Placing a Man Under InvestigationJamaica KincaidMr. PotterFarrar Strauss and Giroux, 2002Mr. Potter tells the life story of the eponymous character as narrated by his daughter, Elaine. Set in a quiet community on the island of Antigua, the story delves into Mr. Potter's formative experiences, and later on, his adult life, discussing his relationships, or lack thereof, with other people, and how he became who he is. The use of the prose, the construction of the timeline, and the way that the imagery is laid out gives the entire story a somewhat timeless, ethereal feel—not in the sense that the story could take place at any time, but that there is little in the way of separating the concrete from the abstract.Kincaid's prose is the cornerstone of the experience. The narrative relies in part on long, descriptive sentences, often creating sentences that span between a quarter and half of a page. Physical character description is somewhat minimal, but when done tends to concentrate on specific attributes of the character being described. Much more detail and imagery is spared for the environment and to the characters' thoughts. There are no formal chapter titles, either; divisions in the narrative are marked by the beginning of a new page, much like a chapter in a regular book without a title.Oftentimes, repetition is used to emphasize some details of symbolism, such as the “line” that runs through Mr. Potter and through his father (referring to the line on Mr. Potter's birth certificate where his father's name would have been, as well as the fact that same line runs through Elaine's birth certificate in the same spot and the same way). In many ways, these repetitions tend to emphasize the similarities between Mr. Potter and his own father as well as the differences between Mr. Potter and Elaine (namely that while Mr. Potter and his father were both illiterate, Elaine is not).The timeline is established solely from the content of the chapter and context, beginning with the day that Mr. Potter, who works as a chauffeur, meets Dr. Weizenger and his wife, his boss' latest customers, before moving backward to briefly discuss Mr. Potter's parents, Nathaniel and Elfrida, then returning to Mr. Potter and examining how he grows up as an orphan. The tone throughout the story is slightly melancholic, yet introspective, as Elaine examines her father's life, and in some ways, her own—mostly, how it was shaped through his absence.One of the story's most memorable traits could also be called its weakest one. As mentioned earlier, the narrative is continuous, and so it tends to discuss the characters' thoughts and motivations with the same long sentences as it mixes in imagery. Accordingly, getting a clear fix on what the characters are thinking, or the reasoning behind their actions, is immensely difficult because something may be directly stated and yet carry the feel or weight of imagery, and not prose. Because of this, it can take a while to really understand the motivation of Mr. Potter or of Dr. Weizenger, and the purpose of some lines that may seem little more than filler. However, considering the tone of the story and the way that it's told, this may have been Kincaid's point—to tell the story of a man without motivation, that lived a joyless, unfruitful life because that was all he knew. Regardless of whether this was her intent, Mr. Potter remains a unique experience for those that enjoy more cerebral analysis of what makes a person who they are.
At first the method of repetition turned me off, but I soldiered on and halfway through I began to understand what Kincaid was up to and accept some of the repetition in the following ways:1. A refrain or chorus that is repeated throughout, such as the repeating of Mr. Potter's birth and death dates, who his parents were, who Elaine (the narrator's) parents were, that Potter could not read and could not write but Elaine could, and so forth--all facts that as they repeat and repeat accumulate in meaning until by book's end you realize why the narrator dwells on such facts as she tries to make sense of this father she never knew, this father who never claimed her. If the book were a song or a suite of songs or an opera, they'd be melodies and choruses and refrains that would convey meaning to us whenever they appeared in the structure.2. Anaphora where the same words or phrases are repeated at the beginning of sections or chapters or even within a paragraph lifting the prose into not quite poetry but quite poetic passages. "There was a line drawn through me" was one of the more successful moments of this.3. A way of thinking that spins out an idea or fact and repeats the idea or fact in the same words but a different order, almost as if Elaine is stating the facts and then turning them over and over again in her hands, looking at them from different angles, dissembling the parts and rebuilding the shapes to see if the shapes change, to make sense of the shapes.And I liked this quote:"...often a thing that is ugly is ugly in itself, and often a thing that is ugly is only a thing that is forgotten, kept from view and kept from memory, and often a thing that is ugly is not only a definition of beauty itself but also renders beauty as something beyond words or beyond any kind of description."
What do You think about Mr. Potter (2003)?
See Mr. Potter.See Mr. Potter sit.See Mr. Potter sit and think.See Mr. Potter think about sun shining. And then it was sunny.And it was sunny all day long.And oh my how it was sunny again and again.But then the clouds came.The clouds were very dark.They darkened Mr. Potter's soul.Mr. Potter did not want to sit and think anymore.Mr. Potter dies because he cannot sit and think anymore.The dull, nonsensical, repetitive, sing-song quality of the prose is still screaming in my head. I wanted Mr. Potter to die. The first paragraph was enough for me to wish Mr. Potter dead. I wanted Mr. Potter to die a dull but painful death -- in the very same manner he killed my own will to live after reading this.Who invented Mr. Potter?Who invented Jamaica Kincaid?Mr. Potter did. Would that it had not been so.The tragedy of this is that there is a very poignant, moving story behind ridiculously repetitive prose but that it is drowned in the reverberation of the crashing waves that scream over the writer's voice. This is like listening to a wonderful song, where the acoustics are all "off": the music drowns the singer, and instead of a beautiful melody, it is merely a harsh, disappointing cacophony.I did much skimming, I must admit, because I was afraid if I didn't, they might be carrying me off to Bellevue, singing ring-around-the-rosie at the top of my lungs.
—Julie
I just dig Jamaica Kincaid. Unusual style, but she can say the most profound things in the most surprising ways. Like this: "And he died and his death seemed sudden even though he had been marching toward its inevitability . . . . his death was a surprise just the way each death is, and his death made all who heard of it and all who knew him pause,stop, and wonder if such a thing could happen to them also, for the living always doubt the reality of death and the dead do not know of doubt, the dead do not know of anything."
—Sandy Brusin
