Over Christmas break, my younger brother Matt noticed that on Mormon Artist's html version of my story "Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg," someone had posted a comment as Lehi M. Sidhu, saying something like "My grandma used to tell me stories like these. Thanks for bringing back the good memories." As it turns out, that someone was me--a fact which my brother was not terribly surprised to discover.
The comment is funny for at least three reasons. First of all, "Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg" is set in a world in which Mormon, Sikh, and Jewish legends are simply one, where it's normal for the Golden Plates to be buried under the battlefield at Kurukshetra. No one's grandma tells them stories quite like that. Secondly, Lehi M. Sidhu is nearly as ridiculous a name as Teancum Singh Rosenberg. I am fairly confident that no one with the last name of Sidhu has the first name Lehi. It's cultural mixing of a particular form which is not terribly widespread as of yet. Third, only people who get into the world of the story will have a good chance of recognizing that the comment is not, in fact, a real person's comment, but rather an impromptu extension of the story. Getting to feel clever like that is funny to the one who feels clever specifically because that person happened to earn it, the way any good joke asks you to earn its punchline by connecting two ideas in an unusual way.
Matt told me that I'm becoming a master of the literary easter egg, by which he meant leaving little surprises that can be unlocked for a reader who looks carefully. I'm especially interested in surprises that point towards and/or reward those who leave the text to get extra-textual context.
Last month, as the communist takeover of Goldbergish was drawing to a close, I realized that there's a politics behind my interest in literary easter eggs. I like texts that invite active reading, that reward readers for careful attention, and that point towards a larger context largely because I believe that the most of the world's problems require that kind of attention, and that we suffer again and again when we solve the problems based on the way they present themselves to us rather than first looking for the pieces of the puzzle (so to speak) which are obscured, often by our habits, cultural frame of reference, education, or prejudice.
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That's interesting, but don't think for a minute that means I'll take Cort's advice and grow a beard.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I find interesting about the internet, and about texts like wikipedia in particular, is the speed with which you can search for new layers of possible context.
ReplyDeleteI think God is constantly putting answers in hidden places on purpose, to remind us of the growth that comes from looking outside of ourselves.
ReplyDeleteTell me about it. All we Jewish scholars have been doing since the Destruction of the Temple is playing around with layers of context.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments.
ReplyDeleteShould I find it suspicious in any way that each one appeared 2-5 minutes after the previous one and almost thirty-five years to the minute after the timestamp on the post?
Also: who are you, and what are you doing on my secret blog?
It's the things people don't immediately see about us, I think, which make the most difference.
ReplyDelete