Dahlia's Iris: Secret Autobiography and Fiction

by Leslie Scalapino

Detectives are investigating the death of Dahlia Winter's husband and also looking into the mysterious deaths of young boys who are imported for labor in a future-time San Francisco. Citing the plots of Invasion of the Body Snatchers , Terminator 2 , and Blade Runner as proof that our sense of inner and outer is tied to rebellion and slavery, the novel appears at first to be a detail of these films all at once, like a colonization of them from the inside. But almost immediately the plot assumes its own life. Based on a conception of the Tibetan written form called Secret Autobiography--which is not the chronological events or actions of a life, but an individual's seeing outside any frames--the novel makes a time-space in which sensation, actions, and thought-memory are occurring alongside our present-day space.

Genres: Poetry

214 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Leslie Scalapino (July 25, 1944 – May 28, 2010) was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. One of Scalapino's most critically well-received works is way (North Point Press, 1988), a long poem which won the Poetry Center Award, the Lawrence Lipton Prize, and the American Book Award.

Scalapino was born in Santa Barbara, California and raised in Berkeley. She traveled throughout her youth and adulthood to Asia, Africa and Europe and her writing was intensely influenced by these experiences. In childhood Scalapino traveled with her father Robert A. Scalapino (founder of UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies), her mother, and her two sisters (Diane and Lynne). She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon and received her B.A. in Literature in 1966 before moving on to earn her M.A. at UC Berkeley. Scalapino published her first book O and Other Poems in 1976. During her lifetime, she published more than thirty books of poetry, prose, inter-genre fiction, plays, essays, and collaborations. Other well-known works of hers include The Return of Painting, The Pearl, and Orion : A Trilogy (North Point, 1991; Talisman, 1997), Dahlia's Iris: Secret Autobiography and Fiction (FC2), Sight (a collaboration with Lyn Hejinian; Edge Books), and Zither & Autobiography (Wesleyan University Press).

Scalapino's poetry has been widely anthologized, including appearances in the influential Postmodern American Poetry, From the Other Side of the Century, and Poems for the Millennium anthologies, as well as the popular Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize series anthologies. Her work was the subject of a special "critical feature" appearing in an issue of the online poetry journal How2.

From 1986 until 2010, Scalapino ran the Oakland small press she founded, O Books. Scalapino taught writing at various institutions, including 16 years in the MFA program at Bard College. Other schools she taught at over the years included Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, UC San Diego, and Naropa University.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Enrique Gautier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mathematical solution for life (with no math)
Dahlia’s Iris in a book that borders on the fringe of insanity and ingenuity at the same space. I refuse to classify her work into any genre because she creates a space where matter meets imagination. A singularity in the space time continuum that satiates my scientific curiosity while tormenting the writer in me. This book will rank in my mind in the same space reserved for the likes of One hundred years of solitude/Cien años de soledad, or Cry, The Beloved Country, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Thomas Kuhn’s Structures of Knowledge and or The Alchemist. I did not care for much of the narrative of the book. The main challenge and triumph of this book is the ability to speak the langue of the universe.
This book’s message revealed itself until I was prepared to listen to nature itself. The message was then refined by the whisperings a rattle snake, copious amounts of prairie dogs, pinecones, the whisperings of a brook, and six horses. I am not sure that the author ever intended to create such a confusing space that expands the mind due to the sheer power of a billion neurons processing two hundred odd pages into a cohesive narrative, but at the end of the day, I do not care. This is the kind of book that ages like a fine bourbon. The fact remains that Leslie Scalapino twists a memoir and noir into one book without ever separating the two narratives. It is both infuriating and beautiful, but that infuriation is where the genius lies. Every scientist that has ever lived understands the Eureka phenomenon. This principle is rooted in the myth that while Archimedes was given an impossible task, he solved it while taking a bath, that allowed his mind to wonder about principles that had nothing to do with the task at hand. When the solution came to him, he ran in the streets of Athens naked shouting Eureka (I got it).
Following today’s hike, I had my Eureka moment with Dahlia’s Iris. Indulge me as I journey down the rabbit hole here, because his type of writing is esoteric and abstract as my thoughts and rationale are. The actual composition of this book allows the reinterpretation of human thought in a way that I would have never conceived. In its most basic form, humans are thinking of many things simultaneously. Thus, the culmination of these thoughts can be thought of as the sum of a life. Now, these thoughts are plotted into a mathematical equation, the result is describing the normal distribution of any random phenomenon. A normal distribution in the simplest of terms states that most events fall within 2 standard distributions from a particular mean or average. Another way of thinking about this is as follows; imagine sampling the number of people that drive at a particular speed in the highway. There is going to be an average speed for the group, plus or minus a few mph. At the extremes you will find the people that drive exceedingly fast and slowly, but the numbers in the extremes are very small in relation to the average. Now comes the end of my rabbit hole; I believe that Leslie whether intentionally or not, has managed to describe human thought much in the same that a normal distribution captures millions of phenomena in everyday life.
Today’s hike brought forth the realization that very few thoughts are ever monochromatic or sustained in a single subject for a prolonged time, without deviating to any number of other subjects. Take a cyclist riding on road, yes, the cyclist will have to worry and keep focus on the road, but, that focus is not exclusive. The rider’s mind will be distracted by other cyclist, other vehicles, scenery, obstacles, the road itself, the stroke count, physiological fatigue, tire pressures, changes in the atmosphere, the impact of shade or intensity of the sun, the point is that unless a shocking event happens, regardless of the intervening events positivity or negativity, the rider’s mind will wander from one thought to the next, but inevitably come back to the ride itself. That thought process is the embodiment of this book. A constant jump from thought to thought. However some thoughts are so emotionally powerful, that they can maintain your attention regardless of time, space, or anything else for that matter. In those categories I will lump things such as, the death of a loved one, the birth of a child, a traumatic event, or the coronation of some sort of accomplishment of significance.

σ=√((∑〖(χ-μ)〗^2)/Ν)
The Dahlia’s Iris Thought Permanence Equation

I will use Dahlia’s Iris Thought Permanence Equation to describe the impact of this book. But how do I express this thought in a mathematical sound manner that is completely devoid of heart or soul? Assume that sigma means the ability to stay any single thought, is affected by the mapping of real thoughts into one’s life, that is the product of the sum of numerous thoughts, multiplied by the product of anyone particular thought minus the average intensity of anyone thought squared, and the resultant thought’s intensity to affect an individual is divided by all of the thoughts that the individual has ever experienced. As you can see, the ability of a single thought to dominate is inversely proportional to the number of thoughts and how different this thought is from the average thought. Thus, for a thought to remain as the single focus point in anyone event in life at a particular instant, said thought’s intensity necessarily needs to disproportionally outweigh the intensity of all previous thoughts.
In conclusion, over time, the force of each individual thought becomes less meaningful, as it is more likely to fall near the average intensity of every other thought ever felt by the individuals. That is the legacy of Dahlia’s Iris. Thank you for journeying down the rabbit hole with me.

[Val · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listen. I appreciate what the author was trying to do here, I really do. It’s not an easy feat to put multiple modes of writing inside one book and also write/publish in secret. But this shit is impossible to read. I mean read it if you enjoy book where you have no idea what the fuck is going on but me? no. give me plot or give me death

[Geoffrey Olsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fiction and autobiography through seeing. What is seen through
characters and self, through the iris. "To write a text that is sight, without sound even--as if it could be only the sight of events." Scalapino writes of a society that has only virtuality, having only the "now" of perception. We are becoming only pod-people, or replicants. Memories are inserted.

"'I am the business' is said by the replicant who learns her identity having thought she was human (in Blade Runner). 'Not recognizing that one is constructed' is the capitalist business. It displaces actual outside event, redefining history, obliterating those past and current events."

Part of this work is narrative and moves with science fiction, referencing Blade Runner, Terminator 2, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the version with Donald Sutherland). Scalapino suggest that movement and navigation of the past and future was the intricacy of the baroque. She is generating a baroque work that intertwines multiple time-scapes simultaneously. It is an effort to be empathetic to what is enduring (of suffering), to be conscious of how conflict and oppression is inside, not away - the invasion of Tibet linked to the Soviet/American invasion of Afghanistan linked to the oppression of immigrants in the United States.

Noir as anti-pastoral, anti-romantic.

"A book might be a simultaneous past, present, and future. To find out a relation that doesn't occur before, in the text.
Introduce motion and interior is in it. Only."

Moving. Scalapino's poetry is moving, turning over event, memory. Writing that restores motion to displaced entities. Displacement evades responses until Scalapino restores connections. It is important work: to allow us to be transformed and aware of terror, erasure.

[Jen]

In Process--and lovin' it!