talk fictionfrontiers of narrativeSeries Editor: David HermanNorth Carolina State UniversityTalk FictionLiterature and the Talk Explosioni r e n e k a c a n d e sUniversity of Nebraska PressLincoln and London by the University of Nebraska Press.All rights reserved. Manufactured in the UnitedStates of AmericaLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationDataKacandes, Irene, I,,8Talk ction : literature and the talk explosion /Irene Kacandes.p.cm. (Frontiers of narrative series). Includesbibliographical references and index.isnx o-8o,:-:,,8-8 (cloth : alkaline paper) isnx o-8o,:-,8oI-: (paperback : alkaline paper)I. Fiction :oth century History and criticism.:. Narration (Rhetoric) ,. Talk shows. i. Title.ii. Seriesvx,,o,.x,, :ooI 8o,.,odc:I :ooIo:,oo,For PhilippeContentsPreface ixAcknowledgments xxi1. Secondary Orality: Talk as Interaction 12. Storytelling: Talk as Sustenance 333. Testimony: Talk as Witnessing 894. Apostrophe: Talk as Performance 1415. Interactivity: Talk as Collaboration 197Notes 219Works Cited 255Index 277ixPrefaceWriting, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but adierent name for conversation.laurence sterne, Tristram ShandyAsagraduateteachingassistantinacoursecalledComedyandtheNovel, I had an encounter with a student that has intrigued me to thisday.Indeed,inmanyrespectsthekernelofthisbookliesinthatinter-action (and for this reason I am particularly sorry I have long forgottenthe name of the student). The professor had assigned Italo Calvinos If onawintersnightatraveler,andjustbeforewebeganoursmall-groupdiscussiononthenovel,amaleundergraduaterushedinandblurtedout:Thisbookwassocool.Itwastalkingtome.Ineverreadanovelbefore that was about me. I wasnt amused. I was puzzled and annoyedby his reaction. I had read the novel for the rst time to prepare for thisclass and had been thoroughly irritated by it, so the students enthusiasmaloneirkedme.Myinitialhunchaboutthedierencesbetweenthisstudents aect and my own was based on gender: the inscribed reader inCalvinosnovelismale,andthisstudentwasabletoidentifywithhimbecausehetoowasahe;incontrast,Iwasputobyyetanotherinstance of the male masquerading as the universal. That the studenthadntovertlynoticedtheinscriptionofgenderinthetextdidntpar-ticularlysurpriseme;afterall,itislessimmediatelyapparentintheEnglish translation the class had read than in the Italian original (a topicItakeupinchapter4).ButIcontinuedtobeperplexedandinitiallydiscouragedby how a Harvard undergraduate whod been through anentire semester of a novels course could think that the text actually wastalking to him or could actually be about him. Hadnt I spent a signi-cant proportion of our discussion time in the previous months introduc-ingnarratologicalterms,distinguishing,forexample,betweenthenar-ratee, the inscribed reader, and the esh-and-blood reader? Ironically, Iappeared to have failed as a teacher where this student succeeded, for hisconvictionthatthenovelwastalkingtohimeventuallytaughtmetorevisehowIreadatleasthowtoreadcertainnovelslikeCalvinos.More precisely, I realized that this novel aims for readers to have both thePrefacexstudentsreactionandmine:delightandannoyance,engagementanddisengagement,identicationandalienation.Myfrustrationturnedtopleasure when I started trying to have both reactions simultaneously.IproposetocallIfonawintersnightatravelerandnovelsinthesame mold talk ction, because they contain features that promote inreaders a sense of the interaction we associate with face-to-face conver-sation(talk)andasenseofthecontrivanceofthisinteraction(c-tion). Furthermore, I mean my phrase to signal a mingling of elementsfromspokenandwrittencommunication:thesetextscontaintalkinction, as in prose ction. This hybridity of orality and textuality linkstheworksImconsideringtotheeighteenthandnineteenthcenturies,when a sense of literature as but a dierent name for conversation hadnotyetbeenbannedfromthedevelopingnovelform,aperiod,too,when literacy itself was becoming a mass phenomenon. It also links talkction to the twentieth century through the phenomenon of secondaryorality, a term referring to the resurgence of oral communication madepossible by technology like the telephone, radio, lm, television, video,andcomputer.Isubmitthatwecantknowwhethertalkctionisaresponse to the talk explosion or a response to the same forces that ledtothatexplosion.Ineithercase,itseemstomethattofullyappreciatethe communicative hybridity of our age, we need to register the presence(reemergence?persistence?)oforalelementsinliterature,theverbalform that the twentieth century nevertheless posited as the most unlikespeech.Contrivance connects my phenomenon to its auditory template, talkradio and the television talk show, related genres based on mediatedengagement of speakers and interlocutors, not on passive transmissionofmusic,news,orotherinformation.Whilenotarguingforthedirectinuence of developments in radio or television on prose ction or viceversa,Idointendtalkradiotoechoinmyphrasetalkction,be-causetalkradio,televisiontalkshows,andtalkctionallprivilegein-volvementovercontentfalsethoughthedichotomymaytechnicallybe. I propose that this privileging of interaction remains partially unrec-ognized,evenasitcharacterizesmanyculturalphenomenaofoursec-ondary oral age.Before I expand my denition of talk ction, Id like to contextualizemyembarrassinglyhaughtygraduatestudentpostureofjudgingthosePrefacexireaderswhodonotperceivetheimpermeableboundariesbetweentheworld of ction and the world in which people actually live as nave, and,well, illiterate. I now see a connection between such a view of literature(onefosteredinmanyacademicenvironments)andawidespreadhos-tility in contemporary society toward the ubiquitous spoken word. Withtheexceptionofmediaenthusiastsandsomeprofessionallinguists,Isuspect that much of the worlds formally educated population fears thatsecondaryoralityisthreateningprintculture,leadinginexorablytoadeclineinliteracy.Whiletherearenumerousvalidreasonsthateduca-tors and the general public should be concerned about literacy rates andfailures to educate subsequent generations, assumptions about the rela-tive value of spoken and written discourse that underlie these concernshinder appreciation of various phenomena that are products precisely ofnewshiftsbetweenthetwo.Ifhumanscouldsuspendalong-standinghabit of thinking about orality and literacy as dichotomous, we might beabletoapprehendemergingformsofcommunication,withthegainsand the losses that their deployment entails.1Talkctionisonesuchemergingform.Tobringitintofocusformyself I had to confront not only personal and societal views of oral andliterate culture but also an academic crisis closer to home: a crisis aboutthe role of literary studies in an age of cultural studies. While denitions,merits, and demerits of cultural studies (rightly) continue to be debated,Isubmitthatculturalstudiesisoneofthoseintellectualdevelopmentsthat shifts our very notions of literature and literary studies. We mayeventually reject the term cultural studies and coin a new one; we mayevenreneourpracticeofinterdisciplinarity.Still,Ibelievethatthenineteenth-centuryGermanuniversitymodelofsegregatedacademicdisciplineshasalreadybeenirrevocablyundermined.Culturalstudieshas taught me that cultural phenomena are linked. They cannot be com-prehended in isolation, and therefore they must not be analyzed this way.Scholarsneedtocasttheirnetswidelyintryingtodescribethelinksamongthem.MediaphilosopherMarshallMcLuhanrevealedasimilarunderstanding of culture when he argued that the use of radio to broad-castthehumanvoicewasboundtoproducenewshapesforhumanexperience(1964:302).Heperceivedscholarsresistancetochange,marveling at the universal ignoring of the psychic action of technology(304). McLuhan himself, of course, created curiosity about the psychicPrefacexiiactionoftechnology,andmediastudiesnecessarilyinterdisciplin-arynow thrive in many universities of the global village.2Inmyview,aninterdisciplinarymodeldoesnotimplyabandoningeither the close study of literary texts or the tools that have been devel-oped to understand how prose ction works.3 Rather, lessons from cul-turalstudiescallforexploringthewayprosectionrespondsnotonlytointernaldevelopmentsliketheuseofstreamofconsciousnessorpresent-tense narration but also to various types of forces in the world inwhich literature, like other cultural products, is created and consumed.Therefore, a cultural studies approach to prose ction works of the twen-tiethcenturyrequiresspecialattentiontohowliteraturemightbere-spondingtosecondaryorality,atasknotyetundertaken,Isuspect,becauseofthepropensitiesmentionedabovetodenigratetalkandtovenerate(andthusisolate)literature.Bakhtinscampaigntocategorizeprose ction as one of several speech genres (1986), Pratts project todeneliteratureasspeechact(1977),andmorerecently,Fluderniksattempttoderivenarratologicalcategoriesfromfeaturesofspontane-ousconversationalstorytelling(1996)arethreeexamplesofpreviousliteraryinvestigationsthathavetriedtoovercomethetraditionaldi-chotomizationoforalityandtextuality.Ioerthisstudyinasimilarspirit, and yet I distinguish it from these through its cultural and histori-calspecicity.Itsmajorclaimsarenotaboutspeechorliteratureingeneral,butratheraboutaparticulartrendincontemporaryprosec-tion.Isuggestthatfromthecurrentvantagepointofculturalstudies,availablemapsofthetwentieth-centurynovel(Realism-Modernism-Postmodernism;x-y-z)donthelpusnavigatewellenoughanymorethroughcertainfeaturesoftheculturallandscape.Wehavetoframedierent questions and then redraw the maps. To push my topographicalmetaphor one step further, Im not suggesting that the continents haveshifted but rather that there are mountain ranges and deserts, or, betterstill,roadsthroughthemountainsanddesertsthatpeoplehavebeenusing but which we havent charted yet. Identifying talk ction may helpus chart some of them.During my rst pedagogic journey through novelistic territory, I waswaylaidandforcedtonoticethatIfonawintersnightatravelerad-dressed my student in a dierent fashion than that of other novels we hadread in the course. That student did not feel addressed just in the sense ofPrefacexiiiencountering a topic he found interesting. He felt addressed in the senseof being the interlocutor. He experienced properly managed writing asa conversation in which he had a personal stake: the novel was talking tohim, and it was about him. His reaction and particularly his choice of theword talk prompted me to ask myself in what sense reading could belike conversation. The answer I eventually came up with after apprentic-ing in sociolinguistics is that in the case of certain texts, reading can beconsidered talk as interaction.4 By talk as interaction, I mean conversa-tionasaturn-takingsystem.Turnsormoves,asunderstoodbyErving Goman and other sociolinguists, are not necessarily verbal butratherarecharacterizedbytheirexpressionoforientationtoexchange.Specically, Goman thinks of the rst move, the statement, as reveal-ing orientation to some sort of answering to follow. The second move,orreply,ischaracterizedbyitsbeingseenasanansweringofsomekind to a preceding matter that has been raised (1981: 24). Along theselines, in many cultures, clapping ones hands together functions as re-ply(applause)tothepresentationofanentirestoryorplayasstate-ment.Similarly,gesturingtoonesbarewristwithaquizzicallookonones face functions equivalently to uttering the words Do you have thetime? And the shaking of ones head side to side replies as eectively tothe issue that has been raised as the verbal response No.Usingaframeworkoftalkasinteractiontoreconsidertwentieth-century prose ction, I seek texts I can classify as statements, in Go-mans sense of oriented to an answering. What I mean here by the text asstatement, as the rst part of the conversation, are texts that in toto or inpart ask for their readers to react to them in certain ways. Such texts donot suppress telling to promote showing, to use the terms given widecurrency by Henry James and his collaborator Percy Lubbock that sub-stantially inuenced the way we drew our rst maps of twentieth-centuryprosection;rather,theyrevealtheiraddressivity,asBakhtinputsit.When such texts are read by esh-and-blood readers like my student ormyself, who nd themselves feeling something, something like being theaudienceforthistext,somethinglikewantingtodisplaytheorienta-tion the text seems to be asking for, readers can be said to be respond-ing, or replying in Gomans sense. In the type of analysis I propose, todosomething(feelsomething,thinksomething)andtoidentifythatsomethingasanappropriatereplytothetext-as-statement,constitutePrefacexivreading as interaction, or as Talk (with a capital T to mark this sense oftheword).Itcouldbearguedthatalltexts,literaryandnonliterary,revealtheiraddressivitybyvirtueofbeingwrittendown,andthatallreading involves having a response. But, in the spirit of cultural studies,my concept of Talk is only intended to apply within an historical contextin which to write and read literature self-consciously as communicationthat aims for eects in the real world must be viewed as going against thegrain, as going against the hegemony of a twentieth-century aestheticistview of literature as art for arts sake.Reading prose ction as a turn-taking system like conversation helpsmenoticetextsfromnumerousmomentsandplacesthathaventre-ceived much attention to date and to perceive roads between these textsand some others that are more well known. The contribution of this studyistoconnectsuchtextstoeachothernotsomuchthroughcontentornational tradition or literary movement or style or narrative technique, asthrough the type of orientation to exchange they exemplify, as throughthe type of interaction they create between themselves and their readers,as through the type of response they seek outside the writing and readingtransaction.FocusingonprosectionasTalkallowsmetoaskwhatcultural work such interaction does in our secondary oral age. My vari-ousanswerstothisquestionallowmenotonlytogroupcertaintextsamong those I have identied as talk ction that seem to do similar workbut also to relate these groupings to extraliterary cultural developments.IthinkofthesegroupingsasmodesofTalking.ThemodesIwilldiscussinthisbookarestorytelling,testimony,apostrophe,andinteractivity. In accordance with a view of secondary orality as a wide-spreadphenomenon,Iassumetheremustbeothermodesthatcanbeidentied by experts with cultural knowledge dierent from my own. Fornow,Iwillpresentmyfourmodesinanorderthatforegroundsmydeningcriterionofinteraction.Thatistosay,Iexaminethesemodesalonganaxisofincreasingexchange;eachsubsequentmodedemandsgreater eort on the part of the reader to recognize the call of the text tointeraction or to carry out the interaction itself.Mystudyunfoldsinvechapters.Intherstchapter,Idenemyconceptoftalkctionbyexploringthegeneralnotionoftalkasinter-actionandbydevelopingmorefullytherestrictednotionsofstate-ment,reply,andTalkintroducedbrieyabove.IreviewcurrentPrefacexvconceptionsofsecondaryoralityandsuggesthowtheyhelpusunder-stand the communicative hybridity of our age. I look at talk radio and thetelevision talk show to illustrate mediated interaction, a structural char-acteristic these genres share with talk ction.Each of the next four chapters takes up one of my talk ction modes;eachstrivestoilluminatethenatureoforientationtoexchangeinthat mode by discussing the historical or cultural circumstances to whichitrespondsandbycloselyreadingseveralliterarytexts.Inchapter2,Storytelling:TalkasSustenance,Iproposethatsomelate-twentieth-century novels address their readers as if they were not only auditors butalsoasifthosereader-listenerswerecommittedtosustainingtherela-tionships extended to them by the narrators. I use the term storytellingtosignaltheconnectionofthesetextstotheoralexchangeofstorieswhose intimacy and immediacy they try to reproduce in their own fash-ion.Whilemysuspicionisthateverycultureinthetwentiethcenturyregisterstheshiftingrelationshipbetweenoralityandtextuality,Ihavechosen my examples from two cultures that particularly employ talk forpassingonculturalandhistoricalknowledgethatsustainscommunity:the Modern Greek and the African American. This preoccupation withoralcommunicationisapparentinlate-twentieth-centurytextslikeKstas Tachtsss The Third Wedding Wreath and Gloria Naylors MamaDaythroughtherelationshipeachestablisheswiththereader,anen-gagedlistenerwhowillinturnbecomeateller.Iforegroundtheserelationshipswithreferencetonineteenth-centurytextslikeDimtrisViklass Luks Lras and Harriet Wilsons Our Nig, where the narratorialclamor for response exposed a belief that creating a relationship betweentext and reader was even literally a matter of life and death. Our associa-tions with storytelling as a primary form of human interaction and thevitalinthesenseofbothbasicandlife-sustainingdemandonthereadertolistensuggesttomethatthestorytellingmodeshouldbeconsidered rst.Inchapter3,Testimony:TalkasWitnessing,Iproposethatnovelsfrom a wide array of societies over the course of the century have tried torespondtotraumainictedthroughwar,brutalregimes,andinterper-sonalviolencebywitnessingtotheserampantactsofaggression.Thenature of trauma itself requires modifying notions of telling and listen-ing to reect that constructing a narrative about the trauma is a collab-Prefacexviorative task between witness-victim and cowitness-enabler. Whereas inmy storytelling mode, readers are called through direct address to listen(receivethestory)withtheproperattitude,Talkinginmytestimonymode is more dicult to decipher; readers must rst recognize the textas a call to testify, and then they must interpret the evidence in an act ofcowitnessing that creates the story of the trauma for the rst time. Testi-monytothepresenceoftraumacantaketheformofmimetictextualperformanceoftraumaticsymptoms(forinstance,repetition,elision,absence of inside views within the narrative) or of the telling itself (forinstance, uncompleted, unpublished, or misunderstood texts whose lackofsuccessissubsequentlyinterpretedwitnessedtoastestimonytotrauma).Specically,Ioeraschemaofcircuitsofwitnessingthataccountsfortestimonyatthelevelsofthestory,thediscourse,andtheproductionandreceptionofthetext.Ibrieyillustratethesecircuitswith a wide range of familiar twentieth-century texts (from Woolf s Mrs.DallowaytoCamussTheFalltoAtwoodsTheHandmaidsTale),andthenoeramoresustainedtreatmentofonelesswellknownnovel,GertrudKolmarsAJewishMother,toshowhowthevariouscircuitsinterrelate to produce Talk between text and contemporary reader.My fourth chapter, Apostrophe: Talk as Performance, borrows fromtherhetoricalgureforturningawayfromonesnormalaudiencetoaddress someone or something who by reason of absence, death, inani-mateness,and/ormereconventioncannotanswerback.Thoughapos-trophe has been extensively discussed in the context of oratory and lyric,no one has remarked its systematic use in some recent narrative ction,where a rst-person narrator (inscribed or eaced) tells a story primarilythroughaddresstoa you,whodoesnotreply.Apostropheisaparticu-larly apt metaphor to describe a type of talk ction, since the content ofthemessagebeingdeliveredisrarelyasimportantastherelationshipscreatedbythecomplicatedenunciativesituation.Structuresofaddressaremobilizednottopromoteaverbalreplybythespeciedaddressee(who, besides, may be incapable of speaking) but rather to promote anemotionalresponseinactualreaders.Whereasidentifyingthetextasstatement in the testimony mode provides a hermeneutic challenge toreaders,intheapostrophicmode,readersfacetheperhapsevenmorediculttaskofrecognizingtheaddressasdouble,assimultaneouslyforandnotforthem.Theycanchoosetostepintotheroleofthead-Prefacexviidressee, while recognizing that they are performing a script written forsomeoneelse.IdescribeactualandinscribedreaderresponsestotheapostrophicyousinJaneRulesThisIsNotforYou,MichelButorsChange of Heart, Gnter Grasss novella, Cat and Mouse, Julio CortzarsGrati,andJohnBarthsLife-Story.Iconcludebyreturningtothetextthatlaunchedmysearchfortalkction:ItaloCalvinosIfonawinters night a traveler. My readings illustrate how apostropheaddressthatisnotquiteaddressdeliversanotherkindofmessage,amessageaboutvariousblockstointimacyinpostmodernsocietiesandhowtoredress them.In chapter 5, Interactivity: Talk as Collaboration, I sketch out whatappearstobetheendgameoftalkction.Late-twentieth-centuryin-novations in communication technologies have spawned an era of inter-activestorytelling.Technologyfacilitatestheorientationtoexchangethat I have been tracing in prose ction in the twentieth century, leadingto even greater activity on the part of readers. If we think of the role of thereader in the apostrophic mode as scripted and performed, in the inter-active mode, the scripting itself requires the activity of both participantstotheTalk,thetraditionallynamedwriterandreader.IbeginthischapterwithabriefanalysisofJulioCortzarspioneeringnovelHop-scotch, in which readers are invited to create their own text by assemblingthe chapters in one of two orders. Of course, to invite reading in an orderother than the conventional start to nish is to open the door to readingin any sequence whatsoever, and thus Hopscotch can be considered theforerunner to cyberstories that are told only when the reader selectsandordersandevenwrites.Iconcludewithaconsiderationofcom-puterhypertextsandinteractivevideomodalitiesthroughwhichthevery concepts of book, writer, and reader begin to vanish, as does there-fore my concept of talk ction.Like authors of most cultural study projects, I make large claims aboutthephenomenaImconsidering.Iattempttosupportthoseclaimsbyreading a particularly broad range of texts in complexly developed con-texts.MychoiceofspecicnovelsandstorieswasguidedaboveallbyselectingthosethatmostclearlyillustratethemodeIdescribeineachchapter. But I also purposely selected examples that might be less famil-iar to some readers, hoping to support my thesis that the talk phenome-non is a widespread one. My corpus prompts two provisos, one practicalPrefacexviiiand one more substantial. As for the practical, wherever possible I haveusedpublishedtranslationsofnon-Englishtextstofacilitatemyau-diencesindependentevaluationsofmyreadings.Still,thereareoc-casionswhensuchtranslationsdonotfollowtheoriginaltextcloselyenoughtoillustratemypoint,inwhichcaseIhaveincludedboththeoriginal language and my own translation of it. As for the more substan-tialissuerelatedtomycorpus,asvariedtheliterarytraditionsfromwhichIhaveselected,myexamplesarelimitedbymyownprimarilyWestern training. I hope that scholars will seek Talk in prose ction fromcultures not represented in this study, and I will welcome any additionalmodes or modications they may propose.Prefaces often mention the origins of the study at hand, and this one hasbeen no exception. But in sharing my encounter with the undergraduatewho talked with Calvino, I have admitted only the most explicit prodtodevelopingtheconceptoftalkction.Iwanttoconcludebybrieymentioningamorepersonalsourceofmystudy,becauseIbelieveitprovides some insight into my fascination with orality and textuality andintowhathascometofeellikeanobsessionwithcertaintypesofliter-ary texts.Ihavealwayswonderedwhymyfamilymemberstellstoriesthewaythey do. Even as a youngster, I noticed how each of us tends to connectmany things with the telling of an anecdote, quotidian or extraordinary.No one in my family tells a short story. We never go directly to the eventbut rather set the scene with detailed explanations of the people involvedand how we know them. If one of us wants to relate a feeling or an idea,we always seem to embed it in a story: how I came to have that feeling oridea. While I, as much as any other member of my family, engage in thisbehavior(forinstance,IknewIwouldopenthisprefacebytellingthestory of how I came to the idea of talk ction), I also nd myself some-what embarrassed by it.At the time I began investigating the dynamics of orality and literacy, Ibelieved I was following a strictly intellectual concern. Yet it wasnt longbefore I realized the extent to which this search addressed my dilemmaaboutfamilyspeechstyle.IrecallthesenseofreliefIfeltafterreadingDeborah Tannens comparative analyses of Athenian Greek and Califor-nian American womens reactions to the same silent lm (1980, 1982a).PrefacexixAlthough my own parents were raised in rural Greece and I in suburbanNew York, the participants in Tannens study matched closely enough tointrigue me, indeed closely enough for me to identify with all of them.InevaluatingtheirresponsestothequestionWhathappenedinthemovie?Tannenremarksseveralsetsofdierencesthatorganizealongcultural lines. Whereas Americans discussed the lm as a lm, recount-ingdetails,reconstructingthetemporalsequence,andusingtechnicalcinematic terms to do this, the Greeks tended to oer explanations of theevents and characters in the lm, omitting the movie frame and detailsthatdidntcontributetotheirphilosophizing.Americansfocusedonmessagecontenttodisplaytheiranalyticskillstotheinterviewer,whiletheGreeksusedpersonalinteractiontodisplaytheirstorytellingskills.Even though everyone gave their answers orally to an interviewer, Tan-nen suggests that the Americans were deploying literate strategies theyhadlearnedatschoolandthattheyassociatedwithaninterviewsitua-tion, whereas the Greeks deployed oral strategies they had learned athome and that they associated with interpersonal communication. (Tan-nenandothersconnectfocusonmessagewithliteratecultureandfocus on relationship with oral.) Tannen concludes that insofar as anyverbalperformanceisanexerciseinpresentation-of-self,itseemsthattheAmericanswereconcernedwithpresentingthemselvesassophisti-cated movie viewers and able recallers, while the Greeks were concernedwith presenting themselves as acute judges of human behavior and goodstorytellers(1980:55).WhileIndthesemarkersoforalandliteratestrategiesultimatelytoosimplistic,Tannensworkhelpedmeunder-standhow,asamemberofbothcultures,IwasjudgingmyfamilysstorytellingstrategiesbyAmericancriteriaIhadlearnedoutsidethehome.Andyetwhenitcametoconversing,liketheGreekwomeninTannens study, I would tell stories in the style of my relatives.TheGreekcivilization,ofcourse,hasknownwritingformillennia.Nevertheless,becauseofhistoricalcircumstances,likethecenturies-longOttomanoccupation(withitsrepressionofGreekschools),toname the most prominent one, oral strategies have played a large role inshapingandpreservingthecultureofmodernGreece.AsIeducatedmyselfaboutdebatesoverthenatureoforalityandliteracygenerally,Ibegan to notice that features cited to explain the presumed poor qualityofModernGreekprosectionarecharacteristicsassociatedwithoralPrefacexxstorytelling,forexample,episodicstructure(Tziovas1989).5Iwasin-spiredtosearchfororalelementsinGreekprose,nottocompareitagainst more literate traditions and pronounce it inferior, but rather tocharacterizemorepreciselyitsuniquequalitiesasawrittengenrede-velopinginaculturewithhighresidualorality,asWalterOnghasit(1982:6869).Whiletheexactresultsofthatinvestigationhavebeenpublished elsewhere and are not directly relevant here (Kacandes 1990,1992), I mention this previous direction of my research because my loveof Greek prose with its oral residue led me to frame the broader ques-tion behind this book about the hybridity of prose ction written in other(all?) cultures of our secondary oral age. I found myself shifting from amoremechanicalevaluationofliterateandoralqualitiesofapar-ticular novel to an investigation of the cultural values it expresses and theculturalworkitdoes.Asaresult,Ibegantoseetextualstrategiesthatseemedtorecruitreadersintorelationship,intoformsofinteractionwith works of prose ction that potentially had consequences beyond theactual reading experience. I began to think of the secondary oral culturesin which these texts were produced not primarily as cultures where thespoken word can be heard anywhere, any time, but as ones in which themaincharacteristicofspeechthatitbringsparticipantsintorelation-shipbecomesprivilegedinalmostallforumsoflife.ThisiswhyTalkbecame the organizing principle of my study. Talk ction lls the samefunction as speech: it creates relationships and elicits interaction.Ithinkofthisbookasacelebrationoftalkinallitssenses.LikeTannens Greek interview subjects, I am aiming to tell a good story. And Ilook forward to you talking back.xxiAcknowledgmentsThis is a book about writing and reading as interaction, something with-outwhichthisbooknevercouldhavebeenwritten.Itisalsoabookabout stories, and since I tell quite a few anecdotes in the main text, I willtry to restrict the length of the ones I tell here. I have been fortunate toteachalargenumberofverysmartstudentsatHarvardUniversity,theUniversityofTexasatAustin,andDartmouthCollege;theirreadingagendashaveconcretelycontributedtowhatIreadandhowIthinkabout literature. I particularly want to single out the students in DonaldFangers Comedy and the Novel course and Susan R. Suleimans Au-thor, Text, Reader seminar at Harvard, where the specic seeds for thisstudy were planted in me as a graduate teaching fellow; and the studentsinmyComparativeLiterature39class,TraumaandProseFiction,atDartmouth,whereIrehearsedthemodelofnarrativewitnessingthatinforms chapter 3.Developing the skills to write this book has taken many years. I wantto thank Dorrit Cohn for teaching me how to read closely and Susan R.Suleimanformodelinghowtoriskwhooneisandenjoyit.MadelineMaxwell,JrgenStreeck,andthelateRobertHopperoftheCollegeofCommunication at the University of Texas at Austin generously invitedme to join the Monday afternoon viewing group, where they introducedme to the tools of conversation analysis and inspired me to consider theinsights of sociolinguistics in the context of literature. For rst suggest-ing I read the work of Walter Ong, I am indebted to Margaret Alexiou;andforstimulatingconversationsonoralityandliteracyIthankDinaandJoelSherzer.TheSocietyfortheStudyofNarrativeLiteraturehasbeenahospitableplacetolearnmoreaboutnarratologyandtotryoutideas: Jim Phelan, Peter Rabinowitz, and Gerry Prince need to be singledoutfortheirhelpfulfeedbackonthisproject.Forculturallyspecicexplorationsofwhatisatstakeintalk,IthankmyfatherJohnG.Kacandes and my friend Michael Hanchard. My rst introduction to theModern Greek texts I analyze in chapter 2 came through the erudite andkindlateGeorgeP.Savidis;mymotherLucieN.KacandeshelpedmeAcknowledgmentsxxiipuzzlethroughthemeaningofseveralcriticalGreekphrases.Myjour-ney into cyberspace would not have been possible without the guidanceofmycomputer-savvyfriends,DavidBush,AlfredDupraz,andMarcComina.Mythanks,too,toSebastianfordemonstratingtheuseofajoystickandforansweringallmyquestionsandtoKeithforpatientlyexplaining the thrill he nds in Unreal.ConcreteaidforwritingthisbookcamefromDartmouthCollege,mostespeciallyintheformsofaBurkeResearchAwardandaJuniorFaculty Fellowship. Research help from Lauryn Zipse, Laura Montague,Linda Williams, Susan Stiles, and Audrey Choi greatly enriched the his-torical dimension of the project. My thanks to Gail Vernazza for techni-calhelp.InvitationstolecturefromtheModernGreekStudyGroupoftheCenterforLiteraryandCulturalStudiesandtheDepartmentofComparative Literature at Harvard University, the Public Lecture SeriesatDavidsonCollege,theDepartmentofGermanStudiesatIndianaUniversity,theWomensStudiesResearchSeminarattheUniversityofTexas at Austin, and the Humanities Forum at Dartmouth College pro-pelled this project forward at critical stages. Series editor David Hermanand humanities editor Virginia Wright-Peterson showed an early enthu-siasmfortheprojectthathasmademyinteractionwithUniversityofNebraska Press enjoyable and productive from beginning to end.IwouldliketothankMichaelRubinerforhiskindpermissiontoreprint a portion of T. S. Eliot Interactive, which originally appeared inthe New York Times Magazine (18 June 1995). I would also like to thankthe editors and anonymous readers who helped me work through earlierversions of some of the arguments made in this book. The commitmentto text-reader interaction in Modern Greek novels discussed in chapter 2wasoriginallyrehearsedinOrality,ReaderAddress,andAnonymousYou.OnTranslatingSecondPersonReferencesfromModernGreekProse (Journal of Modern Greek Studies 8, no. 2 [1990]: 22343) and inThe Oral Tradition and Modern Greek Literature (Laografa: A News-letteroftheInternationalGreekFolkloreSociety9,no.5[1992]:38).AshorterreadingofKolmarsnovelthanthatwhichappearsinchapter3was published in Narrative Witnessing as Memory Work: Reading Ger-trudKolmarsAJewishMother(ActsofMemory,ed.MiekeBal,Jona-thanCrewe,andLeoSpitzer[Hanover,1999],5571).Theideasoflit-eraryperformativeandnarrativeapostrophethatarediscussedinAcknowledgmentsxxiiichapter 4 were rst oated in Are You in the Text? The Literary Perfor-mativeinPostmodernistFiction(TextandPerformanceQuarterly13[1993]:13953)andNarrativeApostrophe:Reading,Rhetoric,Resis-tanceinMichelButorsLaModicationandJulioCortzarsGrati (Style 28, no. 3 [1994]: 32949).AsIhopetoconvinceyouinthechaptersahead,someofuscannotwrite without readers who are very much present to us; I could not havewritten this book without those friends and colleagues who were willingtobeinterlocutorsforme:KitBelgum,SusanBrison,ScottDenham,MaryDesjardins,GerdGemnden,MaryJeanGreen,LindaHaverty-Rugg, Lynn Higgins, Alexis Jetter, Monika Kallan, Amy Lawrence, Jenni-ferLevin,AgnesLugo-Ortiz,DianeMiliotes,AdamNewton,AnneliseOrleck, Graziella Parati, Jonathan Petropoulos, Ivy Schweitzer, Leo Spit-zer, Andrea Tarnowski, Tom Trezise, Janet Whatley, and Mark Williams.Robyn Warhol and Mary Lou Kete, the members of my writing group inBurlington, and Lisa Moore, Marianne Hirsch, and Susanne Zantop readmy drafts with a level of attention that even Pulitzer Prize winners wouldbeluckytoget;thisbookissimplybetterwrittenandmoreinterestingbecause of their input. The aws that remain can be no fault of theirs.The emotional support that allowed me to complete this project camefrom many of the people acknowledged above, but most especially fromNora Pirquet, my church family, my nuclear family, and from the famillesuisseintowhichImarried.John,Lucie,Maria,Steve,Tina,Georgia,Tom,Regina,andPeter,etMireille,Alfred,Marie-Claude,Christine,etAnne-Marie,yourtastymeals,encouragingconversations,andsimplefaiththatIhadsomethinginterestingtosaykeptmegoingattimesItruly would have preferred to stop. Half and Susanne Zantop encouragedme in this and other endeavors with the pride of parents and the con-dence of best friends. They would have enjoyed celebrating the appear-anceofthisbook.Finally,IthankPhilippeCarrard,whosegoodideasinform every aspect of this project, and whose wit and love sustained mein ways that cannot be adequately described here.talk fiction11secondaryoralityTalk as InteractionIt is in talk alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In short, the rstduty of a man [sic] is to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk,which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible ofpleasures. It costs nothing in money; it completes our education, founds andfosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any stateof health.robert louis stevenson, Talk and TalkersThe premise of this book is that literature, like other institutions, shapesand is shaped by shifting forms of communication. The major shift of thejust completed twentieth century has been identied colloquially as thetalkexplosionandprofessionallyassecondaryorality.Inmyview,the most important consequence of this oral resurgence has been an asyet unfully recognized privileging of the interactive component of com-munication. In the preface I proposed talk ction as a label for worksoftwentieth-centurynarrativeliteraturethatpromoteasenseofrela-tionshipandexchangeinreadersthatwenormallyassociatewithface-to-face interaction. I connect orientation to exchange in these texts tosociolinguisticdenitionsofconversationasaturn-takingsystemtobolstermycontentionthatsomeliterature,inthissense,anyway,trulydoes talk. I use the word ction in my titular concept denotatively tosignal the restriction of my study to prose ction, but also connotativelyto evoke the useful pretenses, the ctions, on which the broader idea ofsecondary orality and the narrower idea of talk ction rely. On the sur-faceofit,mymodesoftalkction,storytelling,testimony,apos-trophe,andinteractivity,soundlikefourquitedistinctphenomena.In this chapter I follow the thread of talk as interaction that ties thesemodes together by (a) creating a context for and eshing out the socio-linguistic denition of talk introduced in the preface; (b) identifying theSecondary Orality2place of interaction in notions of secondary orality; (c) illustrating talk asinteraction in familiar secondary oral genres, namely, in talk radio andthetelevisiontalkshow;and(d)demonstratingwhattalkasinter-action, my Talk, can mean in prose ction.TalkBaby talk, grown-up talk, girl talk, self-talk, street talk, small talk, shoptalk, black talk, straight talk, double-talk, hot talk, bad talk, cheap talk,talkabouttown,talkoftheparty,talking-to,talkingback,talkingup,talking down, talking out, talking over, talking big, talking dirty, talkingsense, talking turkey, talking garbage, talking shit, talking story, talkingcure,talkingbook,talkinghead,talkradio,talkshow,alltalk,confron-talk, talk explosion. Talk, talk, talk. We use the word all the time, butwhat does it mean?Forthepurposesofthisstudy,IfollowRobertLouisStevensonandothersinunderstandingthetermtalkasreferringrsttotheubiq-uitous situation of the mundane exchange of words between two or morepeople.Insummoningthismodel,Iforegroundtheinteractionalele-mentoflanguage,aswellasitsimmediacy,itstopicality,anditsreci-procity.Further,Iaimtoalignmyselfwiththosescholarswhobelievethatconversationisthefoundationforotherformsofcommunicationandthatthesamedialogicprinciplegovernsrelationswithinandamong written words as within and among spoken utterances (Holquist1985: 83).An interactional conception of language developed over many routes,throughandbetweendisciplinessuchaspsychology,philosophy,an-thropology, sociology, and certain lines of inquiry within linguistics. Mystudy relies most explicitly on a tradition that can be plotted from HaroldGarnkel, Dell Hymes, and Erving Goman to Harvey Sacks, EmanuelScheglo, and Gail Jeerson. Sociologist Garnkel developed an intellec-tualapproachknownbytheawkwardbutdescriptivenameethno-methodology,andwascommittedtounderstandingdailylifefromwithinactualsocialsettings.Hebelievedthatpastandpresentinter-actions,notthewordsoflanguage,lieattheheartofcommunicating(1967). Hymes is associated with a hybrid of anthropology and sociologyoften referred to as the ethnography of speaking. Among other things,Secondary Orality3heproposedthedevelopmentofaeldcalledcomparativespeaking,alongthelinesofcomparativereligionorcomparativezoology(seeHymes1962,1974a,1974b;BaumanandScherzer1974;Tedlock1983;Sherzer 1992). Goman, of course, was the premier investigator of face-to-face interaction; he made apparent the unspoken rules of common-placebehavior.SacksandScheglo(Gomansstudents),alongwithGailJeerson,foundedconversationanalysis,adisciplineinwhichtranscripts from unstaged, unscripted conversations can be analyzed atthemostminuteleveltodeterminehowverbalinteractionproceedsinspecic contexts. All these approaches reject the materials of traditionallinguisticanalysis,articialdatalikethestatementthecatisonthemat. They listen instead to the word spoken in situ. Data are gatheredmainly from interpersonal encounters unelicited by researchers and areanalyzed for the interconnection of mundane conversation, social struc-ture, and culture. Why? Because, as ethnographer Moerman puts it, in aformulationwithwhichmanypractitionersofthesedisciplineswouldprobably be comfortable, language itself is mute. Anyone interested inhow a view of the world is shared, recognized, maintained, or socializedwithinacommunitymustattendtolanguagemadepublicandsociallycompelling, must attend to talk (1988: 103).By attending to talk, these sociolinguists shifted notions of conversa-tiontowardtheinteractional.Threeaspectsofthisshiftparticularlyinform my project: the building blocks of talk are not words or sentencesbutratherturnsormoves;therolesofspeakerandlistenerareconceivedasequallyintegralparticipants;andtheactivityitselfisdened not so much by what gets produced (the content of the speech)as by participants perceptions of what is going on.Baldly, participants take turns. A more elegant denition of talk in theidiom of conversation analysis characteristically emphasizes interactionandreciprocity:Talkisdesignedtoreectbackonpriorturnsandproject ahead to future ones, and we interpret talk as if it is tied in someway to prior and future turns (Nofsinger 1991: 3). The basic principles ofturn organization were rst outlined by Sacks, Scheglo, and Jeerson intheir foundational 1974 article, A Simplest Systematics for the Organiza-tionofTurn-TakingforConversation.Specically,conversationana-lysts dene ordinary, natural, or spontaneous conversation as in-stancesofspeechexchangeorganizationwithvariableturnorder,turnSecondary Orality4size, and turn content peculiar to a given occasion and the participantsinvolved (West and Zimmerman 1982: 515). Sacks and Scheglo furtherproposed the useful concept of adjacency pair, observing that a cur-rentaction(arstpairpartsuchasagreetingoraquestion)requirestheproductionofareciprocalaction(orsecondpairpart)attherstpossible opportunity after the completion of the rst (as summarized inGoodwin and Heritage 1990: 287). That the absence of a second pair partwill be noticed conrms that it is expected. Conversation analysis positsthatadjacencypairorganizationisanelementaryframeworkthroughwhichconversationalparticipantswillinevitablydisplaysomeanalysisofoneanothersactions(GoodwinandHeritage288).Fromthisper-spective,arstturnisalwaysproducednotonlywiththetraditionallynamedreceiverinmindbutalsowiththeideathatthereceiverwillquickly take a turn as speaker. Sackss terms participant and partyfacilitateareconceptualizationoftherolesofspeaker-senderandlistener-receiver, particularly with regard to independence and ac-tivity. In the view of conversation analysts, speakers are not sovereignsimposingwhattheyhavetosayonpassivelisteners.Rather,hearersareactiveparticipantsintheprocessofbuildingaturnattalk,andtheiraction,ornonaction,canleadtosubstantialmodicationsinthesentencethespeakerisintheprocessofproducing(GoodwinandHeritage 293).GomanderivesconcordantnotionsoftalkthroughtheWittgen-steinianconceptofgames.Thecomponentsofthesegamesaremoves that may sometimes coincide with a sentence and sometimeswith a turns talk but need do neither (Goman 1981: 24). That is to say,forGoman,talkisnotcompletelydependentonwords.Hedeparts,further than conversation analysis originally did, from the standard lin-guisticnotionsofquestionsandanswers,statementsandreplies,evenawayfromexclusivelyverbalutterances.Heappropriatesfromlinguis-tics the terms statement and reply, only to redene them for his ownpurposes. Goman denes statement as a move characterized by anorientation to some sort of answering to follow and reply as a movecharacterized by its being seen as an answering of some kind to a preced-ing matter that has been raised (24). These denitions, like those citedabove,identifytalkbyitscharacteristicofmutualfocus,thatis,byitsparticipantsorientationtowardexchange,ortoputityetanotherway,Secondary Orality5by its participants perception that they are interacting with each other.For my work, Gomans understanding of the attitude of participants iscritical: a reply is constituted not by being an answering, but by beingseenbyparticipantsasananswering.AswithSacksandScheglosnotionoftheadjacencypair,asecondpairpartmayneveractuallymaterialize, but that would not change the fact that a statement in Go-mans sense displays orientation to an anticipated response.Goman repeatedly and humorously illustrates that nonlinguistic actsareoftenmoreappropriaterepliestostatementsthanareverbalutter-ances:wewouldbebaedbysomeonerespondingyestothequeryDoyouhavethetime?andthenwalkingaway.Similarly,aroundthetable we are more likely to expect to receive the salt than to be told yes, Ican pass it and to receive nothing. An oral response to On your mark,get set, go or The test begins now would be self-defeating (Goman3640;seealsoGoodwinandHeritage298).Inalltheseexamples,acombination of verbal and nonverbal actions or nonverbal actions alonecanfunctioneectivelyassecondpairparts;theactionsofgivingthetime(bylookingatoneswatchandthenverballyannouncingit,byshowing ones wristwatch, or by gesturing to the lack of one), passing thesalt, or starting the race or test reveal the respondents thorough orienta-tion toward the matter that has been raised by the speaker.Although sociolinguists often use the terms talk and conversationinterchangeably, I have chosen the term talk for my central concept toavoidthemorestrictlyverbalconnotationsofthewordconversationandtoforegroundtheideathatinteractionmatters.InthisIfollowGomans hypothesis that What is basic to natural talk might not be aconversationalunitatall,butaninteractionalone(48).Theinter-actional unit may contain any number of smaller elements (even turnsintheconversationanalyticsense),butthelengthoftheinteractionalunit will depend on appropriate orientation to the matter that has beenraised,notonanabstractunitofspeechsuchasthesentencenoronchangeofspeaker.Gomansillustrationofthispointisparticularlyrelevantformystudy.Inthecaseoforalstorytelling,asintheperfor-manceofaplay,hesuggests,theansweringwilltaketheformofappreciationnotforthelastsentenceutteredbutratherforthewholestoryanditstelling(42).ThisexamplepointstoonemorefeatureofGomans model that informs my own project to view some literature asSecondary Orality6Talk. The participants in talk should not be thought of as speaker andrespondent, unless we keep in mind that they refer not to individualsas such, but to enacted capacities (Goman 46). In the cases just raisedof oral storytelling or the theater, the enacted capacity of speaker maybe one or more persons relating the story or performing the play. Thecomplementaryenactedcapacityofrespondentmaybeasinglelis-tener or a group of varying size orienting to the statement (story, play)asanaudience.Theinstanceofself-talkfurtherillustratestheutilityofthismorecapaciousconceptionofparticipantssincebothrolesofspeaker and respondent are enacted, but a sole individual makes allthe moves (Goman 80).These denitions and examples have brought me far from my baselineof talk as the mundane conversational exchange of words between two ormorepeople.However,exchangemorepreciselynow,orientationtoexchangeremainscentral.Iappeartohavesetmyselfuptomaketheargumentthattheinteractionalunitoftalkctionwouldbethepro-duction(writing)andconsumption(reading)oftheliterarytext.Idomeanthis,thoughthisappliestoallction,indeedtoallwriting.Iwanttodenetalkctionassomethingmuchmorenarrow.Gomanand conversation analysts have expended much eort in specifying themodications from spontaneous conversation for other kinds of speech-exchange systems, such as visits to the doctor, telephone calls, or televi-sion news interviews. I undertake my project to specify how orientationto exchange is expressed in some twentieth-century narrative literaturein a similar spirit. But before I proceed with describing talk ction as aturn-takingsystemwithinaspecichistoricalandculturalcontext,Ineed to pose a question about that context: Why is an understanding oftalkasinteractionlikethatjustlaidoutsoalientoourculturethatweneed specialists to propose and explain it? The answer lies in two issuesthat go hand in hand, those of medium and communicative era.Spoken-Written Wor(l)ds, aka The Age of Secondary OralitySo far, I have used secondary orality as a descriptive term for an ageourageoftechnologicalinnovationthatenablesthespokenwordtoreemergeasthedominantformofcommunication.Tobesure,oralspeechhasalwaysbeenthedominantmethodofcommunicatinginSecondary Orality7terms of numbers of minutes per day in which it is used by numbers ofpeople.Butthetermsecondaryoralityismeanttoreference(amongother things) the proliferation of modes for the conduct of oral speech,aswellasthedisplacementthroughthosemodesofwrittenorprintedcommunication,forinstancethediminutionofpersonalletterwritingthrough use of the telephone.Toexpandthisparsingoftheterm:secondaryoralityderivesfromdiachronic approaches to the study of human communication, in whichsocieties are assumed to progress from an exclusively oral mode of com-munication(primaryoral)toonebasedonwriting(andthereforeliterate,textual,orchirographic).Asubsequentoralage,whichprivileges speech, serves as an addendum to this model. Simply put, wehearmorespeechduringourwakinghoursthanourparents,grand-parents, and great-grandparents presumably did. But how does this in-undationofspeechaectus?Towhatextentisthewordawholeworld? Assuming that the medium of communication does shape thementalityofthoseusingitovertime,whatmentalitiesresultfromourhybrid ways of communicating? To rephrase my question from above, ifweareoralonceagainandinteractionissuchabasiccomponentoforal communication, why is an understanding of talk as interaction notobvious to us?Theshortanswertothislastquestionisthatwearenotoralonceagain, we are secondary oral for the rst time, only very recently hav-ingwokenuptothepresenceoforalityasacontemporaryfactinourmidst(Havelock1986:118).Withinadiachronicoral-literateschema,the designation secondary refers not only to its chronological sense ofcomingaftersomethingelse(thatis,secondaryoralitycomesafteraprimary oral and a literate stage) but also to the idea of being auxiliaryorsubordinate.Thatistosay,secondaryoralitycouldnotcomeintobeing without the written word, both because the technologies that facil-itatetheresurgenceofthespokenwordrelyonwrittenlanguagefordevelopment and some levels of operation, and also because the changesinmentalityassociatedwithliteracyforexample,individualism,self-consciousness,andasenseofcommunicationastransferofinforma-tionendure in this communicative age. On this score, the expressionsecondary orality is opaque, only indirectly signaling the literate com-ponentsofthephenomenon.IntentionallyorunintentionallyignoringSecondary Orality8thedependencyofsecondaryoralityonliteracyandtheliteratemen-talities that continue to shape contemporary societies constitutes what Istyledintheopeningofthischapteracertainction.Thoughinele-gant, my phrase spoken-written may be more descriptive for our age.Togetonestepclosertotheeectsoftherelatedtechnologyandtalkexplosions,IwanttobrieyconsidertheideasofWallaceChafe,who,thoughnotparticularlyinterestedinthediachronicschemain-troducedabove,doesilluminatethedierencesmediumcanmake.Chafe launches his analysis from the observation that the dependence ofspeaking on sound and of writing on sight has a variety of consequences(1994:42).Oneofthemoststrikingisdierencesintempoofpro-duction and reception of language: while speaking and listening neces-sarilyproceedtogetheratthesamespeed,writingandreadingdeviatefrom that spoken language baseline in opposite directions, writing beingmuch slower and reading somewhat faster (1982: 37; also 1994: 4243).Chafeandothersattributethespontaneousqualityofspeechandtheworked over quality of writing to these disparate tempi. Whereas ideastend to develop as they are enunciated, writers typically revise sentencesmanytimesbeforetheyarereadbysomeoneelse(Chafe1994:43).Sound of any kind quickly fades away, and the unassisted human voicedoes not carry very far in space; writing, depending on the exact mate-rialsused,canbetransportedandcanlast,insomecases,evenformillennia. Finally, in terms of medium, talk in its conversational form isnotofapredeterminedlength.Breathisanimmediatelyrenewablere-source,andasChafeobserves,speakingseemstobenaturaltohumanevolution. Writing and reading, on the other hand, must be laboriouslylearned and are highly dependent on resources external to the bodies ofwriters and readers (1994: 4344).Thesephysicalfactsatleastuntiltheinventionofthemicrophoneandsubsequentlyderivedtechnologiesforvoicepick-up,aprovisotowhich I will returnbear upon interaction. Speakers and listeners shareacommontimeandspace,whereaswritersandreadersmostoftendonot. Speakers and listeners can be said to collaboratively produce speech,in that speakers are not only aware of the identity of the audience but alsoof its developing reaction to the speech. Of course, in the case of writtencommunication, too, writers must have an audience in mind (Ong 1982:177).ButthereistypicallyalackofimmediateinterchangebetweenSecondary Orality9writer and reader, and therefore the reader presumably inuences whatis written less than the listener what is spoken. Although both speakersand writers may intend specic addressees, due to what Chafe calls theevanescence of speech and the transportability of writing (1994: 42), thespeakerislesslikelytohaveunknownhearersthanthewritertohaveunknownreaders.Anawarenessofconsumptionbyunknownreadersperhaps plays a larger role for writers in many situations than an aware-ness of unknown listeners for speakers. (Is this a source of the attractionof eavesdropping?) Since speakers and listeners share the same physicalenvironmentatthetimethelanguageisproduced,thatlanguageitselfgenerally has a closeness to the immediate physical and social situation, acharacteristic Chafe terms situatedness. Written language, on the otherhandisusuallydesituated,theenvironmentandcircumstancesofitsproduction and reception having minimal inuence on the language andconsciousness itself (4445).Atrstglance,Chafescharacterizationsmakesense.But,asIhavealready felt compelled to interject, we recognize them only as long as webracket technologies developed in the last century that have changed thespeed of writing and the evanescence of speech. For example, while mostpeoplewritebyhandmoreslowlythantheyspeak,contributingtotheworkedoverqualityofthetextproduced,manywritersusingkey-boardsjoinprofessionalstenographersinachievingspeedsofspeech.Among my student speed-typists, there are some whose writing assign-mentsreadasless-thought-throughthantheirverbalcontributionsinclasssound,especiallywhentheydonottakeadvantageofelectronicword processings possibilities for easy revision. Similarly, assumed lackof shared space and time (and therefore of a communal sense) betweenwriters and readers is challenged not only by (ancient) blackboards butmoreespeciallybyelectronicchatroomsthatprovideasurfaceforreciprocalwritingforimmediateconsumptionbyanindividualoragroup. Conversely, microphones, loudspeakers, telephones, two-way ra-dios,andtaperecorderstonamejustafewrelevanttechnologiesallowforphysicaland/orchronologicalseparationofspeakersandlis-teners.Chafesjusticationforexcludingtechnologyseectsfromthedescriptions he developsthat the properties of spoken language musthavereachedtheirpresentstagelongbeforethetelephonewaseverthought of (44)seems untenable when we consider how quickly andSecondary Orality10eectivelytechnologyhelpsdevelopnewmotorskills.Nocontempo-rarycultureiseitherpurelyoralorpurelyliterate,andIagreewithDimitris Tziovas that the relationship between orality and textuality isnot one of rigid opposition, but rather one of intrication and enfolding(1989: 321; see also Tannen 1982a: 3). To better familiarize ourselves withtheintricationsandenfoldingsofourage,wecanturntoWalterOng, one of very few scholars to concern himself with the eects on thehuman mind of specic types of technologizing of the word, most no-tably, of handwriting, printing press, and electronic word processing.Tobeginwith,Ongexplainshowonesignofthecurrentcontinuinggripofliteracyisourobsessionwithmedia.For,theverytermme-dium reveals a sense of communication as a pipeline transfer of unitsofmaterialcalledinformationfromoneplacetoanother(1982:176).Our willingness to live with the media model shows chirographic con-ditioning.Thatistosay,literateculturesregardspeechasmorespe-cicallyinformationalthandooralcultures,wherespeechismoreperformance-oriented, more of a way of doing something to someone(177). Of course, Ong is not denying the eects of medium; rather, he iscautioning that the media model obscures what he considers most dis-tinctive about (all) human communication: the capacity of human be-ings to form true communities wherein person shares with person inte-riorly, intersubjectively (177).Ongssearchforhowthissharingoccurshasledhimtohypothesizeaboutprimaryoralitysomethingnoliteratecantrulyknowaboutliteracy, and, most relevant to our purposes here, about secondary oral-ity(hisdescriptionofthislasthighlightsitshybridcharacter).Ontheonehand,electronicwordprocessingcreatesmorewrittentexts,rein-forcingthementalitiesofliteracy,whatOngcallsacommitmentofthewordtospace,sequentiality,andclosure(forexample,13536).Thisliterateunderstandingofthewordcontrastswiththatofprimaryoralcultures,wherethespokenwordisanevent,amovementintime,completelylackinginthething-likereposeofthewrittenorprintedword(75).Ontheotherhand,thespokenwordproliferatesthroughtechnology; it becomes available to more people over larger amounts ofspace and longer periods of time. I quote at length Ongs analysis of theeects of hearing more talk:Secondary Orality11Secondary orality is both remarkably like and remarkably unlike primaryorality.Likeprimaryorality,secondaryoralityhasgeneratedastronggroup sense, for listening to spoken words forms hearers into a group, atrue audience, just as reading written or printed texts turns individuals inon themselves. But secondary orality generates a sense for groups immea-surablylargerthanthoseofprimaryoralculture....Inourageofsecondaryorality,wearegroup-mindedself-consciouslyandprogram-matically. . . . Unlike members of a primary oral culture, who are turnedoutwardbecausetheyhavehadlittleoccasiontoturninward,weareturnedoutwardbecausewehaveturnedinward.Inalikevein,whereprimary orality promotes spontaneity because the analytic reectivenessimplemented by writing is unavailable, secondary orality promotes spon-taneity because through analytic reection we have decided that sponta-neityisagoodthing.Weplanourhappeningscarefullytobesurethatthey are thoroughly spontaneous. (13637)In addition, then, to literacys legacy of privileging information and theindividual who communicates it, secondary oral cultures display fea-turesknowntocharacterizeprimaryoralcultures:astrongcommunalsense,desireforparticipation,andloveofspontaneity.Whatdistin-guishes these features in a secondary oral culture from these features in aprimarycultureisamentalcapabilitydevelopedthroughliteracy:self-consciousness.I want to extend Ongs analysis by adding that the self-consciousnessand analytic reection to which he points can be sporadic and short-lived. That is to say, at least from the perspective of the early twenty-rstcentury, what is most striking about the rise of secondary orality in thetwentiethcenturyisthepropensityofindividualstoforgettheplan-ning that went into making the happening spontaneous, to cite Ongsoxymoron.Toputitanotherway,thetechnologythatbringsusthespoken word becomes invisible to us. Or, to return to my earlier formula-tion,weforgetthesecondaryinsecondaryorality,creatingforour-selves a partial ction that the happening is spontaneous or the inter-actionthesameasface-to-face.SuchslippageorforgettingisillustratedintheanecdoteofmystudentssenseoftalkingwithCal-vinos If on a winters night a traveler that I related in my preface. But inordertofacilitatemyanalysisofthemorespecializedcaseofliterarysecondaryoralgenres,Iwanttoturnnexttothemorefamiliar,ifnotnecessarilyapparent,caseofradioandtelevisiontalkshows.ThoughSecondary Orality12what follows can by no means be an overview of the history of broadcast-ingnorevenofthespecicformofthetalkshow,apauseovercertainaspects of those histories reveals a bizarre combination and/or alterna-tion of self-consciousness and navet about technology that I propose ischaracteristic of many secondary oral phenomena and that can serve as ahelpful backdrop for the kind of reading procedures I am proposing inthis book.Talk Radio, Talk ShowLongbeforethedevelopmentandproliferationofspecicformatsknown as talk radio and the television talk show, the earliest days ofradio provide support for Ongs thesis that secondary orality generatesrelationshipsor at least a sense of them. In articles with titles like TheSocialDestinyofRadioandRadioDreamsThatCanComeTrue,journalists in the 1920s marveled at the ability of radio to bring Ameri-cans together: How ne is the texture of the web that radio is even nowspinning!Itisachievingthetaskofmakingusfeeltogether,thinkto-gether,livetogether.Anothercommentatorsawradiospreadingmu-tual understanding to all sections of the country, unifying our thoughts,ideals,andpurposes,makingusastrongandwell-knitpeople.Thesame writer supports his view by citing the hundreds of letters a day thatNewarkstationwjzreceivedin1922fromilliterate[sic]orbrokenpeople who are for the rst time in touch with the world about them (asquoted in Douglas 1987: 306). For some listeners, like the author of ItsGreat to Be a Radio Maniac, the thrill of knowing he was connected toothersinfar-ungplacesoutweighedthesubstanceofthecontact:Tomenosoundsaresweeterthanthisisstationsoandso (asquotedinDouglas 1987: 307). This sense of being part of a group is the prominentfeaturedistinguishingearlyradiofromthepriordevelopmentofthetelephone.EarlyradiohistoryalsoprovidessupportforOngsclaimofself-consciousnessaboutthisnewkindofinteraction.IncontemporarycommentatorMcMeanssview(1923),radiolistenersthoughtofthem-selvesasanaudiencetotallydierentinseveralwaysfromanythingbeforeknown(asquotedinDouglas1987:312).Oneappreciativelis-tener praised the fact that he could be part of a crowd and yet remain atSecondary Orality13home: This vast company of listeners . . . do not sit packed closely, rowonrow,instuydiscomfortenduredforthedelightofthemusic.Thegood wife and I sat there quietly and comfortably alone in the little backroomofourownhomethatSundaynightanddrankintheharmonycoming three hundred miles to us through the air (as quoted in Douglas1987: 308). He and the wife consider themselves part of a vast companyandyettheyarehappytobealone.Anotherearlyfanofradiocele-bratedlistenerscontroloverspeakers:Withradiowe,thelisteners,will have an advantage we have never had before. We do not even have togetupandleavetheplace.Allwehavetodoispressabutton,andthespeakerissilenced.Indtheexactformulationrevealing:again,theradio listener thinks of himself as part of a group, we; furthermore, hedoes not say that we stop listening but rather, the speaker is silencedasifthefactthathelongerhearsitmustmean(asinface-to-faceinteraction) that the speaker has stopped speaking.Though Bruce Bliven might sound to us like an early technophobe, hewaspinpointingalreadyin1924oneofthemajordierencesbetweensecondary and primary orality when he worried about the eect of thisseparation of listeners and speakers: so much listening without seeinghadupsetoneofnaturessubtlebiologicalbalancesandhadcreatedwhat might be called a hunger of the eyes (as quoted in Douglas 1987:312). Others remarked the transformed relationships between the speak-ers and listeners from the producers perspective: the lack of immediatefeedbacksincespeakerorperformercouldneitherseeresponsesonlisteners faces nor hear laughter, booing, silence, or applause. Absenceof this kind of contact caused anxiety mixed with excitement about thisgreatest audience ever assembled by any means for any purpose in thehistory of the world (as quoted in Douglas 1987: 312).IwanttopausenextoveraquotationfrommediaguruMarshallMcLuhan,whointhe1960sawardsradioaspecialplaceamongearlytechnology: Even more than telephone or telegraph, radio is that exten-sion of the central nervous system that is matched only by human speechitself.Isitnotworthyofourmeditationthatradioshouldbespeciallyattuned to that aboriginal mass medium, the vernacular tongue? (1964:302).Presumably,theradiocanfunctionsynecdochicallyininterper-sonal communication because both the radio and the human voice sendsoundviatheairwaves.ButwhatdrawsmyattentionmostaboutthisSecondary Orality14pronouncementisthatinmakingthesynecdoche,McLuhanobscuresthedierencesbetweenface-to-faceinteractionandcommunicationmediatedthroughtechnology,evenashecelebratesthetechnological.For McLuhan, the radio is an extension of the central nervous system. Heevenseemstoanthropomorphizeradiobysayingthatitisspeciallyattuned to the human tongue.The specic formats known as talk radio and the television talk showbestmakeapparentthehybridityofsecondaryoralityhintedatintheexamples above. In order to make my own argument about the parallelbetweensomenarrativectionandbroadcastmediamostclear,Iwillneedtooerafairlyfulldescriptionoftheform.Thisisperhapstheappropriate point to acknowledge that my term talk ction, my excur-sionintotalkradioandtalkshows,andperhapsevenmyquotingofMcLuhanwillbearedagforsomeofmyreaders.Imraisingthespecterofthetalkshowneverthelesstoforegroundtheconceptofsec-ondary orality and to provoke consideration of the inevitable inuenceofmediauponeachother.ThoughIamuninterestedintracinganydirectinuencebythebroadcastmediaontheproductionofspecicliterary works, I do aim to point out the common privileging of interac-tion over content in talk radio, talk shows, and talk ction. In this erawhen many children learn to view television at a much younger age thantheylearntoread,whentelevisionsandradiosaretunedinformorehours a day than most people are at work or school, how could the massmedia not play a role in how we read and write? I intend not to under-mine our appreciation of literature as a distinctive form of communica-tionbutrathertochallengethenotionthatitissomehowasacrosanctone that responds only to internal formal developments.For those of us who grew up with radio and television, Goman onceagainhelpsusperceivethespecicfunctioningofthemundane.Inhisanalysisofradiobroadcasting,heidentiesthreemainmodesofan-nouncing,thatis,allroutinetalkintoamicrophone(1981:232).Henames the rst mode action override, where the action in question is ofprimaryconcerntotheaudience,asinsportscasting,forexample,andthetalkoftheannouncerisonlyameanstothatend(234).Hissecondcategoryisthree-wayannouncing,whereahostconductsaconversation with one or more persons in the studio and a studio audi-ence and/or broadcast audience listen in (234). Direct radio, in whichSecondary Orality15theannouncerspeakstotheindividuallistenerathomeasifinatte--tte is his third category (235). With this last term, Goman is referenc-ing direct address in speech, an analogy that also applies to the momentincinemaandtelevisionwhenactorsorannouncerslookdirectlyintothecamera.Thetelevisionmediuminparticularhasapropensityfordirect address, which Sarah Kozlo suggests gives such a strong impres-sionofinterpersonalexchangethatsomeviewersevenanswerback(1992: 81). Robert C. Allen terms direct address televisions rhetoricalmode, which in contrast to the cinematic mode does not pretend theviewer isnt there, but rather simulates the face-to-face encounter by . . .acknowledgingboththeperformersroleasaddresserandtheviewersrole as addressee [and attempting] to persuade the actual person watch-ing at home that he or she is the you to whom the addresser is speaking(1992b:11718;seealsoShattuc1997:73).Inotherwords,thismodeexplicitly acknowledges the communicative circuit that underlies all usesof the media but remains implicit in many.Though Goman seems disinterested in the historical development ofradio,itisworthnotingthathislattertwocategoriesofannouncing,three-wayanddirect,qualifyaswhatisnowwidelyreferredtoastalk radio and not just radio talk, the title of his study. To describethe genre more fully, one needs to add the additional category of call-in, shows or segments of shows in which a radio host engages in freshtalk with an individual over the phoneand on the airin the context ofan extended conversation with other callers and silent listeners. Manytelevisiontalk-showformatscombineasegmentofGomansthree-wayannouncing,withguestsandhostsinteractingandstudioandhomeaudiencesonlylistening,andasubsequentsegmentofcall-in,wherethestudioaudiencereactstothetalkoftherstsegmentandcreates fresh talk based on the subject introduced. These may be linkedby moments of direct address.Talk showsI will use this term alone when I refer to both the radioandtelevisionformatshaveenjoyednothingshortofameteoricrise(and partial fall) in the last few decades in the United States. Radio talkshows became so popular, and therefore lucrative, that exclusive all-talkstationsdevelopedinthe1970s.Thetalkformathasmadeseriousinroads into tv as well, beginning in the 1960s and expanding throughthe mid-1990s, when talk shows surpassed soap operas as the dominantSecondary Orality16daytime form and proliferated in late-night programming (Shattuc 1997:19). Some hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Oprah Winfrey have becomehouseholdnames.Evensportscastsandnewscasts,showswithcontentto transmit, have come to rely more and more on a conversational formattodelivertheirinformation.Thusoverthehistoryoftheradioandtelevision media, which roughly overlaps with the period whose ction Iwant to reevaluate, there is a fairly continuous expansion ofthough bynomeanscompletetakeoverbyformsthatstageinteractionbetweenproducer of speech and consumer of speech.TheparticularstructuralfeatureoftalkshowsmostrelevanttotalkctioniswhatGomancallsthepresence...ofabsentaddressees(321), an oxymoronic phrase worth pausing over. What makes the talk ofbroadcast dierent from ordinary conversation is the physical absence ofitsaddressees.Gomanexplains:Becausetalkislearned,developed,andordinarilypracticedinconnectionwiththevisualandaudiblere-sponse of immediately present recipients, a radio announcer must inevi-tably talk as ifresponsive others were before his eyes and ears (241). TobringthisintodialoguewithGomansconceptionoftalkreviewedabove,thetalkoftheradiohostmustdisplayorientationtoexchangewithabsentaddressees.Thatistosay,whatmakestalkshowsqualita-tivelydierentfrombroadcasting,say,music,todayspriceofinternetstocks, or a movie, is that while music and so forth may be sent with theintention of being received by willing listeners/consumers, the talk ofthetalkshowisitselfproducedasaddresstothoseabsentreceivers.Tooverstate the case with a phrase meant to echo McLuhans most famousdictum: the interaction is the content. In television (and some radio) talkshows, there is typically a studio audience that is an audio and/or visualpartofthespectacle,someofwhosemembersbecomeactualpartici-pants in the conversation. But these shows are produced not so much forthese present addressees as for the exponentially more numerous absentaddressees, the listener-viewers at home, in the car, at work, at the beach.These displaced listener-viewers are present to the speakersthey areinmindevenwhennotdirectlyaddressedasthetalkisconstructed.Though there may be a daily topic organizing the show, the main attrac-tion seems to be this multi-tiered, multi-located conversation. The ideathat a talk show is about interaction rather than delivery of information isanotherfeaturethatlinksittoprimaryorality.OngreferstothisasSecondary Orality17the person-interactive context of orality and suggests that the privileg-ingoftheinterpersonalcomponentovertheinformational(object-attentive)contextmaycauseirritationtoliteratesbymakingalltoomuch of speech itself . . . overvaluing and certainly overpracticing rheto-ric (1982: 68). This privileging of interaction over content may partiallyaccountforthestrongnegativejudgmentstalkshowselicitfromsocialcommentators who consider themselves the guardians of literacy.Radiotalkshows,asevenmoreobviouslytalkshowsontelevision,needrealpeople(Bogosian1988:xv).Therearerealhosts,realtalk-show guests, real callers, real people in the studio audience, real peopleinotherlocationslistening.Yettalkshowsalsorelyonction;theyhavewhatMurrayBurtonLevincallsaqualityofcontrivedauthen-ticity (1987: 19). It bears reminding ourselves here that when televisionhostsorguestsappeartobelookingdirectlyatus,theyareactuallystaring into the lens of a camera. Another ction is immediacy; though itmay seem spontaneous and simultaneous, the interaction between thoserealpeoplewhoconductradioortelevisiontalkis,infact,highlymediated. Many (unheard, unseen) people and much machinery facili-tatethisconversationbetweenspeakerandreceiver.Thetalkwhichisthereby disseminated is not even as fresh as its meant to sound. To citethemostobviousexample,almostallliveradiotalkshowshaveamultiple-seconddelaytoallowthestationtodeleteanyobscenitiesbe-yondtheacceptedstandardsofthestation,itssponsors,andnancialbackers(Bogosianxv).Donahuewasairedliveinmanymarketsforyears, but most television talk shows are taped several weeks before theyarebroadcast.JaneShattucpointsoutthatmostshowsdonotactuallywriteorevensubsequentlyeditconversations,yettheirspontaneousqualityisnonethelesshighlyregulatedthroughthehostsselections,prior coaching, and the general production process of camerawork, mik-ing,andsegmentation(1997:6;seealso73).Anothertypeofctionisthat the audience at home is a part of the conversation in the same waythat the hosts and guests or studio audience are part of it. A great deal ofverbal juggling is required to keep up this conversational pretense, espe-cially as hosts have to change footing repeatedly, switching from one-on-one with a caller, to address to the viewers at home, to exchange with astudio guest, and so on (see Goman 1981: 23537; Shattuc 73).Withthesectionsinmind,wecannowreturntotheideaoftheSecondary Orality18talkshowasahybridcommunicativeform.Itcontainsface-to-facein-teraction:realpeoplespeaktooneanother;buttheshoweectsanddisseminates those conversations through technological mediation, self-consciousness,andpretense.Thoughhedoesnotusethesameframe-work,WayneMunsonconcurswiththisanalysis,callingthetalk-showformatabizarrecombinationofparadigmsofthetraditionalandthemodern worlds: talk and show; the format links conversation, theinterpersonalthepremodernoraltraditionwiththemass-mediatedspectacle born of modernity (1993: 6). Even though media experts pointoutthatwereallydonot(yet?)knowverymuchabouthowradioandtelevisiongetconsumed(Shattuc48),theystillmakepronouncementsabout what audiences experience. Eric Bogosian, author of the play andstar of the movie Talk Radio, hypothesizes that the popularity of the talkshows depends on audiences attraction to realness. When a caller dialsin to a radio talk show or when Oprah or Ricki Lake speaks with mem-bers of the studio audience, we, the nonparticipating but present au-dience,canascertainwithourownearsand/oreyesthatthosearehu-mans talking to one another. Other folks want to listen to those people,accordingtoBogosianbecausetheymighthearsomesmalltidbitofgenuineemotion(xvii).Similarly,Shattucsuggeststhatthedrawoftelevision talk shows is the ultimately uncontrollable: real people with-out scripts (73). Audiences are not lured as much by a desire to under-stand social or personal problems (that is, content), Shattuc maintains,as by a desire to identify with the participants (that is, emotion, relation-ship)(95).Again,creatingidenticationissetinmotionbythetalkhosts awareness of the presence of absent addressees; as Goman putsit,theremote(andstudio)audienceistreatedasifitwerearatiedparticipant,albeitonethatcannot[always]assumethespeakingrole(234). It may be the attractiveness of being treated as a part of the conver-sation, in addition to the witnessing of real emotion mentioned by Bogo-sian, that rst gave talk shows their large audiences.Participationiskeytotheevolutionofthegenre.Inthe1990s,talkshows (especially those occupying a late-night time slot) attracted theiraudiencesnotsomuchwiththepromiseoftalkasofshow:theseaudiencemembers,accordingtoShattuc,arenotasconcernedaboutwitnessing authenticity and real emotion as they are about reveal[ing]the performance behind the notion of truth. They foreground much ofSecondary Orality19thecontrivancebythemselvesparticipatingandputtingonthemostoutrageous parts of this show (16061). The partial fall of talk shows towhich I alluded at the beginning of this section may in fact be related tomediation. For example, there has been negative publicity about manip-ulation of guests and audiences, what, drawing again on the frameworkintroduced above, we might call an intentional obscuring on the part ofproducersofthemediatedaspectsofthetalk.Andyet,Shattucsanalysisremindsusthatweshouldnotmakeeasyassumptionsaboutwhomanipulateswhom.Inmyownexperienceasalistener-vieweroftalkshowsIrecognizethattherearebriefmomentswhenIfeelasifDr. Laura is judging my behavior or Oprah is chiding me to pay attentionbecauseIreallyneedtohearthispart.Morefrequently,however,Iamkeenly aware that I am one of myriad other individuals listening and/orviewing, that most of what I hear and see is carefully calculated to makeuseachfeelinterpellated,andthattheemotionsofhosts,guests,andcallersmightjustaswellbefabricatedasgenuine.Iattributebothmymomentsofidenticationandmyself-consciousnessaboutthosemo-ments to my secondary oral conditioning.How did radio and television get this way? What is the history of thelureofthesemediatedandvicariousformsofparticipation?Whileitwould take me too far from my topic of talk ction to recount in detailthedevelopmentofbroadcastingtalkformsinalltheirspecicity,itisworthwhile mentioning that some critics, relying on Habermass notionofthepublicsphere,connectthetalkshowwiththegeneralriseofparticipatorytalkpracticesandthemultiplicationoftalkspacesintheWest,suchasthecoeehouse,thephilosophicalsociety,literarycircles, and lyceums (Munson 2026; Shattuc 8788). For a more pre-ciseoriginofaudienceparticipationinthemedia,Shattucpointstoseventeenth-centurybroadsheetsthatwerethemselvesdescendantsofsuch oral traditions as the town crier, gossip, and folk tales (15). Munsonstartswitheighteenth-centurymagazineswhosetitlesreectedtheircloseconnectiontooralpractice,forexample,Tatler,TownTalk,TeaTable, Chit Chat (20). Both analysts identify the talk shows direct ante-cedent as late-nineteenth-century womens advice columns and servicemagazines that specically fostered participation by inviting individualresponse to contests, surveys, advice columns (Munson 2122; Shattuc 3,2628).ForegroundingexchangewasonewaytogetmorepeopleintoSecondary Orality20theconversationandintothemassmarketplace.InMunsonsinter-pretation:Thedisruptionsofmodernity,whichtookpeoplefromanethic based on localism and self-suciency to one of spectatorship andconsumption, were eased by the magazines through the rear-view mirrorofnostalgicparticipatorypractices....Asmodernitybrokewiththepast, it also had to ease the transition for its now anonymous consumingsubjects (24). Levin oers a more specically class-based analysis of talkradio, maintaining that Working-class listeners are often encouraged toparticipate by the host, who assumes that their natural estrangement willprovoke a barrage of civic complaints and expressions of mistrust fromothers. Working men and women may be emboldened to participate bytheabsenceofvideo,whichrelievesthemoftheshamethatbourgeoissociety imposes on the unfashionable and less well educated (16). Shat-tuccontinuestofollowthisthreadthoughshedoesnotsubscribetoLevinsclassistassumptionaboutshamewhensheconnectsthespe-cicformsoftelevisiontalkshowswiththelargershiftbroughtonby identity politics in the second half of the twentieth century (91). Inthe tumultuous 1960s, she argues, Participatory talk shows were wherecommon people could express frustration with the impersonal state andsociety (35).Of course, talk ction, unlike talk radio and talk shows on television,isnotamassphenomenon,norisitascommerciallysuccessful.Al-thoughthereissomeliteraturethathasmassiveaudiences,noread-ingpublictodaycompareswiththesizeofthetvaudiencesoftodaysmostor even lesspopular talk shows. To cite just one illustrative setof data: whereas a typical John Grisham novel sells three million copiesin toto (Goodstein 1998), an Oprah Winfrey audience averaged nine toten million viewers a day in 1986 (Shattuc 39). (Unfortunately for theirauthors, the texts Ill be discussing sell many fewer copies than Grishamnovels.)Anotherimmediatelyapparentdierencebetweentalkshowsandtalkctionresidesintheiraudioandvisualqualities.Radioandtelevision can reproduce the human voice with a delity that allows forthetransmissionoftone,volume,pitch,andsoforth.Andthetele-visionimageismorethanadequatetopickupgesturesandfacialex-pressions of participants. Thus sounds and images in face-to-face com-municationandinbroadcastcommunicationareregisteredasquitesimilaralbeitnotidenticalinsimplephysicalterms.Printcandis-Secondary Orality21seminate static images, but of course not voices, though several theoriesof reading suggest that we create sounds in our head when we read (Ong75). There are other important semiotic dierences between talk showsand talk ction to which I turn in the next section. But my point here isthatparticipantssenseofinteractingandyetbeingatleasttosomeextentself-consciousaboutthatinteractionarecommontobothtalkshowsandtalkctionandlinkthemtoeachotherandtosecondaryorality. Having created, I hope, an unfamiliar backdrop for a discussionof twentieth-century prose ction, I now want to pursue printed Talk.Talk in FictionAs far as my investigations uncover, linguist Robin Tolmach Lako wasone of the rst scholars to elucidate specic ways in which the oral modeisbeingincorporatedintothewritteninNorthAmericanculture.Ina1982 article titled Some of My Favorite Writers Are Literate: The Min-gling of Oral and Literate Strategies in Written Communication, Lakoconsiders a wide variety of contemporary written texts. In her examples,whichrangefromplacardsincrowdstonewspaperandmagazinearti-cles,andfromcollege-studentessaysandcomicstonovelsbyThomasPynchonandTomWolfe,sheremarksnonstandardusesofquotationmarks, italics, ellipses, capitalization, and orthography. To quote Lakosanalysis of this last: special spellings are used not simply as a guide topronunciation,butasawayofindicating,Sincethisrepresentationisdierent from the formal forms of written language, it is to be taken asoral, i.e., immediate, emotional, colloquial (253). What she identi-es as new in writing aects the oral in two specic ways. On the onehand,Lakosuggeststhatnonstandardtypographyandorthographyserve as a guide to the sounds of speech (for example, capitals as volume,italicsasriseinpitch,ellipsesassilenceorhesitation,misspellingsasactualpronunciationofwords).Ontheother,thatacurrentpracticedeviates from traditional practice itself communicates that this writing istrying not to be writing, but presumably its opposite: speech.Lako attributes the proliferation of these features as one type of signof the general shift in our society from a literacy-based model of idealhumancommunicationtoonebasedontheoralmodeofdiscourse(240).Sheoersseveralotherexamplesofthisshiftintosecondaryorality, though she does not use the term. For instance, whereas signs ofSecondary Orality22forethought,afeatureusuallyassociatedwiththewritten,usedtobevalued and therefore considered desirable in writing as in speech, we arenow suspicious of speech that sounds rehearsed; we value spontaneityor what sounds like itin both speech and writing (245). According toLako,wearenotcompletelycomfortablewithanyofthesechanges,even though they seem to express our preferences, because the borrow-ing of a device from one medium into another is always overdetermined:it carries with it the communicative eect, or feel, of one medium intoanother (the metacommunicative eect) and at the same time attemptsto utilize the language of one mode to communicate ideas in another (thecommunicativeeect).Itisnowonderthatthissortoftranslationcancreate confusion in readers (or hearers), and can also create in them verystrongfeelingstypicallynegative(25152).Lakooersheranaly-sis to address this negativitynot by denigrating literacy, but by identi-fying these new practices as attempts to come to terms with the future(25960).I nd Lakos argument extremely helpful and recapitulate it here fortwo purposes. First, I want to emphasize that the particular communica-tive change on which she focuses, what she calls the mingling of oraland written communicative strategies is of course not a fact, but a ctiontowhichweagree.Writtentextsdonotnowspeak,butbecausetheyare doing something dierent from custom we let them function for us asspokeninteraction.ThoughLakoneverdrawsattentiontothispoint,herargumentimpliesactivereading.Herexamplesdonotconstitutespeech in some ontological sense: they are not oral, they are to be takenas oral. It is readers who may interpret them as templates for the sound ofspeechorasspontaneousandemotional,andthereforelikespeech.ReadersactivityandpretenseplayimportantrolesinthetalkshowsdescribedaboveandinwhatIcalltalkction,too,thoughIjudgetheactivityinvolvedinreadingtalkctionasnecessarilymoreself-con-scious, and the pretense of a dierent nature.Accordingly,mysecondpurposeincitingLakosobservationsistodistinguishthespecicwrittenphenomenasheisdescribingfromtheones I am treating, beyond the fact that she deals with various types ofwriting, whereas I deal only with prose ction. I take Lakos borrowingofadevicefromonemediumintoanothertomeanasubstitutionofone sign system for another, say, italics for a rise in pitch or capital lettersSecondary Orality23for such emotions as excitement, anger, and hysteria. The italics and thecapitalssignal:tobetakenasoral. MycorpusmaycontainsomeoftheborrowingthatinterestsLako.ButthestrategiesIfocusondonotinvolvesubstitutionstobeinterpretedasimitationsofqualitiesofspeech. (I am not interested in representations of dialect, for example.)Talk-ction texts are not translations into writing which we understandthrough reference to speaking (Lako 247). Rather, they mobilize tex-tualstrategiesthatrevealorientationtoexchangebetweentextandreader.Thatistosay:IcallmyphenomenonTalkneitherbecausethewrittenpagesoundslikeoralspeechnorevenbecauseitsignalsdier-ence that should be interpreted as informal or spontaneousand there-foreasresemblingspeechmorethanwritingbutratherbecausetalkctionperformswhatmanyexpertsidentifyasthecentralfunctionofspeech: it creates relationships and invites interaction. Readers must beself-conscious about this hybridity and about interacting with a writtentextforthereadingexperiencetoconstituteTalk.Iwillreturntothisissue below.Inpresentingsociolinguisticdenitionsoftalkintherstsectionofthis chapter, I suggested that the concept of the interactional unit invitesconsiderationoftheproductionofaliteraryworkbyanauthorasastatement that asks for the reply of being read. After all, literature iswritten with the intention of being read by someone, even if only by theauthor who then wants it destroyed, as Kafka purportedly did. But I alsosuggested, following Ong, that this interactional unit in fact applies to allwriting and doesnt help us specify anything about literature, much lessabout some twentieth-century prose ction.Describing talk ction requires time and space, and I try to give eachmodeitsduebydiscussingitinitsownchaptertoilluminatethewayasetoftextshasrespondednotonlytosecondaryoralityasbroadlysketchedoutabovebutalsotomorespecic,thoughstillwidespread,culturalphenomena:thechangingformsoftransmissionofcultural/historical knowledge (chapter 2, Storytelling); the iniction of trauma(chapter3,Testimony);andattemptsatintimacyinsocietiesthatforvarious reasons promote alienation (chapter 4, Apostrophe). The signsandextentofinteractionineachmodevary;insomecasestheinitialsituationofenunciationinvitesthereadertoconsidertheentiredis-courseasdisplayingorientationtoexchange.Inothers,specictextualSecondary Orality24featureselicitadistinctresponsefromthereader.Inallcases,thetextsaim to provoke some kind of reaction in the readers world, that is, in theworldoutsidethetext.Withoutunderminingthespecicityofthetalkction modes I analyze in subsequent chapters, I want to adumbrate howGomans conception of talk can be applied to narrative ction.Traditionalnarratologicalmodelsofthenarrativecommunicationsystem draw arrows from a real author to a ctional narrator of a story toa ctional receiver of the story, the narratee, to a real receiver of the story,thereader.Narratorsandnarrateesmaybemoreorlessperceptible,andtheremaybeadditionalnarratorsandnarrateesembeddedinagiven text. But in all such models, narrators and narratees are consid-eredintrinsictothetext,whereastherealauthorandrealreaderareoutside the narrative transaction as such, though, of course, indispens-able to it in an ultimate practical sense (Chatman 1978: 151). Thinking oftalk ction as a turn-taking system invites two important modicationstosuchschemas.First,ifwetakeseriouslyGomansconceptoftheproducersofstatementsandrepliesasenactedcapacities,thereisnojustication for keeping narratological levels distinct. And second, theideasofturn-takingandofmovesasnotnecessarilyverbalinvitetheadditionofasetofarrowspointingintheoppositedirection,fromthereal reader back toward the author-narrator.Icannowoerthefollowingdescriptionofthebasictalkctioncommunicativecircuit:theinitialmoves,orstatements,areconsti-tuted by the discourse or segments of the discourse, in the sense of thewords, punctuation, and even blank space that communicate the story oftheliterarywork.Iwillrefertothesestatementsastexts.Texts-as-statementareproducedbyesh-and-bloodauthorsthroughnarratorswhoenunciatethem.Liketraditionalnarratology,Iwillrefertothisparticipant in the Talk as the narrator, but with the understanding thatthe real authors as well as the characterized or uncharacterized narratorstogetherconstitutetheenactedcapacityresponsibleforproducingtexts-as-statement.Thesetextsaskforrepliesfromrealr