Bodies in Pieces: A Review

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In Bodies in Pieces: Fantastic Narrative and the Poetics of the Fragment, Deborah A. Harter argues that fantastic fiction depicts a fragmented world, representing a vision of reality as piecemeal that is best expressed in the short story. Quoting Tsvetan Todorov, she defines fantastic narrative as fiction that occupies the precarious position between the marvelous and the uncanny.

The marvelous, Todorov claims, is made up of “those texts in which the reader knows to suspend disbelief,” she says, whereas the uncanny consists of “those in which a rational explanation serves in the end to explain an occurrence.” Hence, by this reckoning, one might deduce, W. W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey‘s Paw” lies within the realm of the marvelous, H. G. Well’s short story, “The Red Room,” lies within the realm of the uncanny, and Bram Stoker’s short story, “Dracula’s Guest” lies within the realm of the fantastic.

For Todorov, the fantastic lasts only as long as “the uncertainty” that the skeptical character (and the reader) endures concerning whether an occurrence is natural or supernatural in origin or character. Once the issue is decided, the fantastic gives way either to the marvelous or the uncanny.

Harter also makes some interesting distinctions between the art of painting and art of narrative. Agreeing with Gotthold Lessing, she argues that the former is restricted by its inability to depict objects as juxtaposed in other than their spatial relationships among one another, whereas the latter may “express with certainty only what is consecutive in time.” Therefore, “the poet. . . tells us only ‘little by little’ what the painter’s eye takes in with a single glance.”

Reality is understood as a space-time continuum, but neither painting nor narrative art can bridge the disconnect between these two aspects of reality as it is experienced by human consciousness. Space remains, and time remains, each seeming separate from the other. Reality, as it is experienced, is fragmented at the most fundamental of all levels.