6444: THE FUTURE OF THE NOVEL
6445:
6446:
6447:
6448:
6449: In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, to use the phrase of Mr Alexander Trocchi, as a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed—A Russian scientist has said: “We will travel not only in space but in time as well—” That is to travel in space is to travel in time—If writers are to travel in space time and explore areas opened by the space age, I think they must develop techniques quite as new and definite as the techniques of physical space travel—Certainly if writing is to have a future it must at least catch up with the past and learn to use techniques that have been used for some time past in painting, music and film—Mr Lawrence Durrell has led the way in developing a new form of writing with time and space shifts as we see events from different viewpoints and realize that so seen they are literally not the same events, and that the old concepts of time and reality are no longer valid—Brion Gysin, an American painter living in Paris, has used what he calls “the cut-up method” to place at the disposal of writers the collage used in painting for fifty years—Pages of text are cut and rearranged to form new combinations of word and image—In writing my last two novels, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded, I have used an extension of the cut-up method I call “the fold-in method”—A page of text—my own or someone else’s—is folded down the middle and placed on another page—The composite text is then read across half one text and half the other—The fold-in method extends to writing the flashback used in films, enabling the writer to move backward and forward on his time track—For example I take page one and fold it into page one hundred—I insert the resulting composite as page ten—When the reader reads page ten he is flashing forward in time to page one hundred and back in time to page one—the déjà vu phenomenon can so be produced to order—This method is of course used in music, where we are continually moved backward and forward on the time track by repetition and rearrangements of musical themes—
6450:
6451: In using the fold-in method I edit, delete and rearrange as in any other method of composition—I have frequently had the experience of writing some pages of straight narrative text which were then folded in with other pages and found that the fold-ins were clearer and more comprehensible than the original texts—Perfectly clear narrative prose can be produced using the fold-in method—Best results are usually obtained by placing pages dealing with similar subjects in juxtaposition—
6452:
6453: What does any writer do but choose, edit and rearrange material at his disposal?—The fold-in method gives the writer literally infinite extension of choice—Take for example a page of Rimbaud folded into a page of St John Perse—(two poets who have much in common)—From two pages an infinite number of combinations and images are possible—The method could also lead to a collaboration between writers on an unprecedented scale to produce works that were the composite effort of any number of writers living and dead—This happens in fact as soon as any writer starts using the fold-in method—I have made and used fold-ins from Shakespeare, Rimbaud, from newspapers, magazines, conversations and letters so that the novels I have written using this method are in fact composites of many writers—
6454:

6520:

7854:

11629:
11630: Then Sekem, Energy. The Technician who knows what buttons to push. No buttons left. He disappears in a belch.
11631:
11632: Then Khu, the Guardian, intuitive guide through a perilous maze. You’re on your own now.
11633:
11634: Then Ba, the Heart. “Feeling’s dull decay.” Nothing remains to him but his feeling for cats. Human feelings are withering away to lifeless fragments abandoned in a distant drawer. “Held a little boy photo in his withered hand . . . dim jerky far away someone has shut a bureau drawer.”—(cut-up, circa 1962–63).
11635:
11636: Is it the Ka, the Double, who is in such pain? Trapped here, unable to escape, unable even to formulate any place to escape to?
11637:
11638: And the Shadow, Memory, scenes arbitrarily selected and presented . . . the badger shot by the Southern counsellor at Los Alamos, sad shrinking face rolling down a slope, bleeding, dying.
11639: