Knock their heads together, insisted Sammy; tell’ em; you’re too

old for this kind of thing; no reason not to get along now.

Lennie wrote to Clara: They’ve lived over so much together; why

could possibly tear them apart? (Olsen 475-476)

There is no place or setting given to these snippets of conversation. Since the children

have all moved into their own homes (some as far away as California), it is possible to

imagine these ungrounded scraps of conversation as hanging somewhere on the telephone

lines or (as in Lennie’s letter) on fragments of paper sailing from one address to the next.

However, each line is a point of reference and contributes to the quality of the text that

defines Tell Me a Riddle as literary pointillism.

As was mentioned earlier, Eva’s physical degradation is mirrored by the textual

entropy as wholeness is reduced to the fragmentary. Chapter one (divided into twelve

sections) establishes the marriage and the root of bitterness that has grown up between

Eva and David. It is also here that the first signs of sickness are made known. However,

much of this chapter deals with the problems of the present—the concerns of Eva’s

children, the argument over the Haven, and Eva’s grudge against her husband for past

wrongs. It is not until the end of the first chapter that cancer is revealed. This revelation

leads to a flurry of activity and the second chapter, which is the most fragmented chapter

because it is divided into sixteen sections, details the seemingly endless visits with the

children and grandchildren in their various homes, advice from the doctor, and a visit

from the rabbi. The second chapter with its many sections jumps from topic to topic and

has a pointillistic effect that gives the reader a sense of Eva’s weariness. Not only is the

text fragmented into sixteen sections, but there is a breakdown of meaning within each

paragraph. Each paragraph does not have a topic sentence and supporting details.

Instead paragraphs such as the following figure into this section:

Attentive with the older children; sat through their performances

(command performance; we command you to be the audience); helped

Ann sort autumn leaves to find the best for a school program; listened

gravely to Richard tell about this rock collection, while her lips mutely

formed the words to remember: igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic;

looked for missing socks, books and bus tickets; watched the children

whoop after their grandfather who knew how to tickle, chuck, life, toss, do

tricks, tell secrets, make jokes, match riddle for riddle. (Tell me a riddle,

Granny. I know no riddles, child.) Scrubbed sills and woodwork and

furniture in every room; folded the laundry; straightened drawers; emptied

the heaped baskets waiting for ironing (while he or Vivi or Tim nagged:

You’re supposed to rest here, you’ve been sick) but to none tended or gave

food—and could not touch the baby. (493)


Intihar / 6

However, it is not until we reach the end of the shortest chapter, chapter three (divided

into eight sections), that the fragmentation slaps the reader fully in the face. Eva’s

seaside existence in the empty tourist town is interrupted by a night at a community

singing event. With italicized words and illogical indentations, Olsen sets a disoriented

stage and juxtaposes the evening’s event against a young Eva dancing in Russia:

So it is that she sits in the wind of the singing, among the thousand various

faces of age…one by one they streamed by and imprinted on her—and

though the savage zest of their singing came voicelessly soft and distant,

the faces still roared—the faces densened the air—chorded

children-chants, mother-croons, singing of the chained;

love serenades, Beethoven storms, mad Lucia’s scream;

drunken joy-songs, keens for the dead, work-singing

While from floor to balcony to dome a bare-footed sore-covered little girl

threaded the sound-thronged tumult, danced her ecstasy of grimace to

flutes that scratched at a crossroads village wedding

Yes, faces became sound, and the sound became faces; and faces and

sound became weight—pushed, pressed

Eva’s thoughts become broken and one idea is juxtaposed against another idea. Visually,

grammatically, and textually, Eva is losing ground in the fight against the cancer that

devours her body.

The final chapter, chapter four (divided in twelve sections), begins

conventionally. The first section is visually cohesive and details Eva’s discussions with

Jeannie and David. The second section is still conventional, but there are hints within the

text that the final breakdown is approaching:

“she could not leave the bed—a rented hospital bed” (507)

“Often into the room the shapes of music came” (507)

“the pulsing red flower, the yellow skull face” (507)

“the fever returned…the excited laugh, and incessant words” (507)

These first two sections also allude to death. It is here that Eva learns about the Mexican

Bread of Death (Pan del Muerto) and also discusses Thuban, the pole star of ancient

Egypt and how the “doors of the death houses [were] fixed to open on it” (506-508).

However, while the textual signifiers point the reader toward Eva’s soon demise,

pointillistically the fragmentation does the same. It is in this chapter that the greatest

breakdown of text occurs. Previously, the reader has been given pointillistic sections and

phrases that allude to Eva’s past life as a Russian revolutionary and her unhappiness with

the devastation of World War 2. However, it is in the bare phrases and words of this final

chapter that we hear the pointillistic echoes of a more fully conscious Eva:

Even in reality (swallow) life’s lack of it


Intihar / 7

The bell Summon what ennobles

78,000 in one minute (whisper of a scream) 78,000 human beings

destroy ourselves?

Olsen juxtaposes Eva’s pointillistic comments against her husband. As she lay dying, he

plays solitare and recalls a time when Eva did not want to be alone or shut off from the

world. His thoughts are interspersed with the names of cards—“ace, queen, jack”—and

Eva begins singing (513). It is not until the final moments of literary pointillism, when

David’s thoughts are juxtaposed against Eva’s broken fragments of song, which is

juxtaposed against his own steady beat of the naming of cards that he reaches his

epiphany and is released from his own bitterness.

While the sections and the fragmentation appear random, they are not. The

fragmentation is clearly and intentionally placed so as to draw the reader to the broader

issues that shaped and confounded this marriage and Eva’s life.

The juxtaposition of Eva’s characteristics is of specific importance when we

consider the correlation between artistic pointillism and literary pointillism. According to

Jennings, when two colors of pure hues are placed next to each other on the canvas, they

seem to merge and create a secondary hue (190-193). In like manner, Eva’s strong

characteristics merge against other aspects of her personality and a new hue is created.

The reader can not color her with one quality that fully defines her. Instead, she is a

conglomeration of her varied attributes. By doing this, Olsen creates a character of

greater depth. For example, in chapter two David and Eva are at their daughter Vivi’s

house.

Attentive with the older children; sat through their performances…looked

for missing socks, books and bus tickets…(Tell me a riddle, Granny. I

know no riddles, child.) Scrubbed sills and woodwork and furniture in

every room; folded the laundry; straightened drawers; emptied the heaped

baskets waiting for ironing …but to none tended or gave food—and could

not touch the baby. (493)

The riddle seems to ask the reader to define the role of mother. Is the mother one who

takes care of the creature comforts of her children, but forms no emotional bonds? Is the

emotional river of motherhood expected to reach forward to her grandchildren? The pure

characteristics of a mother’s functions are strong and contrasted against opposing

characteristics that reveal a lack of communication with the grandchildren.

Because Olsen uses literary pointillism to define Eva, the reader is also privileged

to glimpse other issues at work in the text. Imagine the various aspects of Eva as

different colors. The colors, when placed beside each other as text on the page, create in

the reader a greater understanding of the world outside of Eva. Just as Seurat’s idea of

juxtaposing colors allowed for greater luminosity (Pickvance), so does Olsen’s

juxtaposing facets of Eva’s complex character allow for greater illumination on the part

of the reader. The reader does not only see the struggles of an older woman as she faces

death. Instead, the reader transcends the basic plot and is introduced into a realm of

understanding. Suddenly, the story becomes deeper and richer, one filled with

“luminosity and vibration.” The story does not rest on Eva’s shoulders, instead the reader


Intihar / 8

must come to terms with questions about mortality, marriage, and motherhood. The

reader is also asked to look at the nature of dreams and success. The reader is asked to

ponder modern technology. (Was it better in primitive Olshana or in technological

America, a country that can kill 78,000 in one moment?) The reader is also asked to look

at America as a melting pot. These are all complex issues on their own, but Olsen tackles

them through the story of one woman’s death via literary pointillism, applying bits of

information as tiny drops of color juxtaposed against other colors.

I went into a toy store with my eight-year old daughter. She wanted to work on a

puzzle and the only puzzles we had at home were too easy. While we searched for a 300-

piece puzzle for her, my attention was diverted to an impossible 1026-piece puzzle put out

by Buffalo Technology featuring Mickey Mouse. I say that the puzzle was impossible

because it was not an ordinary image of Mickey Mouse. Instead, Mickey Mouse and the

blue background surrounding him consisted of tiny squares. Inside each square was a

scene from an animated Disney movie. Each scene was tinted in such a way that from a

distance you could not see the tiny picture inside the square. Each cell was tinted in such

a way that it corresponded to the color of the larger picture. The image of Mickey itself

is relevant because Mickey has become the icon for the Disney Corporation. Each of the

cells that made up the image represeted contributions to the whole Disney image.

Buffalo Technology’s 1026-piece Mickey Mouse Puzzle


Intihar / 9

“The term divisionism [now called pointillism] refers to the division of colors into pure

pigments; a technique of painting in which small touches of pure hues are gradually built

up together on canvas to create an effect known as optical mixing, in which the dots of

color appear to merge into secondary hues and tones” (Jennings 190-193).

So, the question remains: Is it possible for the characteristics of pointillism to be

applied to literature? Can a writer build a story in much the same manner as a pointillist

painter builds color upon color on the canvas?

In 1982 Ihab Hassan wrote “Postface 1982: Toward a Concept of

Postmodernism.” In this essay Hassan argues for a more definitive line to be drawn

between modernism and postmodernism. One of the terms he uses to define

postmodernism is “indetermanence,” of which he says that the term itself, “subsumes a

dozen current terms of unmaking: decreation, disintegration, deconstruction,

decenterment, displacement, difference, discontinuity, disjunction, disappearance,

decomposition” (88). Two thoughts come to mind as the text begins to unravel and

breakdown with postmodernism. First, was literary pointillism one of the first steps that

moved the text closer to postmodernism? That is, the fragmentation and restructuring of

the text could be an early modern step toward postmodernism. Second, is the use of

literary pointillism an attempt by the author to structure and order the text in such a way

so that the reader comes away with his or her own ideas about the text? For example,

Hassan discusses his second tendency of postmodernism as “immanences, a term that I

employ without religious echo to designate the capacity of mind to generalize itself in

symbols, intervene more and more into nature, act upon itself through its own

abstractions and so become, increasingly…its own environment” (88). By employing

literary pointillism, does the author direct the reader to come away from the text with

impressions that are different from authorial intent? Because each reader makes his or

her own connections, it is possible that each reader steps back from the text with a

different impression or idea about the text as a whole.

The Impressionist period in art history occurred in the later half of the nineteenth

century. Consider the fact that the text did not start to unravel, fragment, and break down

until the advent of postmodernism, which began to be felt sometime in the mid-twentieth

century. Is literary pointillism a condition of this postmodern entropy? In other words, it

might be worthwhile to look at the zeitgeist of the age and ask if the breakdown in art and

literature is part of some greater sociological concern. However, I will not attempt to do

that in this paper. Instead, it is my goal to examine the qualities and characteristics of

literary pointillism.

Taking his cue from the pointillism painters of the Impression era, artist Chuck

Close creates an image on the canvas by using blocks of colors and patterns to create the

overall image. The best explanation for his technique was found in a review for a

showing of his work at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. The review

explains:


Intihar / 10

Close's recent paintings are a departure from his earlier hyper-real

renderings. Utterly frontal and close-up, these images are constructed from

hundreds of gridded squares or diamond shapes filled with abstract

passages of paint. During the past decade, his experimentation with

expectations of photographic focus has resulted in images that lose focus

at close range and dissolve into a mosaic of miniature abstract

compositions. (Indepth Art News)

While Close’s work is not exactly pointillism by pure definition, most critics agree that

his work takes its cue from the early pointillist painters. In a sense, it takes pointillism

and broadens each “dot” so that each point can almost represent a miniature work of art.

Chuck Close’s Emma A closer look at Chuck Close’s Emma

Likewise, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio can be compared to a

multiplicity of little pictures that make up the whole. If we consider each short story a

“dot,” then it would have to be a pointillistic dot of color comparable to Close’s work.

Each dot, or story, broadens the picture, or text. Each story is a snapshot that is tinted in

such a way that it creates the overall image of Winesburg. Just as Olsen’s use of visual

pointillism is not as tight as Seurat’s, the literary pointillism employed in Winesburg,

Ohio is not as tight as Tillie Olsen’s “Tell Me a Riddle.” It does, however, create an

overall effect so that when the reader steps back from the text, the tiny blocks of story

create a complete picture. While the reach is broader with this style of literary

pointillism, it does not deviate very far from my original definition:

1) A series of moments or experiences that does not necessarily

relate directly to the preceding or following “moment” but are

woven together in such a way that the character has depth and

is being developed through the use of these interrelated

moments in the text. (In the case of Winesburg, Ohio, a picture

of the town, rather than a character, is being developed.)

2) Each moment can stand on its own because it has impact.

Further, each moment contributes to the whole of a particular

topic or a particular characteristic that the author is trying to

develop. (Several of the stories in Winesburg, Ohio are

concerned with similar motifs such as: communication, hands,

and windows. In this sense, Anderson works these motifs into


Intihar / 11

each story and explores the issue from many different angles

without being pedantic.)

Many of the stories include George Willard, a reporter for the Winesburg Eagle.

There is a sense that, perhaps, Willard is the narrator behind each of the stories. We

know from the text that the other characters seek him out and talk to him about the

secrets they carry. Other stories, such as “Godliness, a Tale in Four Parts,” do not

include George Willard, but are an important part of the mythos of the town and, thus,

would be common knowledge. In one sense, it is possible to look at Willard as the artist

behind the text. Each story is a miniature painting that fits into the whole of Winesburg,

Ohio. Thus, Anderson’s text is really Willard’s tales about the people and events that

influence his life in the town of Winesburg, Ohio. Willard is the artist and Winesburg is

the canvas on which his stories hang.

Virginia Woolf employs a type of literary pointillism in her work, Mrs. Dalloway.

The narration travels from character to character by various objects. Some of these

objects include: the mysterious car on Bond Street, Peter Walsh’s knife, and a small child

in Regent’s Park.

The use of the airplane in the skywriting scene best illustrates the author’s use of

literary pointillism. Each perspective is as a dab of paint and Virginia Woolf is a master

literary painter as she pulls the brush back and, hoving up in the sky with the skywriter,

descends with a dab of paint as the text colors the reality of each perspective. In a sense

this is an illustration of the artist as she dabs points of color (or narrative) upon the text.

Each point is juxtaposed against an incongruous other. The only relationship the

characters share is that they are bound by the text. Compare this to points of color whose

only relationship to each other is sharing the canvas. Emily Coates is outside the palace

when she sees the plane:

Suddenly Mrs. Coates looked up into the sky. The sound of an aeroplane

bored ominously into the ears of the crowd…It had gone; it was behind

the clouds…Lucrezia Warren Smith, sitting by her husband’s side looked

up. (20-21)

Now the hand of the author allows the reader opportunity to look into the lives of Rezia

and Septimus Smith, who are in Regent’s Park. The perspective shifts two more times, to

Maisie Johnson and then to Mrs. Dempster, within the Regent’s Park setting before Mrs.

Dempster notices the plane, “There’s a fine young feller aboard it, Mrs. Dempster

wagered, and away and away it went, fast and fading” (28). The narration sits with the

action of the plane for a moment before the words are asked, “What are they looking at”

(29)? And, suddenly the text is back with Clarissa Dalloway.

J. Hillis Miller, in his article, Virginia Woolf’s All Souls’ Day: The Omniscient

Narrator in Mrs. Dalloway, tries to explain Woolf’s narration of this text in a manner

consistent with my definition of literary pointillism:


Intihar / 12

If the reader asks himself where he is placed as he reads any given page of

Mrs. Dalloway, the answer, most often, is that he is plunged within an

individual mind which is being understood from within by an ubiquitous,

all-knowing mind, a mind which moves at ease from one limited mind to

another and in fact knows them all at once, speaks for them all. This form

of language generates the local texture of Mrs. Dalloway. Its sequential

structure is made of the juxtaposition of longer or shorter blocks of

narrative. (103)

It is the form, the juxtaposition of perspective, that gives the text its flavor. Each

character moves about in the text by his or her own design.

Some of the characters never even come in contact with each other nor do they

know each other. But, they have impact on each other. For example, when Clarissa

hears of Septimus’ death, she is lead to her own epiphany. She did not know Septimus

and she never spoke with him, but the reader spent time with Septimus. Because of the

juxtaposition of their stories, a certain hue begins to form in the reader’s mind, one that

can only take color from the opposition and nuances of each of their tales. As a result,

Clarissa’s epiphany belongs more to the reader than it does to Clarissa.

While I have much praise for literary pointillism, it is not a technique that can be

used with all texts. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is a work that is a broad type of

literary pointillism, akin to Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio in that the many different stories

make up the complete picture. While the background is a linear progression of

time, the different points of view as various characters tell their story shift the reader

away from the present time of the novel and back to the situations of long ago that shape

the psyches of the present characters and, thus, influence the store of Pecola Breedlove.

Morrison comments on her work, The Bluest Eye, in terms that closely parallel the

literary pointillism I have discussed in this paper. However, she is not satisfied with the

use of the technique. Morrison says in her 1993 after word to the text:

One problem was centering: the weight of the novel's inquiry on so

delicate and vulnerable a character could smash her and lead readers into

the comfort of pitying her rather than into an interrogation of themselves

for the smashing. My solution--break the narrative into parts that had to

be reassembled by the reader--seemed to me a good idea, the execution of

which does not satisfy me now. Besides, it didn't work: many readers

remain touched by not moved. (211)

Although Morrison, herself, was not pleased with the fragmented text, readers enjoyed it.

The Bluest Eye became a best seller and Oprah Winfrey added it to her prestigious

collection of books in her book club. Could Morrison have examined the same issues if

she chose to employ another form for her text? While the jury still seems to be out on


Intihar / 13

this one, the question leads back to the old discussions on author intent and reader

response. Would The Bluest Eye receive the same response if it were in another format?

For example, if Morrison employed a first-person straight narrative from the perspective

of Claudia, or even Pecola, could the same questions arise from the text? Obviously, this

is a question that is unanswerable, but I ask it in order to underline the importance of

form. Literary pointillism, as a form, has its place. While all stories cannot be told in

this format, the stories that are textualized in this manner have a vibrancy and intensity

that is a direct result of the juxtaposition of various moments. Further, the arrangement

of such incongruous moments creates a unique impression that could not be produced by

a linear, straightforward narration. It is this unique combination of moments that

amalgamates with the residue of the reader’s mind to form a depth and richness that is the

result of the author’s decision to employ literary pointillism.

Last year I took my daughter to the Art Institute of Chicago. Our goal was to

locate the Seurat painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, within

the museum. As we wandered around the museum, I grew impatient. The Renaissance

objects were tiring; the ancient Egyptian and Greek relics looked just like they did at

every other museum; and, the miniature rooms seemed out of place. Like a child trying

to remain patient and good before a trip to the candy store, I examined the collection

with my daughter. But, as we began to find various Impression era pieces, my excitement

mounted. When at last I entered the gallery with Seurat’s painting I didn’t know whether

to genuflect or cry. On the one hand, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the painting

(made up of tiny dots!) and felt a sort of reverence for the piece wash over me. But, on

the other hand, I was upset by the multitudes milling about the gallery. Clusters of

people stood before the painting and obstructed the view. Others clustered around other

works in that gallery. The room was heavy with body heat and murmurs. I wanted to be

alone with the painting and stare at it until I was satisfied. Instead, I managed to squeeze

ten minutes of time with the painting as I traded places with the others who moved about

in front of the painting and tried to shush my daughter who kept exclaiming, “Can’t we

go yet? I’m getting soooooooo booooooored!”

Like I said, literary pointillism isn’t for every text. Nor does it appear that artistic

pointillism is suitable for long periods of inspection by my daughter.


Intihar / 14

Works Cited

Hassan, Ihab. “Postface 1982: Toward a Concept of Postmodernism.” Critical Essays on

American Postmodernism. Ed. Stanley Trachtenberg. New York: Maxwell

MacMillan, 1995. (81-92)

“Indepth Arts News: Chuck Close.” Absolute Arts. 04/19/2006

http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2000/12/30/27885.html

Jennings, Guy. Impressionist Painters. Hong Kong: Octopus Books Limited, 1986

Judd, Orrin. “An Author To Remember.” BrothersJuddBlog: May 2002 Archives. 21

May 2002. Brothers Judd. 8 March 2006. < http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog

/archives/2002/05/>

Miller, J. Hillis. “Virginia Woolf’s All Souls’ Day: The Omniscient Narrator in Mrs.

Dalloway.” The Shaken Realist. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and John B. Vickery.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. (100-127)

Monahan, Patricia, Patricia Seligman and Wendy Clouse. Art School: A Complete

Painter’s Course. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1996.

Morrison, Toni. “Afterword.” The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume, 1994. (209-216).

Olsen, Tillie. “Tell Me a Riddle.” Contemporary American Short Stories. Ed. Douglas

and Sylvia Angus. New York: Fawcett Premier, 1967.

O’Malley, Sheila. “Tonight’s the Night.” The Sheila Variations. 29 July 2003. 16

February 2006. <http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/2003_07>

Pickvance, Ronald. “Post-Impressionism.” A History of Art. Ed. Sir Lawrence Gowing.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2002. (803-816).

Documents

Literary Pointillism