Graham Swift, Ever After : a Study in Intertextuality

Hannah Jacobmeyer (Münster)

In line with the growing interest in the intertextual dimension of literary works, this
analysis seeks to uncover some of the intertextual patterns inherent in the novel Ever
After (1992) by Graham Swift, one of Britain's leading contemporary writers.

Intertextuality has become a major focus in postmodern literary criticism probably for
two main reasons. First, its hybrid character as both being applicable to concrete
passages of text and as an abstract concept of the relatedness of all writing; second,
the pleasure which can be gained from investigating the hide-and-seek games which
literary texts present with their intertextual references. The latter point relates to the
playful aspect which is often highlighted in postmodern works and, likewise, in
contemporary criticism. Seen from the author's point of view, intertextuality is
introduced into the literary work on two levels: consciously and subconsciously. In its
conscious use, i.e. as a strategy to create meanings, it allows for intricate, complex
stories, challenging the reader with a handful of more or less clearly
recognizable hypotexts. Instinctively, and not unlike the attempt to look up an
unknown word in the text which will reveal a fuller presence of the passage in
question, the reader tries to identify these other texts. This may happen to a greater or
lesser degree, depending on the level of recognition of the hypotexts and on the
reader's patience, or on his/her wish to find the actual pre-texts. Intertextuality
generates tensions and excitement, even if the reader finds himself unable to solve all
the intertextual riddles which are put to him. This consciously-used, concrete kind of
textual criss-cross, which can be seen to emerge in all its contemporary multi-
facetedness (not just texts, but all kinds of media are involved) from the ancient
rhetorical device of imitatio , allows for a pragmatics of intertextuality, as opposed to
the overarching, abstract phenomenon which was first claimed by Julia Kristeva
(Kristeva 1967).

Thus, on a subconscious level, the writer of postmodern fiction always and inevitably
falls prey to intertextuality, in the sense that no written or spoken utterance can
possibly be free from the influence of (all) other texts. Just as it is in the nature of all
writing to defer meaning endlessly, from one linguistic sign to the next, so meaning is
being sought - and deferred - by calling up different (literary) texts. The point which
Jacques Derrida makes about the 'différance' of writing can be observed on any level
of textual production - up to the automatic and inevitable weaving of texts.
Intertextuality is therefore second nature to the literary discourse as such (especially if
taken literally: the 'running to and fro' designated by 'discourse' already refers to the
[inter-]textual movements).

In Ever After , as in every literary work, this abstract intertextuality is of course much
harder to grasp, or to define - not only because every reader will 'find', or suspect,
his/her very own hypotexts in the work, but also because no author could possibly
give an account of the number and kind of texts which have influenced (and are
wrought into) his work of fiction. This potential, which is left to the reader to define
as he/she likes, the vagueness about the actual content of the work in question, is what
can appropriately be called a work's 'intertext'. But even on the level of a concrete
intertextuality, it can be assumed that postmodern literature, with its sharpened
awareness of an ever-intruding universe of texts as well as with its eclectic ways of
composition, contains more consciously-chosen hypotexts than the literature of
preceding periods.

Graham Swift is generally ranged among the less adventurous writers as far as his
(knowing) use of intertextuality is concerned: his writings belong to a
moderate, 'muted' postmodernism (Broich 1993: 38). Among his novels which have so
far been published (including the most recent one, Last Orders ), intertextuality is a
striking element only in Waterland (1983) and Ever After (for intertextuality in
Waterland , see Bernard 1991). While Waterland attracts attention mostly as an
example of so-called historiographic metafiction, Ever After , with its 'contemplative'
character (a qualification used repeatedly by the novel's hero, Bill Unwin, to describe
his life), draws greater attention to the hypotexts involved. If Waterland focuses on
history/(his) story, Ever After chooses the form of romance as a narrative frame for
Bill Unwin's and Matthew Pierce's story. As the following analysis will show,
romance invites intertextuality more naturally than other narrative forms, becoming
the actual site where texts meet.

Identifying Intertexts: 'aleatory' versus 'obligatory'?

Even a first, brief look at Ever After will show that several clearly distinguishable
hypotexts are integrated into the novel, for example several plays by Shakespeare,
Hamlet being the most prominent among them if we consider the frequency of its
presence in the hypertext. The remaining difficulty, however, is how to approach the
task of identifying as many pre-texts as possible - ideally, a complete list of the
existing hypotexts. This becomes difficult as soon as intertextual markers, such as
quotation marks, italics or other distinct differences in comparison with the hypertext,
are missing.
Michael Riffaterre claims that a hypotext can always be assumed when the reader
finds 'ungrammaticalities' in the text (Riffaterre 1990:57). Although this proves to be
helpful insofar as it sharpens the reader's attention, it also remains vague, especially in
the case of the contemporary, i.e. postmodern novel: with its tendencies towards
fragmentation and an admixture of traditional narrative structures, ungrammaticalities
are bound to occur. Ever After , for all its 'muted' postmodern character, presents no
exception to this rule. The novel seems to suggest hypotexts everywhere until the
story, which begins medias in res , has settled down somewhat and allowed the reader
to piece together those passages from the beginning of the text which could not be
fully understood at the time. Nevertheless, if a pre-text is introduced without any
markers and altogether subtly, such as for instance the passage from Love's Labour's
Lost (212), the reader might as well suppose that an existing pre-text lurks behind any
other phrase, such as 'I find myself a rich man' (7) or 'What worldly adroitness I can
muster, what chutzpah and charm, what spring in my step' (42). Almost every passage
which is in some way striking (the latter of the two examples also calls for attention
because of its alliteration and rhythm) could be called 'ungrammatical'; and again,
every reader will find ungrammaticalities in different phrases or passages of the text.

Riffaterre's second suggestion which provides some initial help in identifying

intertexts is linked to the first one, and proves to be equally vague when tried in
practice. At first, the distinction between 'aleatory' and 'obligatory' hypotexts seems
helpful in reducing the complexity of the problem: Hamlet will of course be
identified as an obligatory pre-text, while all those bits and pieces that the reader
carries into the hypertext by way of spontaneous associations (stimulated, for
example, by the last movie he/she has seen, or the last novel he/she has read) must be
called 'aleatory' and can be excluded from the discussion (Riffaterre 1984: 24).
However, a number of examples from Ever After reveals that the categorization of
'aleatory' versus 'obligatory' is too open-meshed a net to catch the phenomenon of
intertextuality: it does not account for changes in a quotation, as in 'Under the Indian
bean tree, who loves to lie with me' (88), which is an echo of 'Under the greenwood
tree,/ Who loves to lie with me' from As You Like It ; it does not foresee the problem
of very short passages, which might or might not be regarded as 'obligatory'
hypotexts, such as 'O England!' (199), a possible quotation from Shakespeare's Henry
V (II.Pr.16); it does not solve the problem of proverbs and whether or not these
should be seen as 'obligatory' hypotexts. Riffaterre's distinction cannot assess any of
the borderline cases where a pre-text comes to mind but cannot be pinned down with
absolute certainty. When Matthew Pierce writes to his wife before embarking on the
sea-journey to the United States, 'And yet as I sit here, a traveller about to submit
himself to the deeps' (55), is this an obligatory verification of the Tennysonian pre-text
of 'Ulysses' ('the deep/ Moans round with many voices' etc.)? And what about the
intertextual quality of the name 'Unwin': is it derived from Dickens' Oliver Twist ?
Just as Bill Unwin is an orphan, and lost in the world, so is Oliver Twist, and 'The
next one as comes', says Mr. Bumble in Dickens' novel, 'will be Unwin'.

Behind Riffaterre's system of binary opposition lies his assumption that hypotexts lead
to the one and only possible interpretation of the (hyper-)text. Undoubtedly, a number
of hypotexts can always be identified as definite cases of reference to another literary
work, but the possibilities inherent in intertextuality seem to point to a multiplicity of
different readings rather than to a single one.

Hamlet : constructing meaning from the pre-text

Hamlet is the most frequently evoked pre-text in Ever After . The play takes on
several functions, its most striking one being that of a general key or aid towards
understanding the story. If hypotexts usually seem to render the text more
complicated, Hamlet helps to clarify matters in Ever After , especially at the
beginning. The novel confuses the reader at the onset both in respect to the plot and to
the I-narrator. The story's point of departure is obviously its end, as the narrator gives
the reader to understand: 'These are, I should warn you, the words of a dead man' (1).
In fact, Bill Unwin's near-death is the last one of the deaths to happen, chronologically
speaking, but it is the first one to be told. Furthermore, the narrator asks the reader to
distrust him before he has actually started to tell his story: '[these are] nothing more
than the ramblings of a prematurely aged one' (1), thus leaving the reader disoriented
because there does not seem to be any firm ground for the story.

Here, the pre-text of Hamlet takes over a stabilizing function and provides a means
of comparison. When the narrator demands that his audience should read Hamlet
instead of his own story ('for a large part of my life [...] I have imagined myself [...] as
Hamlet', 4; 'For Claudius, read Sam Ellison', 6), i.e. that the pre-text is the more
realistic, more reliable, indeed the 'truer' story of the two, he offers the reader a way to
qualify or modify his 'ramblings'. In fact, given the intertextual foil of Hamlet which
accompanies the whole of the hypertext, the narrator can be said to underestimate his
readers' power and far-sightedness ('you have no means of comparison and only my
word to go on' (4) - whereas in fact the reader has Hamlet as a means of
comparison).

If Hamlet takes on a stabilizing and ordering function, the hypertext naturally also
deviates from its hypotextual basis. One fundamental difference to Shakespeare's play
is stated in the same breath as is the similarity with it: 'the odd thing is I have always
liked him [Sam]' (6); 'You see, I thought Sam killed my father. So to speak. But now I
know he didn't' (11). The reader knows, therefore, from the very beginning that
Hamlet , as an overall key to an interpretation of Ever After , must in its turn be read
with a critical distance. Thus, the pre-text of Hamlet also mystifies and again
complicates its hypertext.

Characters in Ever After are strongly influenced by the pre-text of Hamlet , and Bill
Unwin most prominently so. The protagonist of the novel shares several character
traits with the protagonist of the play. Both are reluctant to act and to speak openly
about matters, the common topic of the protagonist's assassinated father being just one
example (despite the fact that Bill's father committed suicide, he himself believed that
Sam induced the suicide and thus views Sam as a murderer until shortly before the
latter's death, when he learns about his true parentage). If Bill Unwin is modelled on
Hamlet, his reluctance is also typical of Swift's narrator figures, as David Leon
Higdon explains:

a new type of narrator, the reluctant narrator , who is reliable in strict terms,
indeed often quite learned and perceptive, but who has seen, experienced or
caused something so traumatic that he must approach the telling of it through
indirections, masks and substitutions. (Higdon 1991:174)

Naturally, Hamlet is one such indirection, mask and/or substitution through which
Bill can tell his story.

Another parallel between Hamlet and Bill can be seen in the relationship with the
mother. If Hamlet is usually interpreted along Oedipal lines, similar ideas about an
incestuous relationship between Bill and his mother occur, particularly in chapter II
('"Do up my buttons, sweetie, would you? There's an angel." / A whole world existed
in which men did up the backs of women's dresses at four o'clock in the afternoon',
17f.), or when Bill's mother is said to be jealous of her daughter-in-law. The figure of
Hamlet is, of course, an unusually rich intertextual source for the construction of
Swift's narrator because Hamlet cannot be reduced to a single interpretation: Hamlet is
a brooding and an acting figure, he is melancholic and witty, suicidal and
murderous, Oedipus and suitor of Ophelia. More examples can be found, which
show how intricately the figure of Bill is modelled on the figure of Hamlet. The
relationship between the two texts - which according to Harold Bloom is the only
really existing textual site (see Bloom 1975: 3) - proves to be many-faceted.

If Bill, on the one hand, resembles his famous intertextual model, on the other hand he
is a rather boring and unexciting figure. He never achieved particular success in
anything (unlike his wife or his 'father', Colonel Unwin, or his stepfather, who made a
fortune in plastics or his mother, who was a singer). Quite on the contrary: Bill is a
'loser figure', albeit in a literal, dramatic sense after the loss of all of his family. He
admits that he is 'the dowdy, forgotten moth' (43). Even in the most dramatic
situations, he appears only as a voyeur, a helpless witness, a victim or a mere
chronicler. However, the novel puts him in the privileged place of I-narrator and
protagonist. It seems that this potential for the special, the outstanding, is added to the
weak figure through the pre-texts and that the figure of Bill Unwin can be interpreted
as a void filled with hypotexts, a blank onto which pre-texts are being projected. He
is, in a way, the 'produit combinatoire' (Barthes 1970: 74) of - in this case above all,
obligatory - hypotexts.

To go once more back to Shakespeare's play, it is also worth pointing out that Bill
unites the figures of Hamlet, Polonius and Horatio. On one occasion, he uses the
words of Polonius to interpret Katherine Potter's advances towards him (85) and once
characterizes Matthew Pierce (whom he usually views as 'just another disillusioned
idealist, an over-reactive Hamlet type' (211) - thus establishing a kind of Hamlet-triad
recruited from three different texts) as 'prating Polonius' (176). But Bill can also be
understood as a Horatio figure who lives on after the deaths of his beloved ones to tell
his/their story: 'in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,/ To tell my story' ( Hamlet
V.2.353 f.).

However closely-linked the figure of Bill is to that of Hamlet (Polonius, Horatio), he

is also distanced from this model in the course of the novel, especially when he
discovers that Sam, or Sam's relationship with Bill's mother, very probably was not
the decisive cause of Colonel Unwin's suicide, and that he was always wrong in
seeking his revenge as he did. That Bill's real father is yet another person, a nameless
train-driver, carries the story further away from the Shakespearian pre-text. At the
point of time when Bill expects Sam to apologize for the grief he caused Colonel
Unwin, and does so with an allusion to Hamlet ('[h]e is here (Claudius at his prayers)
to atone for his part in my father's death', 154), the distance from the pre-text becomes
obvious. Bill cannot 'fool' the reader, or indeed himself, with a Hamlet identification;
the evoking of Hamlet in this place rather stresses the difference between the two
texts. Thus, meaning in Ever After is created not just from the pre-text of Hamlet ,
but also against it.

Characters are perhaps the main focus in Swift's novels: 'Over all, though, towers
Swift's interest in his characters' confessions [...] his deep commitment to viewing
them within the historical ties linking past and present' (Higdon 1991: 181). However,
the pre-texts in Ever After take on an important function regarding action, as well.
On the one hand, the pre-texts, in particular the plays among them, advance the action
in Ever After . This is necessary as there is little or no action in the novel: in fact, the
only consistent action is that of remembrance. Remembering his life and his losses is
for Bill a form of case history, of anamnesis, which will gradually lead to the healing
of his wounds. The plays introduce some forward movement into the novel; the
intertextual references to them promise the reader that there is as similar structure of
beginning, middle and ending in this seemingly immobile, paralysed story - paralysed
as is its teller.

Secondly, the hypotexts, Hamlet in particular, take over the function of conveying all
the extreme elements, such as the extremely violent, or extremely sad parts of the
story. One example is Ruth's suicide, which is rendered in the words of Charmian
from Antony and Cleopatra (cf. 121). The pre-text can help to alleviate the hypertext
and therefore take on the role of an aesthetic norm:

Afin d'atteindre une réalité hors du commun telle que seules la souffrance, la
folie ou la mort peuvent la mettre à nu, l'écriture de Swift se fera écriture de la
violence. A la représentation normée s'opposera donc une forme de
représentation excessive, qui fait l'expérience de ses propres
limites. (Bernard 1991:8)

The hypotexts assume the function of shaping the novel. They establish meaning(s) by
evoking common features, such as the similarities between Bill and Hamlet, as well as
by setting themselves against the hypertext. The shaping process takes place on every
level of the novel: figures, plot and narrative.

Intertextuality and the form of romance

Ever After may be classified quite obviously as a romance (see Maack 1993: 279),
although there is no mention of romance in the title. Both Bill's and Matthew's stories
are marked by the love for their wives, particularly in the case of Bill whose wife
Ruth, a famous actress, had been the centre of his life until her death. The novel closes
with a description of Bill's and Ruth's first night together: a culmination of their love
story which Bill begins to tell as far back as the seventh chapter. The intertextual
references, not just in the seventh chapter ('Dido and Aeneas [...] A midsummer night
[...] I was a puckish soul [...] Jack shall have Jill; nought shall go ill', 77 f.) but
throughout the novel stress the theme of love between man and woman.

Love is only one element which is considered to be typical of romance. There is also
the quest which Bill and Matthew undertake in the form of an inner journey, not of a
visible itinerary. This quest is partly a search for the father: just as Bill is torn between
the 'truths' of three father-figures (Sam, Colonel Unwin and his genetically true father,
whom he has never got to know), so Matthew looks to a triad of fathers, neither of
whom can qualm his anxieties: Matthew's real father has become estranged from him,
partly through drinking; his father-in-law, Rector Hunt, fails to comprehend Matthew's
crisis, and he himself loses faith in the Father, God. However, this search for the father
is only the kernel of a general crisis which overwhelms both figures. Matthew's
questions and problems are presented in the nineteenth-century context of Darwinism.
For Bill and Matthew, a whole system of life values is shaken; they do not trust
meanings or explanations behind the events which they experience any more. Ansgar
Nünning calls this an 'epistemological scepticism' (Nünning 1995: 333). Bill and
Matthew look for the fullness of being, for firm ground on which to base their lives.
As Bill summarizes: 'And so I sit in these college gardens [...] trying to recover my
substance' (10). The garden, of course, is another symbol reminiscent of romance.

Romance as a narrative form asks for an intertextual capacity on the part of the reader.
It can be composed of various elements which can be weighted differently, such as
symbols and themes (death, love, repentance, resurrection), names and figures,
interlacement techniques and narrative style. Romance also generally unites with
other narrative forms, especially in the postmodern novel. The most prominent
example for such a mixture of forms is A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance (1990).
The reader must therefore be prepared to recognize the romance and to put together its
elements and patterns, similar to the intertextual riddle which is put to him/her (cf.
Bronfen 1996: 129).

A typical romance feature is the postponing of an end, or a solution. The questing after
some kind of treasure or presence – which can take various forms as a material or
spiritual reward – is regarded as the actual romance structure (cf. Parker 1979:4). This
means that romance always happens 'in between' (between the initial problem which
motivates the quest, and the [happy] ending) and is therefore related to the concept of
intertextuality which views the space between hypertext and hypotext as the scene of
intertextuality. Intertextuality, which aims at a clash of texts, is symptomatic of the
wish for a 'dire total', for a covering of the gaps between signs (texts) and meanings.
Similarly, romance pursues the goal of a holy grail which can satiate the wish for total
love, or total happiness. Both romance and intertextuality articulate the desire for a
presence (a meaning, a treasure, a recognition), while at the same time endlessly
postponing such a presence.

Appendix I: A list of hypotexts in Ever After

Appendix II:
Remembrance as the Highest Achievement of Life - the Specific Meaning of
Intertext

References

Graham Swift, Ever After (London: Picador, 1992).

Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970).

Catherine Bernard, Graham Swift: La parole chronique (Nancy: Presses
Universitaires, 1991).

Harold Bloom, A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).

Ulrich Broich, "Muted Postmodernism: The Contemporary British Short Story". ZAA
41 (1993).

Elisabeth Bronfen, "Romancing Difference, Courting Coherence: A.S. Byatt's

Possession as Postmodern Moral Fiction". In: Rüdiger Ahrens/Laurenz Volkmann
(eds), Why Literature Matters. Theories and Functions of Literature (Heidelberg:
Winter, 1996).

David Leon Higdon, "'Unconfessed Confession': the narrators of Graham Swift and
Julian Barnes". In: James Acheson (ed.), The British and Irish Novel Since 1960
(London: Macmillan, 1991).

Julia Kristeva, "Bakhtine, le mot, le dialogue et le roman". Critique 23 (1967).

Annegret Maack, "Die romance als postmoderne Romanform?". Literatur in

Wissenschaft und Unterricht 36 (1993).

Ansgar Nünning, Von historischer Fiktion zu historiographischer Metafiktion, Bd. II:

Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungstendenzen des historischen Romans in England
seit 1950 (Trier: WVT, 1995).

Patricia Parker, Inescapable Romance. Studies in the Poetics of a Mode (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1979).

Michael Riffaterre, "Production du roman: l'intertexte du Lys dans la Vallée". Texte ,

2 (1984).

--- "Compulsory Reader Response: the Intertextual Drive". In: Judith Still/Michael
Worton (eds), Intertextuality. Theories and Practices (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1990).

Graham Swift Websites: