Real Mysteries: Narrative and the Unknowable

H. Porter Abbott. Real Mysteries: Narrative and the Unknowable. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2013. 178 pp. ISBN 978-0-8142-1232-5. The word "narrative," it has often been observed, is related to the Sanskrit root for "knowledge. " In his latest book, narrative theorist Porter Abbott explores the less charted side of narrative's connection with knowledge: namely, how storytelling, and particularly storytelling of the literary variety, can deal with states of unknowing. Abbott does not limit himself to asking how narrative can represent the unknowable, ineffable, or incomprehensible--arguably, a familiar question in literary studies. Rather, Abbott contends that literary fiction can convey to willing readers states of unknowing which are not a matter of narrative representation, or even interpretive negotiation, but of immediate experience: readers sensitive to certain kinds of textual prompts may become immersed in a "palpable experience of what is unknown" (17). The premises of Abbott's book are intriguing, and the execution is admirably poised between affability of tone and uncompromising scholarly engagement with texts by Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tim O'Brien, and others. Here the close readings are integral part of the argument, and Abbott's well-paced textual analyses pull off the feat of conveying the "palpable experience" he is theorizing. Anchoring his contribution in recent debates on theory of mind and empathy within cognitive narrative theory, Abbott draws on a wide array of scientific sources, from cognitive psychology and neuroscience to evolutionary theories. Chapters 1 and 2 tackle questions of selfhood and artistic creativity, showing how literary narrative may confront the reader with the mystery of self-consciousness and the inexpressible wonders of literary inventiveness. Chapters 3 and 4 turn to what Abbott calls the "syntax" of literary language and narrative, exploring the momentary hesitation of parsing a garden-path sentence, or of engaging with texts that invite us to entertain two narrative scenarios at the same time. Abbott looks at the epistemic dizziness that these narrative strategies may engender: it is almost--Abbott suggests--as if such texts worked against the grain of evolved cognitive functions, complicating and problematizing mental operations that have long been streamlined by evolution. Finally, in chapters 5 and 6 Abbott considers permanent ("egregious") gaps in a fictional world, or in the mind of an "unreadable" character, and how such gaps may force readers to acknowledge the intrinsic limitations of their cognitive apparatus. The concluding chapter teases out the ethical implications of literary encounters with the unknown, arguing that literature can function as a "machine to think with" (in I. A. Richards's phrase) and, perhaps, counter absolutisms of all kinds through the epistemological questions it raises. One of the unique strengths of Abbott's book is how, without fanfare, it succeeds in integrating narrative theory, cognitive approaches to literature, and literary interpretation--a feat considered impossible by some of the critics of literary cognitivism (see Jackson). The path Abbott carves through these approaches is elegant and original, and his book is likely to appeal to literary scholars well beyond his "home fields" of narrative theory and cognitive literary studies. In this respect, Real Mysteries has something in common with Rita Felski's Uses of Literature or Joshua Landy's How to Do Things with Fiction--two recent monographs theorizing, from different perspectives, how literary fiction can be employed as a tool for self-exploration and interrogation. Like Landy, Abbott zooms in on a particular set of "formative fictions" (Landy's coinage), demonstrating how these texts may impact readers willing to face the unknown. Both Landy and Abbott emphasize that readers must be predisposed to this experience, for the effects of literature are never inescapable: they are always a matter of hermeneutic circularity, with readers finding in fiction what they expect to find on the basis of their individual interests and sensibilities (in this case, a fascination for the unsolvable mysteries of human existence and selfhood). …