Fantasy life origin island fountain12/16/2023 ![]() ![]() When they play for the third time, the warfare of chess seems to follow the rules, as each player seeks to win, without Mason throwing the game: “In the next game Mason focused all his mental powers, but the mulatto had a way of pinning you down with pawns and bishops, then wheeling his knights through the mush of your defense. ![]() A better player, an unnamed Haitian mulatto, is so good at chess that Mason is finally asked to play without cheating. This perverse form of cheating runs counter to a long history of race relations between blacks and whites in Haiti, but also to a history of diplomatic relations between American occupation forces and later, OAS 2 observers, and a Republic struggling to be independent. For example, in the story “Rêve Haïtien,” Mason, a white American chess player, cheats to lose, because of some sense of racial and cultural guilt he feels confronting his black Haitian opponents,-since any chess game is based on the assumption that the players are trying to win the game in a contest that codifies the ancient arts of war. (Fountain, 2012, 164)Ĥ Ben Fountain’s fiction constantly tests the rules in his encounters, to question the assumptions of the game and the players. So despite the terrific violence inherent in the game a weird passivity seeped into your mind. It seemed that football must be made to be productive and useful, a net-plus benefit for all mankind, hence the endless motivational yawping about teamwork, sacrifice, discipline, and other modern virtues, the basic thrust of which boiled down to shut up and do as you’re told. In the novel, the rules of “organized ball” are exposed as dulling the faculties to the point of preventing any critical thinking: Encounters may follow the rules or not, establishing a pattern of understanding or anarchy between the players. Subverting the rulesģ Games have rules that determine the moves and the relationships between the players. Let us now follow their pitch to understand what it is they are playing for so seriously. Ultimately, Fountain’s narrative voices play with the reader, in an invitation to enter their game and to play along. Their games pursue a philosophical goal, served by narrative experimentation with the anonymous voices of a community, alive and dead alike. From playing games with the powers that be to being possessed in the Haitian Vodou 1 sense, they set high stakes and risk their lives or sanity. Dissembling allows characters and narrators to look for a position of otherness, to enact a part and magically impersonate another, to look upon the self from a collective vantage point-or to lose themselves. 1 The spelling corresponds to the October 2012 subject heading modification by the Library of Congres (.)Ģ In the collection of stories Brief Encounters With Che Guevara and the novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain’s characters play many games: baseball, football, golf or chess they play war, they play a part, they act out, or they play the players to subvert the rules of the game, while Ben Fountain’s narrative voices play with one another, trying to find a collective voice, or to emphasize the lack of one. ![]()
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