Connective Tissue
Connective Tissue

Summary/Abstract: “Connective Tissue” owes a huge debt to W.G. Sebald’s un-named “I” from “The Rings of Saturn” and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s unknown observer from “Jealousy.” Wanting to examine the unconscious and often tenuous connection between people, place, time, action and reaction without resorting to narrative omnipotence and identity, I have leaned heavily on the sense of isolation they created, and on the presence of observers/observed not identity. In this piece I have attempted to isolate the voice from the events and characters of the narration even further than Sebald and Robbe-Grillet while allowing some implied knowledge, some relationship with events, some connections – however nebulous. The story is an experiment in the removal of expected identifiers and signifiers so that events and place, circumstance/thought/action and the resultant reactions of the characters create a narrative-horizon, tension and pace, and the expectations of the reader are therefore either removed or reduced without the reader being unable to identify with the world, both in ‘real’ and ‘mythic’ modes. The narrative, in allowing the reader’s need for empathy, uses situations that are recognisable and uses place to signify – to some extent – character. The space behind the words, the places where a reader’s own perceptions and experiences colour their responses, their mental filmic replay of the text, also remain unsculpted.

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