The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction Page: 22
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the existing circumstances, the boy brings the mail there never is. Shortly after, the narrator tells
us, still discussing the hermit, that "People said they saw him. Or they didn't see him. That was
the point" (57). Here, the narrator reports a logical formula that stands to reason: onlookers can
report that 1) they saw the hermit 2) they did not see him. The text presents no violation of this
formula; however, its inclusion, like the one above, mimics the recognition, analysis, and action
that occurs when a real consciousness negotiates meaning with itself.31
That most texts do not sketch the logical formulae they manifest or violate so explicitly
calls attention to the calling-attention-to of the logical formulae in "Lull." Link's narrator
reveals-in ways other stories (indeed, most real events) do not-what Dennett calls "perceptual
sets" or "semantic readiness" and what the cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser calls "schemata"
or "priming" (discussion to follow). The oscillation between confirmations and violations of the
these explicit logical formulae in "Lull" destabilizes how readers progress through the text-it is
never certain which will happen. Creating such "semantic unreadiness" is part of what makes the
borders between narrators and narrated, conscious and inanimate so unclear in the story.
Essentially, it is a cognitive exposure of David Bohm's problems with categorization.
There are reasons why we come to our conclusions, both in real life and in the literature
we read. Similarly, there are reasons that inform, if they do not necessarily explain, how
characters, narrators, and focalizors come to their conclusions. Neisser, in his essay "The
Development of Consciousness and the Acquisition of Skill," explains that
... after a while, the characteristics of the self and the environment become
familiar, so familiar that they are no longer discovered but merely confirmed. ...
If something is confirmed, it must first have been anticipated; if it was
anticipated, some mental structure corresponding to it must have existed in
advance. In almost all modern cognitive theories, such structures are called
schemata.32
"Lull," then, makes clear as it goes the assumptions it makes about itself-that is, what it knows22
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Bradley, Darin Colbert. The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction, dissertation, May 2007; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3703/m1/26/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .