Although the aim is worthy, Nathan Smith’s The Non-Chronological Anthology is a disingenuous attempt at a literature without context. Here is Smith on the project:
“The Non-Chronological Anthology is an experiment in literary pleasure. By obfuscating the authors and dates of each story, we have created a book written by Valéry’s ‘Universal Spirit’: a work that presents the beauty of its contents unhindered by the imposition of the context associated with its author, its language, its time period, or its motivations. The Non-Chronological Anthology consists of 16 beautiful literary works, some recent, some ancient; some translated, some demonstrating the power of English; and each presented without any of this specific knowledge, allowing the reader to experience its merits purely, as they lay on the page. The anthology features stories by Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, John Updike; several classic authors such as Herman Melville, Edward Allen Poe, and Leo Tolstoy; works translated from Russian, German, and French; as well as a new story by Philip K. Dick, written specifically for The Non-Chronological Anthology. The stories were chosen for their inherent beauty, and we are confident that The Non-Chronological Anthology will present the reader with a literary experience like no other.”
I will point out the obvious: Smith need not have indicated any of the eminent authors appearing in the collection. The heady prose of “One Rose for Tomorrow” is instantly recognized as the work of Dick—it was pointless to go through the trouble of writing it for this anthology, as if his writing would not be recognized, even if he had not been named; though I do admire his willingness to be included “anonymously” in support of the project. Hemingway, Tolstoy, and Poe are also of course instantly recognized. The obfuscation of the names and dates has done nothing to prevent the context from seeping in.
Which is why, later this year, I will be publishing The Amnesiac Anthology, a genuine attempt to create an opportunity for context-independent enjoyment of literary art. The Amnesiac Anthology will be published without a publication date, because it will be published by myself independent of the demands of ornery publishers. It will also have no copyright, because acquiring a copyright requires stamping the book with the year in which the copyright was obtained, and it is my hope that the date of publication will be forgotten to time, and each reader who picks up the anthology will be able to forget that it was assembled at any specific point in time, and therefore not be able to forge something of a context by excluding the context of the time between the publication date and the current date.
The Amnesiac Anthology will include no stories from recognizable writers—no Hemingway, no Melville, no Tolstoy. The reader may be sure of this because I could not commission these writers even if I wanted to. Instead, the collection will consist solely of works written by mostly unknown writers, writers which never achieved prominence, some of them even first-time and/or one-time writers. I am preserving the “non-chronology” of Smith’s collection, excluding mention of authors and dates; but I am doing so with even more enthusiasm than he, for, rather than merely plucking a couple tales from The 1,001 Nights, prose versions of a couple ancient plays, and a lesser known story by Poe, I have combed multiple libraries in search of stories or references to stories which have only been read by a handful of souls alive today to be included in my anthology. Many of these authors have been mostly forgotten to time, hence the descriptor “Amnesiac.” Of course, I will not disclose which or how many stories in the anthology are written by unknown writers of today or of old—this is one of the mistakes made by Smith and his collaborators, giving the reader a clue which allows them to piece together a context for the entire collection. I will mention, with sadness, that all of the stories in The Amnesiac Anthology were originally written in English, for I have no access to translators. This is certainly an unfortunate hole that will allow some amount of context to leak in, or at least the lack of context to leak as negative space which could allow the reader to infer some context, or at least some of the context that is missing, but perhaps a future project will contain works from many languages, if I can gain access to translators following the success of the The Amnesiac Anthology—of course, in which case, the existence of these translators or the multiplicity of original languages would not be disclosed (another of the many mistakes made by Smith).
While I have spent many days and nights contemplating how best to craft a context-free anthology in order to create an experience of unhindered literary art, not to mention months executing on this conception, there remains a thorny problem for a non-chronological anthology, (mostly) outside of the editor’s control: that of future works which reference the anthology. Such works place the anthology in time, by assuring the reader that the anthology must have already existed at the time the work which references the anthology was published, undoing all the hard work of the editor to eliminate the opportunity for chronological context to develop around the content of the anthology. Furthermore, such works introduce another type of context, even more destructive, in the actual content of the reference to the anthology. If a future commentator publishes an essay which references The Amnesiac Anthology, calling it “a marvelous experience; finally a way to appreciate literature purely, unfettered by the noise of criticism, society, and life in general; truly, the anonymous editor is a genius”—this reference itself is a context, now inextricably imposed on the anthology, rendering it absolutely unremarkable, because what made it remarkable in the first place was the utter lack of context. Obviously, such a thing cannot be allowed to happen. The reader will not be surprised to learn that I am prepared to make The Amnesiac Anthology and similar future projects my life’s work; so, I ask my colleagues (including those which I will never meet, those of future generations that will enjoy my anthology after I am gone) not to produce any references to the anthology, and I must point out that if such references are created, I will see that they are destroyed. Of course, you may be thinking, that all this, this announcement and discussion and this preclusion of contexts is also a context; alas, this is true—I ask that you do not act on the urge to point this out in a work of your own, thereby creating a reference and further developing this context of non-context—as this is a context that must be allowed, in order for all other context to be effectively purged.
Now, although I am working on The Amnesiac Anthology with great excitement, it is not without its problems, as I have honestly noted above, in an effort to convince the reader that my attempt at a context-free anthology is genuine. I readily acknowledge my failings (unlike my friend Smith), and in this recognition, I already have the germ of an idea for a truly context-independent collection; a true Amnesiac Anthology. Because, as I have pointed out, even my labors suffer from certain context infiltrations; the potential for chronological placement via references or other connections, the context of non-context. Of course, the anthology that would overcome all these problems and all others would be one that puts the reader in an amnesiac trance as soon as he opens the book, making the reader forget the world, and their expectations, all knowledge of himself and his history, and even the basic awareness that they are reading a book; indeed, obliviating all memory and knowledge of anything outside the experience of the story itself. How an editor would accomplish this is quite a big question indeed, but I have already had some success experimenting with the administration of certain substances prior to initiating the act of reading. Whether these experiments will bear any fruit in the form of a future project remains to be seen; nevertheless, I maintain that this true Amnesiac Anthology represents the ultimate aim of an editor. “Amnesiac” seems an insufficient descriptor for such an anthology; I think it could only be called Benighted.