Cleft (a short story) and In my father’s house (an essay)

Abstract

“Cleft” – a short story – is concerned with bodily cuts and folds and the meanings that are given to them, and it is also concerned with the cuts and folds in storytelling itself: where narrative breaks and where it goes on. “In my father’s house” is a companion essay to the story. The essay doesn’t attempt to explain the story, however; it is not exegetical in that sense. Instead, it is another attempt to find “the words to say it”, to recall Marie Cardinal’s novel of the same name. To write a story about a life is in some ways to make that life – it is a performative rather than merely representational gesture – but it is also to fail to make it. To try again is to fail again.