seven-point-seven

2006-06-22T13:27:00.000-07:00

Who has the right to remain silent? Only some. Only in some places. Only in some situations.
The peaceful one, the scared one, the thoughtful one, the frozen one.

When does this right to silence expire?
When someone decides. At a moment of motion. At the plea. At a feeling of understanding, at fear, in desperation, or intelligence, by persuasion, by writ.

Why do we say a suspect is warned of his rights?
Everyone will be on their own side, and every side is complex.

How are the rules of truth in lit different from court? Reader and juror?
The writer is not silent.

I spoke to a friend when I had trouble answering these questions. I asked about poems that talk about silence. She reminded me of the Charles Simic poem, Stone.

STONE

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill--
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

2006-03-07T14:54:00.000-08:00

February's Cross-Examination:

Who, in fact, has this right to remain silent? (Who doesn't?)

When does this right to silence expire? (What are its limits?)

Why do we say a suspect is "warned" of his rights?

What is different about the "rules of truth" such that a person under custody must be informed that new rules have taken effect?

How are the rules of truth in literature different from the rules of truth in court?

How do we trust the subject of literature differently than we trust the suspect in court? (What is the difference between a reader and a jurer?)

2005-12-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

It is interesting how the law takes (distrust) into account and, even odder, takes the trouble to warn us: when someone is arrested, as least in films, he is allowed to remain silent, because, as he is immediately informed, "anything you say can be used against you." There is in this warning a strange--or indecisive and contradictory--desire not to play entirely dirty. That is, the prisoner is told that the rules will, from now on, be dirty, he is informed and reminded that, somehow or other, they are going to catch him out and will make the most of any blunders, lapses and mistakes he might make...all their efforts will be channelled into gathering the evidence that will condemn him, all their vigilance and monitoring and investigation and research into collecting the clues that will incriminate him and support their decision to arrest him. And yet they offer him the opportunity to remain silent, indeed, almost urge it upon him; they tell him about this right which he may have known nothing, and therefore, sometimes, actually put the idea in his head: not to open his mouth, not even to deny what he is being accused of, not to run the risk of having to defend himself alone...

Interpretation:
The author is obsessed enough with notions of guilt or, more properly, accusation, that he interrupts his narrative with this aside (or it would be an aside if the novel weren't made mostly of such asides, if obsession with guilt and accusation weren't the stuff of which the novel is built), showing the uncertainty of the rules of truth upon which the first person novel turns. The right choice in the face of this uncertainty seems to be silence, but in the context of a novel, which one might argue has no explicit need for being, his choice is clearly not silence.