Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes is a purposely incomplete book, as it’s an erasive re-reading of Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles.
- many of the words have been removed,
- some of the remaining words have fewer letters than originally
this hits me around p.88 when the title of the book appears in the main text as
” tree of cod es”
that is, whittled from Schulz’s title story in the the following manner
street of crocodiles
street of crocodiles
Intriguingly, from my view point, it turns out that the ‘tree of codes’ is actually a map…
“My father kept in his desk a beautiful map of our city, an enormous panorama. the city rose toward the center of the map, honeycomb streets, half a street, a gap between houses. that tree of codes shone with the empty unexplored, only a few streets were marked.” (87-88) the map is incomplete, however…. “The cartographer spared our city” (88) ….by inexact mapping the city can continue? …or that the map becomes the city? “we find ourselves part of the tree of codes. Reality as thin as paper” (92)
This brings to mind an interesting metaphorical relationship that is perhaps at the heart of JSF’s methods for creating the Tree of Codes….
map : city : : Tree of Codes : Street of Crocodiles
This re-writing brings to mind the issues explored in “On Exactitude in Science” by Jorge Luis Borges, where initially the map of the territory is the same size as the territory, but as generations pass, the descendants lose interest in cartography and the old map only exists as such in desolate areas especially for the ‘Animals and Beggars’… as Schulz describes them…
In both cases, we are reminded of, or perhaps inspired by, malleable maps that allow the material/territory to be tactile and creatively flexible, not over-embalmed with detail…
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for those interested in structural ephemera;
the book starts with page 7
the phrase ‘tree of codes’ first appears on p.88 of 134 pages
81/127 = .63, ~Golden Mean
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