Note 068. This transitional space is located near the bottom of the spine of the big
block C (a pun on the word “see”?)
formed by all the writing spaces in “pig_love” (Directory 4). Superficially, it verges on the fulcrum (Note 069)
between
the vertical and horizontal planes. More directly, 068 joins the enigmatic but clearly political “Pig_Love
Index” (067)
to the literal pig love in Frank Figurski's pornographic ravings of 069. The shifting focus in “pig_love” from
animal
pigs such as Ralph (058) and the victims of pigsticking (060) to the pigstickers themselves, the human pigs,
becomes
explicit in 067, as does the parallel movement from the original
Boy Scout Manual to
The Revised Boy Scout
Manual. In
the latter, William Burroughs notes the “familiar pattern” of oppressed peoples, still lovesick after
liberation,
following the bad examples set by their oppressors (e.g., the comical Moroccan bureaucracy inherited from the
French;
Middle Eastern countries continuing summary executions from the English). New pigs taking over for the old pigs.
As we
have seen, “patterns”
in Figurski always has at least a double meaning, one of which
refers reflexively to the
fictional
form or architecture. Is the author implying that the hyper-structures he employs somehow mirror Burroughs'
observed
historical patterns, or rather that they are strands of the big broom of revolution that can potentially “make a
clean
sweep of all this old garbage”? It's difficult to say. But before we leave Note 068, we should observe how
“pig_love”
zigzags, as it turns the corner of that big C formed by its writing spaces in the map view, from revolution and
eroticism to the internal journey-quest (070-071), and from popular culture (072-073) to
Alice in Wonderland
(075).
Alice's node is framed by Nguyen and Vieuchanger removing the servomechanisms from the mechanical pigs in
Figurski's
possession (074 and 076), just as “pig_love” gives way to the pivotal Directory 5, “automaton!” Alice's pig is
ugly or
beautiful depending on what it's called; Note 068 asks whether linear coherence is radically subverted, or
merely
revealed for what it is (another form of subversion?), in the “pig_love” directory.
— Alan Richardson, “Metanarration in the Notes directory of Figurski,” in Millennial Machinations, ed. Alexander
Parritt (Fictitious Press, 2001)
