To conclude my report...

on my workshop with Harry Mathews, I will summarize the rest of "The Name Game" exercise and post some of my results.



Our first task after receiving and putting on our new identities, securing all the buckles and straps, was to write a little autobiography. I think we had 10 minutes or so.



In mine, I, Victoria Rosemarie Caranello, explained my three marriages (the first husband lives in Northern California, the second was my high-school sweetheart John and he died of a heart attack, and the third and current husband is Gene and he's the bartender at my Cajun Restaurant). The restaurant is named "Victoria Rosemarie's" and I'd like to open another location but can't decide what to name it. "Caranello's" sounds like an Italian joint, I think. I've already created the signature drink, a muffaletta martini: gin, straight up with a sniff of vermouth and a little spoon of muffaletta olive salad for a dirty garnish.



You get the gist.



Then we had 5 minutes or so to write about an important incident in our lives. I wrote about running into John, my high-school sweetheart, after returning to New Orleans after my first divorce. John became my second husband. We ran into each other at the grocery store. It was the day before Thanksgiving. I invited him over for pie the next night after dinner. And so were the days of our lives.



Etc.



The next part of the exercise was to write another incident in our lives, but one that involves one of the other personae the class has created. I chose Renee LeVey--she had the name for it. Remember, she's 31 and playing the field, and works as a coatcheck girl on the weekends. So I put her to work at Victoria Rosemarie's. Here's that incident:



One night Renee came in late--not like that's a rare occurance--and after apologizing and me saying it was fine, god bless her--she sashayed off to the coat room. The first few customers were already checking their jackets with Gene, who was going back and forth between the coat room and the bar. As Renee came in and Gene came out, I swear to god she grabbed his left asscheek.



Just as I was about to head over there and giver her the keep-your-hands-off-my-husband what-for, Gene said to her "Well, I didn't know that you didn't know that I'm married to the boss. But now you know...and so does she," turning to look in my direction.



Took care of that. Renee was so embarassed she quit after her shift was over. I thought about asking her to stay but decided not to press my luck. And we didn't really need Renee anyway. I mean it's rarely cold enough for a coat down here--just two months out of the year. Next time I'll get a high-school kid to do it. Maybe my neighbor's kid. She's shy and quiet, but pretty. The customers will like her. And she won't be all catty like Renee. Bon voyage, Renee.



We could have gone on from there, said Harry. The next step is to introduce more personae and relate incidents that happen between them, etc. The game part of the exercise had provided us with enough fuel to write all night, really. We spent two hours writing and talking about these characters. Harry's point was that getting yourself and the idea of "self-expression" out of the way was a big step toward freedom from anxiety. I ended up with several pages of prose that could be a short story or the seed of a novel--with work!--and they seemed to have materialized from nowhere.



So if you ever have the chance to take a workshop with Harry, do it. I begged my way into this one saying I was willing to sit bound, gagged and blinfolded in the corner for the entire two days (I graduated from the program almost 2 years ago) and even in that state I'm sure I could have written something.



Hunt down a copy of The Oulipo Compendium--it's out of print, but used copies must be out there somewhere. It contains some of the exercises we did in class, and many more, plus the history of the group and the biographies of the members, examples of their Oulipian work, etc. There are other books too--Dan mentions OuLiPo: A Primer of Potential Literature. And Atlas Press publishes lots of the Oulipian work, as well as many other fine things. Check them out, as well as Exact Change, which publishes "Classics of Experimental Literature."