Literary draft: The semiotic power of the lie

IBRAHIM TAHA

Language is always a lie. Philip Roth (2002: 21)

Texts incorporate the structural properties of the signiers with which they are constructed, but they are not conceptually equivalent to the aggregate of their signieds (Sebeok and Danesi 2000: 29). Hence a text, a literary text, and in particular a literary draft are always a lie. A literary draft can somehow be considered an act of pre-writing. It is actually a sort of noisy intra-conversation, so to speak, in which the writer presumably provides his/her original/true thoughts.1 If the act of literary writing is a process,2 which theoretically and potentially can be long and complicated, the drafts that the text (the nal product) undergoes are denitely signicant stages in this act. Referring to the nal text in terms of process and stages undoubtedly means that the nal text is somehow similar to a construct that hides the raw material shaping it. However, unlike a buildings renovation/repair, in which the concealment of the buildings defects and faults always makes sense, the nal product of the literary writing process hides very important data related to lingual, literary, stylistic, autobiographic, contextual, and many more facets of the writing process. This concealment may rudely aect the readers wishes and his/ her real attempts to reach the true meaning of the text. Still, one may welcome such an eect. The writers decision to state a word/sentence (x) and then to replace it by (y) apparently indicates a situation of uncertainty as to whether a literary text can be a complete, nal, and denite product. The kind and the number of drafts of a literary text indicate that literary writing is the outcome of a fully conscious process of deep thinking and designation. By denition, a literary text can always bear further acts of rewriting. A literary text looks like the draft of an incomplete work, a pre-text, a version of a text that has not yet been written. The history of literature is full
Semiotica 1521/4 (2004), 159177 00371998/04/01520159 6 Walter de Gruyter

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of published texts that underwent a delicate process of rewriting by the writer or by another authority long after their rst publishing. New editions of classic literary works are a well-known phenomenon. The confused thoughts raised previously can be classied into three major categories: (1) self-referring, which concerns the interrelations between draft/s and a writer; (2) internal-referring, which concerns the interrelations between draft/s and a last (nal?) text; and (3) external-referring, which concerns the interrelations between draft/s and the reader. While the second category includes issues of an obvious and explicit textual nature such as the characters of a draft, draft-genre interrelations, draft-meaning interrelations, and so on, the two other categories seem to include extratextual issues such as the original/true meaning in the writers mind, his/ her intentions and anxiousness to provide the reader with a good product, the communication between him/her and a reader over the text, and the like.

From writer to reader What does the writer usually do to reach the nal text that he/she imagines in his/her mind? Initially, it is extremely signicant to emphasize that whatever he/she does, his/her doing is all graduated and divided into various stages. He/she works in dierent forms and through acts of addition, omission, adaptation, and editing. All these activities may involve a long and complicated process to reach the nal goal. The writer may make stylistic, syntactic, grammatical, or linguistic changes. He/she may also modify phrasing and wording according to various levels of classical, standard, modern, or gurative language. Furthermore, he/she may make structural and literary changes in keeping with dierent kinds and forms. Whatever changes the writer makes in dierent drafts, the literary draft is primarily meant to clarify the writers strong will and aim to: (1) delimit the nal meaning/message in his/her mind despite awareness of the weakness of any human talent and ability to do so; (2) provide the reader with a denite, clear-cut, and nal meaning/message in one lingual composition despite awareness of the weakness of any language to do so; and (3) provide the reader with a good product of verbal text, to the best of his/her ability. The interrelations between the human mind and language have been widely discussed in recent decades by semioticians and linguists. Our present aim is chiey to shed more light on this topic by following the process of literary writing and rewriting. This complicated process indicates the highly problematic interrelations between writer and language. Language

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as a human product is meant to fulll a communicative role among people. Verbal communication itself is a means, not a goal, and as such it is always expected to be improved to attain better results. The questions are: what does better results mean? What do we mean by a good product? Who decides what a good product is? For whom is the product good? These questions may elicit serious topics and bring to mind some complicated issues in the innite discussion of the philosophy of literary writing. The literary draft seems to be a major part of this category of discussion. Literary language apparently is an elusive verbal instrument. By consideration of the drafts of a literary text, one may reconstruct/restore the original meaning of the text and perhaps that of the writer himself/ herself. One of the most complicated issues in literature is undoubtedly the writing process. A literary text is, rst and foremost, a lingual medium; language is a cultural thing; and culture is the product of a living human being that signicantly undergoes constant change. These summary generalities are highly meaningful to me, so that I can claim that literature is an important expression of the living and changeable human culture. To be honest with myself, its not precisely obvious where these generalities may exactly lead me at the end of the day. Yet one thing seems to be certain at the moment, namely human being is a key phrase in all this series of generalities, because nothing can exist and come true without some sort of involvement by the human being to some extent. This self-evident statement acquires its importance from the fact that a writer represents the global culture and its language, and equally represents himself/herself and his/her own language. A writer accordingly is somehow considered a combination or synthesis of collectivity and individuality alike.3 Once he/she seeks to say something about himself/herself and culture through language, which belongs to himself/herself and to culture alike, he/she actually wishes to locate himself/herself, in some way or in another, in the center of his/her text. Consequently, any reader, if he/she has decided to read and interpret that text, should initially follow the major character centered in the text. The major character in a literary draft that the reader should track is the writer himself/herself, because he/she, in such a case, looks and sounds like one who is thinking about his/her language and considering the living culture. In (a) literary draft(s) a writer plays with language, hoping to represent the culture and his/her own position on it authentically and accurately. What does this mean? It means, as many scholars of deconstruction truly may claim, that language cannot precisely and fully reect the whole message in the writers mind. The message is something larger than language, which, as stated, is a cultural

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medium. Culture is a living and changeable product of the human being, so the human being is larger than language. Knowing and experiencing this substantial fact, a writer deeply feels an urgent need, and even some constraint so to speak, to search for a proper lingual medium, from his/ her language, through which he/she feels able to transmit his/her confused thoughts. However, one should bear in mind that thoughts are a living, changeable, and owing activity, which cannot easily be expressed by one static verbal sequence. One can accordingly claim that since literary drafts are undoubtedly living and changeable products, it is very dicult to imagine a nal literary work whose writer does not seriously consider making minor changes in it after its publication. Once a writer decides to say something about his/her published work, he/she denitely will say something new that he/she did not say in the published work. Strictly speaking, every new, additional statement somehow has a new, additional message. Any attempt to frame or to encompass the writers streaming thoughts by lingual means will not be smoothly successful. Thats why a writer feels a deep impulse/motive to use various verbal manners and styles, so that he/she can ultimately choose the appropriate and the suitable one for his/her message, such as: dierent repetitions, similes, metaphors, allegories, examples, proverbs, comparisons, analogies, associations, detailed descriptions and clarications, imitations, quotations, dierent ways of intertextuality, etc. All these verbal means, of which at least some are explicitly used in this article, may indicate the weakness of language to represent the writers thoughts in one denite manner. This preface may help me to assume that every writer, even a talented and skilled one, uses dierent sorts of drafts, typescripts, and proofs. Its very dicult indeed to imagine a case of a literary work not undergoing any type of editing or revision before being published. The various drafts that a literary work may undergo to reach its nal version reect various situations of uent and dierential thoughts in the writers mind in a single writing process. These thoughts maybe classied and divided into three directions/levels: (1) thoughts on the message that the writer wishes to convey to his/her audience; (2) thoughts on the style, the appropriate verbal means that the writer should use; and (3) thoughts on the reader for whom that message is intended, namely thoughts on how the message wrapped in a certain style will be accepted by the reader. This question will be discussed later. The rst direction/level is the outcome of a lengthy process. Thoughts on the writers message are very likely a function of the interaction between the writer, as an individual, and the overall culture. Its a sort of game in which a writer uses his/her language to say something about history/culture. Literature normally speaks about

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history/culture; literature doesnt speak history/culture. The clear distinction between these two statements resembles the distinction between ordinary literature, so to speak, and historical literature.4 In rst type, language can be considered the partition between history/culture and the reader. This partition is ironically meant to bridge the gap between them in a unique way. In literary drafts, the writer, as a representative authority of history/culture both individual and collective, takes further steps approaching literary historical writing, and thats why he/she sounds and seems in his/her text like a real and actual character rather than a ctive one. In literary drafts, the act of forming/producing the text itself, precisely the act of constructing the model of textual reality, most likely becomes the only truth in the writing process itself; this act becomes the major interest and concern for both writer and reader. In such a case, the debate that the writer may conduct with extra-textual reality (history/ culture) can clearly, even noisily, be heard, and consequently the readers attention is directed outside toward history. Paradoxically, however, the act of writing itself reminds the writer and the reader alike that they are both dealing with ctive, not with real/actual history. This principled balance between these oppositions is chiey a function of various data, such as the degree of the writers and readers involvement in reality/history, and of the interrelations between the textual reality model and extraliterary reality (between ction and history). The experience the writer undergoes while writing changes from a theoretical status to a practical one. This leads us to the second level, which seems to me the most significant one at the moment. This conversion is not easy. It cannot be smoothly carried out because the material that the writer uses to convert the message in his/her mind into a real product is language. Needless to say, language, by denition, is a complex of innumerable styles, levels, and strata, which some may refer to as multi-lingual language. Therefore, the principle of selection plays an extreme role in that conversion process. Selection is not a simple measure when it comes to literary writing. In such a case, the choice the writer has to make is not ultimately between proper and improper styles, but between a variety of proper styles. Thats why, as is commonly believed, the act of selection seems pretty dicult and complicated. This selection can determine and dene the aftermath of any writing process; it can somehow determine the literary works nature and quality. The writer deals with language itself, while writing denitely means a sort of engagement and involvement in an act of meta-language. Although literary drafts are the most representative forms of meta-writing, one may notice fundamental distinctions between literary drafts and meta-writing. In typical writing of meta-literature, the two processes thinking about the proper

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style needed to reect the writers message and writing itself mix together in the text, and both can be available for the reader. One can readily speak of a sort of combination between ction and criticism in the case of meta-literature.5 But in case of literary drafts, interrelations between ction and criticism may be formulated as follows. A literary draft is a practical version of theoretical thinking (of language) carried out by a writer without his/her being required to explain what he/she is doing. In a typical case of meta-literature, the writer sounds like an external theoretician-critic, while in a literary draft he/she functions just as an executor. In meta-literature he/she is like an engineer, in addition to his/ her original role as a builder, while in a literary draft he/she is only like a builder, who concentrates on the act of building itself, not on explaining the process of construction. In meta-literature, the writer explores theoretical aspects and literary methods within a practical text as formulated by P. Waugh using some theoretical/methodical terminology,6 while in literary drafts a literary theory/method is experienced only by practical terminology. This signicant distinction may in one way or in another be associated with or parallel to the distinction between two techniques telling and showing, by which the writer tells something about theory/ method, in the case of an ordinary meta-literature, and shows his/her way of execution, in the case of literary drafts, without being required to give any theoretical/methodical title. In both cases, as in any other case of the writing process, the writer clearly performs some sort of critical role. However, in the former case the writer very likely becomes the rst theoretician of his/her work, while in the latter he/she becomes the rst reader of his/her text(s). Literary drafts enable the writer to show the confusion of his/her thoughts as they are explicitly reected in numerous changes additions and deletions he/she makes in the text(s) in a self-editing process. Writing dierent literary drafts, a writer not only provides the reader with some of his/her ways of thinking and writing methods; he/she also provides himself/herself with a serious means of self-examination of his/her thinking and writing in which he/she ultimately can improve his/her literary techniques and devices. Literary drafts clearly reveal a type of internal dialogue between writer and himself/herself. One rightly can make use of Bakhtins terminology and consider them (i.e. literary drafts) multi-dialogic forms. Speaking about the urgent need for serious and intensive dealings with literary drafts, I am by no means referring to any external process of editing by any external authority but to the possibility of publishing literary drafts themselves, so that they can be read publicly, just like any nal published text. The act of editing normally means that the editor replaces the original writer and takes over his/her basic role. This is not what I am refer-

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ring to; I certainly have no wish to see the writer replaced by any kind of independent editors, and consequently literary published drafts shouldnt be removed or replaced by edited versions done by dierent readers. Literary drafts, to my mind, are nal versions, and they can exist by themselves and have the full right to live by their own unique power. By terming literary drafts anarchic or chaotic systems, I actually speak of the possibility of their being updated by the writer himself/herself, after being published, or by readers, without physically replacing or deleting them. A writer, whenever he/she wants, can publish further drafts. I am not so pleased with the idea that a writer himself/herself may interfere in a process of interpretation of his/her work after publishing it, as U. Eco has done, for example.7 E. Dipple is absolutely right in her critical comments on Eco and in her defensive remarks about the reader and his/her right to be a free partner in an interpretation process (1988: 117139). Any attempt at involvement in the interpretation process of a nal published work by the writer himself/herself is unacceptable, because it may totally neutralize the reader, or at least restrict his/her activity and freedom in that process. But in case of literary drafts, the writers involvement sounds reasonable and legitimate.8 The major dierence between these two cases of self-criticism and self-interpretation is that literary drafts somehow allow such an involvement within the drafts themselves, not outside them, not independently. In such a case, in an act of intra-meta-criticism the writer remains a writer who does his/her job within his/her natural role of authorship. While in the other case, namely the case of any detached act of self-criticism, the writer operates neutrally as an external critic/editor. Since the writer seemingly has an ideal model or archetype of his/her nal text, he does not regard the dierent drafts of the text as separate and independent but as temporary and serial stages. The writer considers the drafts as means not as goals. Treating the drafts as incomplete texts denitely means that the writer chiey functions as a reader, a critic, and an editor. Being the rst reader, the self-critic and the internal editor of his/her work, the writer provides himself/herself with a powerful feeling of authority and unlimited ability to do almost anything with his/her product. This feeling does not merely mean one-way domination and control by the writer of the text, but bi-directional inuence from writer to text and vice versa. As stated, writers always have a potential motivation, will, and ability to make major changes in their dierent drafts on their way to reaching the nal text. Yet this motivation, will, and ability are not unlimited or innite. The drafts may certainly aect the writers work, approach, and outlook, and his/her methodological techniques. While the rst draft is expected to leave room for major changes, the last

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drafts allow only minor and limited ones. In either case, the writer is not completely free to do anything he/she wishes with his/her incomplete product. Since he/she works within a known framework of elementary materials (he/she initially states his/her thoughts and concepts in his/ her mind and eventually translates them from pre-lingual text into written text) the writer is inevitably aected by the textual data that he/she compels himself/herself to refer to. In any changes the writer makes in his/ her further drafts, he/she somehow has to refer to changes he himself/ she herself has made in earlier drafts. Therefore, we ultimately may speak of the interrelations between the writer and his/her drafts in terms of self-referring. Referring to his/her writing in terms of clarication, interpretation, illustration, and even complication, the writer, consciously or unconsciously, seeks to treat his/her writing in terms of meta-writing. A potential ability of literary drafts to maintain the writers role in literary study justies its signicance and status in the semiotics of literature. It gives him/her back some of his/her roles and authority in the interpretation process that some scholars constantly dismiss and ignore. The potentially enormous number of drafts of any literary work enables the reader/scholar to deal with the writing process as reected in the writers mind. With a nal text one can ignore all those versions of drafts and concentrate on the only published text one has in a reading process. Some theoreticians seek to detach the writer from his/her literary work. I seriously doubt if a complete and total separation between them is possible in the case of the interpretation process of a nal/published text. Some scholars constantly talk about an undeniable need for reconstruction of the writers intentions and his/her original message in any case of the interpretation process, using the terminology of implied writer and meaning and signicance. With regard to a series of literary drafts, any sort of disconnection between them is denitely impossible. With use of the terms before and after, literary drafts are condently considered one step before being converted into the nal work, which is then taken from the exclusive and direct responsibility of its writer and transferred to the readers authority. Literary drafts are still in the hands of the writer himself/herself and are his/her absolute responsibility. In that case, literary drafts seem to function as a real and true biography of the writers mind, as stated by McCaery (1995: 183). To be precise, it seems that the literary draft is the only literary medium that may bridge the gap between two poles: those believing in the writer and his/her signicant role for a deep understanding of his/her literary work; and those dismissing any need for him/ her in any interpretation process. Literary drafts do justice to both writer and reader. One of the most important contributions of ordinary meta-

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writing is, one truly may claim, the quest to reinforce the writers status and role. Sometimes, this can be achieved only by taking some roles from the reader and giving them to writer. In literary drafts, a writer is ascribed great importance for his/her originality without any attempt at theoretical interference by him/her, which is considered a part of the readers role. In such a case, the two of them, writer and reader, enjoy an equal position. Once a writer leaves his/her text/s confused, fragmented, and incomplete, he/she yields some of his/her traditional and fundamental roles to the reader, who thereby paradoxically becomes powerful and eective. By not completing his/her text/s, a writer feels a deep need to keep in contact with his/her own text/s, and this is exactly what a reader normally does with texts.

From text to sub-text Text is a dierential and changeable system, I once claimed, not only because a reader frequently may refer to it in dierent ways, or may observe it from various standpoints, but because the text itself has contradictory data that make it a multi-directional system and a non-uniform and nonstable medium (Taha 1997: 134136). This is particularly true in literary drafts. That is why I refer to such a draft as a sort of sub-text, by which I mean it is a fragmented, hesitant, initial, and changeable text, and consequently it is an incomplete and an innite system. Yet these characteristics are the very source of its power. This weakness makes it a powerful text. A literary draft as a sub-text or even as a pre-text presents a serious potential challenge to the reader, even more than a nal text. Even in its shape a literary draft looks like a chaotic text: new words above erased/deleted others; new sentences replace irrelevant others; words/sentences/paragraphs marked by dierent signs to be changed/ replaced/deleted/relocated/revised, etc. In this sense, a literary draft seems to be a complicated network of various texts, which becomes possible only through an endless act of revision that principally means a fundamental disagreement with what has already been written by the writer himself/herself. This basic position of un-acceptance can be reached by four dierent mechanisms: (1) Addition of verbosity, which is mostly used for reinforcement of what has already been written, or alternatively the writer may make use of this mechanism to replace some deleted verbosity. In both cases, this mechanism is undoubtedly meant to indicate the literary drafts nature of impermanence and incompleteness. This is the very reason why I hold language too weak, as mentioned, to meet the precise and entire needs and measures of any human experience.

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Language can restrictively reect a human experience by replacing it with an imitative and illusive verbal one. (2) Deletion is considered a parallel mechanism to the preceding. Like addition, the logical role of deletion is a function of the limited capability of language. Deletion can be used in two ways: rst, as a goal in itself, namely to cancel textual data that seem irrelevant to the writer; second, as a means to the act of replacement: deletion is the rst step, to be followed by addition/revision/ improvement and so on. (3) Rearrangement mostly operates as a major means of editing. A writer may take advantage of it to replace original words/ sentences/paragraphs by new or true ones. It is not a technical activity, as one may think, but a highly signicant one, because in writing, especially in literature, formal techniques cannot be detached or disconnected from the overall meaning of the text. (4) Linguistic editing is not possible without those previous mechanisms. However, this mechanism functions as a particular technique for minor linguistic changes, namely semantic and grammatical changes. It also may be used to make further technical changes: punctuation, division into separate paragraphs, division into chapters and sub-chapters, and so on. Having implemented all functions of those mechanisms, a writer may make his/her literary drafts look like a confusion of dierent versions of texts that consequently cannot be regarded as consecutive and linear texts. Literary drafts cannot be read in a one-directional way; on the contrary, they should be read as multi-directional and multi-sided texts. By making intensive use of those four mechanisms, a writer can confuse the mono-directional streaming of the text, which we may nd in some nal published texts. Using confused associations and thoughts in the process of writing literary drafts, a writer may make them look like a mixed multi-text system. This feeling of confusion comes into being by the use of dierent techniques of interconnectivity, such as the four just described, by which a writer makes his/her literary drafts a multi-sequential system. Applying this terminology, I intentionally seek to bring to mind one of the most recent phenomena in literature, namely hypertextuality. A brief comparison of this with the phenomenon of literary drafts could be highly useful.9 Hypertextuality is meant to undermine the established poetics of the paper-printed texts. One of the most fundamental measures of ordinary paper-printed texts is the well-known concept of triple unity: a start point, a middle, and an ending, regardless of how confused and chaotic the textual details of these three units may be. In the case of hypertext this triple unity gets blurred. Instead of a united/framed/stable entity one may easily refer to it as an open and endless work. These features are commonly shared with literary drafts. Since literary drafts may require enormous changes of dierent sorts and measures, one certainly

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may regard them as an open system. Every change, even a minor one, that a writer/reader may make in a literary draft supposedly has the theoretical and practical power to generate a new version of the literary draft, and this is what makes literary drafts look like a Russian babushka with the extreme ability of procreation and generation. Having taken a careful and deep look at various drafts of James Joyces Finnegans Wake10 and having compared them with the nal version, I discovered that lots of interesting work is still waiting urgently to be done there. True, regarding Finnegans Wake, a unique text, such work seems and sounds extremely interesting. One cannot ignore the fundamental distinction and dierence between textuality, including literary drafts, and hypertextuality. Yet literary drafts may seemingly operate as a bridge or mediator between them. Many features common to postmodern textuality and hypertextuality have been widely addressed in recent years. In literary drafts these shared features become sharper, more meaningful, and clearer. It is highly important to indicate the interrelations between textuality and hypertextuality in order to emphasize the unique identity of the literary draft among dierent types and forms of textuality, which one may prefer to describe it by generic terminology. P. Waugh distinguishes tendency and subgenre in regard to metaction (1995: 50). I have to admit that I cannot grasp the ne point of this distinction. But it is quite obvious that metaction cannot be regarded as an absolute, denitive, and independent genre. Unlike metaction, the phenomenon of literary drafts has the fundamental potential to be dealt with as an independent genre. One of the most signicant dierences between a literary draft and a nal/published text concerns the writers dierent attitude to each. A writer treats his/her literary drafts as provisional texts that have been facing ceaseless activity of supervision and editing, whether by the writer himself/herself or by the reader. Since literary drafts are considered the most reliable biography of a writers mind, more than any other literary texts, even more than his/ her autobiography, they are the only writer-oriented system that ensures a credible intercommunication between writer and reader. This minute discrimination actually means that the text in the case of nal/published literature is in the center, while in the case of literary drafts the writing process itself is focused in the center. One may rightly inquire what this distinction between text and its writing process precisely means for the reader. Before embarking on the details of the answer, we should stress the basic dierence between the product and its cultivation or making process, which means a distinction between the nal product and its loose original components and raw materials. Any making process may lead to substantial changes in these original components and raw materials to the

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extent of blurring their original measures and their ontological identities. The nal published text is practical and usable while literary drafts, according to common literary norms and conventions, are not. A thing that cannot be used by a wide audience may in principle be ignorable and dismissible. This precisely is the reason why I am greatly eager to see literary drafts published and consequently treated as nal literary works that usually are and should be so treated. They could be published independently by themselves, or alternatively together with their nal versions. A text that is still experiencing a process of writing and editing has the full right to be treated in the same way we treat a nal published text. Once I refer to literary drafts as a genre, I actually claim that the writing process should be associated with the reading process. It is most dicult to separate them in literary drafts that somehow combine theory and practice. In literary drafts, a writer shows the way/s he/she practically implements a theory or a method. True, in an ordinary metaction one may speak of some sort of combination of theory and practice,11 but in literary drafts these two poles theory and practice are united in a special way in which a writer neutrally reveals the process of implementation itself without interference. That is why I believe that writing and reading processes are equally interesting. Sometimes, the process of reaching a decision is more important and more interesting than the decision itself. The question of how things are done, performed, or attained sounds more attractive than the question of what has been done, performed, or attained. Showing an interest in how rather than in what is frequently a function of an investigating and inquiring reader. Concentrating on the how in a reading process of literary drafts, a reader may meet the writer as a true and real authority that cannot be considered dead. Literary drafts make the performance of both acts of writing and reading possible in a very live way. Both writer and reader get a deep impression that things in literary drafts are authentic and reliable, chiey because they proceed in a live way. The possible and potentially enormous number of subtexts in one literary draft, and of versions or literary drafts of a nal published text, is a function of an innite activity of revision, which delays the end of the writing process and postpones the natural wish to reach some sort of completeness, comprehension, and nality. Any change in a literary draft made by the writer himself/herself, or by the reader, would absolutely lead to a kind of change in its original meaning/message. However, the question is, where is the original meaning of the text: is it in the rst draft, or in the second, or in the nal one? That is, does its being rst automatically mean that it is the original one? Probably not; rst and earliest does not always mean originality. The rst-written version/draft of

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a text is ultimately an adapted version of dierent primary thoughts within the writers mind. That is, the rst-written draft is somehow a product of some pre-written drafts. A further question has to be posed in this stage of discussion: why do we need to speak of the original meaning when we have the nal one? Is the original meaning in the rst draft really the most authentic, reliable, and true one? Or is the nal one actually the most interesting due to its being adapted, established, and completed? By the deconstructionist approach, one may wonder whether the literary text (the nal written draft) is really the nal version. It is possible and acceptable to refer to the text in the common domain, in the readers hands, as a further version/draft of an unwritten text. The fact that writers rewrite some of their literary works long after rst publication certainly bears out this assumption. This means that the interrelations between the writer and his/her text can potentially be innite. This inniteness, one may argue, is a prominent symptom of the dual weakness of the human mind and verbal language. One may rightly argue that in the case of literary writing these weaknesses are not obligatory but intentional. Therefore, the various drafts of a literary text are not necessarily meant to clarify the true message within the writers mind. Presumably writers may use the draft precisely to complicate the message and to make it more indirect and implicit. A hidden message of a literary text can probably be a useful means of irritating, stimulating, and attracting the reader.12

From reader to writer From the early 1960s, even many years before, till the present day we have been witnessing a running debate on the reader, his/her role, status, and interrelations with the writer and literary text. Many scholars talk about his/her fundamental role in any interpretation process, others even talk about his/her rule in such a process.13 Whatever his/her means of involvement in a literary communication process, which includes reading and interpretation processes, and regardless of his/her very fundamental and signicant involvement in such a process, he/she cannot control the writers or the texts roles or dominate such a process. Writer, reader, and text have equal importance, in the sense that each has a particular role in his/her/its own domain and territory, which logically cannot be replaced by or shared with others. All of them are merely functions of history (culture). If a writer can be nothing but a complicated combination or synthesis of individual and collective measures and features, why cannot a reader be the same in this respect?! Writer and reader

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are both producers and consumers of history-culture; both of them, somehow, aect history-culture and they equally are aected by it. A literary text is basically written to be read, that is, to be the means of a literary communication process between writer and reader. Taking this into consideration, one cannot but recognize the innately semiotic character of literature. A writer may experience pleasure, fun, or a sort of suering while writing a literary text. In doing so, he/she ultimately wishes to communicate with a reader, to share with him/her his/her experience. This brief preface of well-known generalities is much needed here in order to concentrate on the readers role in literary drafts. W. Iser expansively describes the need for an active reader in practical terms in a literary communication process. He suggests that his gaps theory be implemented in literary texts as a methodical catalyst that is supposed to activate the readers involvement in any communication process (1971: 279299). In literary drafts, the reader has a good chance to be a highly active partner in a sense he/she somehow participates in the writing process of the nal version. R. Barthes speaks of the need to restrict the involvement of the writer, particularly in a writerly text, in terms of death since a dead writer makes more room for the reader, so that he/she can be the dominant partner in the reading-writing process (1977: 142148). With some reservations, a hypertextual case has enormous potential for activating the reader in the reading process, regardless of its exceptional ethics of reading, as rightly stated by Hillis-Miller (1995: 2739). However, in cases of ordinary printed literature, there is apparently no better option than literary drafts to carry out Barthess vision of a writing reader. Unlike Barthes, in literary drafts one cannot speak of any concept of writers death because in such a case the writer and the reader can nd sucient and equal room for both of them to share an interesting communication in a rewriting process of the text. By publishing literary drafts in addition to nal versions, a writer can guarantee a sort of meeting between himself/herself and a reader, instead of articial disconnection. A kind of struggle between a writer and a reader is undoubtedly always a real option in literature, but in literary drafts there is indeed much room for genuine reconciliation between them. Ignoring all the details of the dierences between E. D. Hirsch and R. Barthes, both of them are quite right, the former in his insistence on safeguarding the writers role in any interpretation process (Hirsch 1967) and the latter in the principled appeal he makes to ensure an enormous role for the reader in such a process. Therefore, I cannot see any room in literary drafts for a struggle between these two appeals. Iser does not refer to literary drafts when speaking of the texts incompleteness, but they very likely are the ideal form to deal with the concept of incompleteness. As previously stated, literary drafts seem

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to be in a position of prewriting. Theoretically, they are somewhere between a human mind/consciousness and language. The readers role in such a case should concentrate on lling in the gaps and blanks left in the draft/s so that he/she can complete the text in terms of subjective and provisional concretization. He/she should guide the draft/s from a position of prewriting to a position of writing. To reach this interesting end, a reader may implement several methods, such as classication, comparison, analysis, replacement/change, and completion, whereby he/ she may reconstruct the original writing process carried out by the writer himself/herself. That is, making intensive use of these methods, the reader may trace (the) changes in (all) dierent drafts made by the writer, which makes possible such a meeting between the two. A reader, for instance, may classify dierent linguistic changes in terms of vocabulary, diction, rhetoric, semantics, punctuation, and so on; and thematic changes in terms of history, culture, ideology, politics, philosophy, and so on. This initial act of classication may help the reader/critic/scholar to compare the dierent versions and to explore the general direction of these changes made by the writer on his/her way to the nal version. Comprehensive employment of comparison could be useful for the reader to detect the changes separately in each draft, and at the same time it could be useful for him/her to follow such changes in all drafts as a single sequence. By doing so, the reader/critic/scholar may acquire plenty of meaningful information, and consequently feel encouraged to play the writers role. For instance, he/she may make changes himself/ herself and may do everything he/she thinks is urgently needed to complete the draft/s and reach the nal version. In this sense, one nds some similarity between literary drafts and interactive texts (hypertexts): in both cases the reader simultaneously deals with dierent texts in a reading-writing process, and in both cases as well he/she cannot allow himself/herself to be a neutral or just a consuming partner. A reader can be a productive partner in a literary communication process on two conditions, rst when he/she has the personal skills to be done, and second when the multi-text itself has the textual measures and features that challenge his/her skills. The key word in these textual measures and features is incompleteness, which may be a function of various literary techniques, but this incompleteness, as noted, is rst and foremost a function of the lie of language, as stated by Philip Roth. This restricted ability of language to express any human experience accurately makes the literary draft a multi-textual system in which a reader may nd sucient room to act in dierent ways as a productive writer. The lie of language makes the contact between literary drafts and a reader almost alive and neverending. Once a reader gets the opportunity to be a writer in literary

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drafts, he/she practically experiences his/her views on literary criticism without being required to approach the theoretical links between word and world, namely between language and reality. Unlike an ordinary text of meta-ction (meta-literature), a reader of literary drafts does not get any explicit signs or theoretical explanations of what the writer has done in these texts, and this is the very reason why I believe that literary drafts are the most proper texts for the reader to become a writer. However, to reach this nal end, a reader should rst follow the original writing process as reected in the writers mind and reconstruct it by posing relevant questions and imagining the right answers such as: why has the writer chosen a specic style not other/s? What thematic explanations for this choice has the writer already thought about? What dierences do the textual changes make? By answering these questions, the reader actually carries out some sort of critical activity besides his/her basic role as a reader. Ultimately, he/she feels a commitment to suggest his/her own changes, and by so doing, he/she achieves the last title in this long process, namely a writer.

Conclusion If culture, in a fundamental semiotic sense, can be dened as a connective macrocode (Sebeok and Danesi 2000: 42), literary drafts can equally be termed a micro-culture or alternatively connective and generated/ generating microcode. This is the very reason why I am not sure whether this paper is my last word, or the last word of my linguistic editor. What I am absolutely sure about is that this version of my paper is preceded by dierent versions/drafts, so I honestly do not know which draft/s the true, the original, the reliable meanings and thoughts are somehow placed in. Having remembered the statement language is always a lie, and the fact that the texts signiers have ambivalent interrelations with their signieds, I feel some release from the feeling of blame for the indirect responsibility that language always misses the precise, complete, comprehensive, and the denite point of any human experience, and for my direct responsibility for this incomplete draft. Anyway, a further draft of this version, posing more questions and rearranging some answers and some confused thoughts I have in mind, might be needed. I hope that this draft sparks a debate that will help me to rewrite further drafts of this current version. The lie of language, and the philosophy of literary drafts established on it, should not sound like a disadvantage in terms of literary communication. On the contrary, the power of literary

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drafts is fundamentally derived from the fact that language is a lie that makes literary works elusive and innite. Literary drafts are seemingly the only domain in literature in which a writer and a reader may exchange some of their traditional roles. A writer yields to the reader his/her duty/right to complete and nalize his/her literary text himself/herself. Instead of a complete and nite text, the reader gets a confused and fragmented one that he/she feels an obligation to complete and nalize himself/herself. In that way, the writer actually reserves much room for himself/herself to re-read his/her text/s he/she writes, and thereby he/she becomes the rst reader of his/her own work. At the same time, the reader obtains a concrete and practical opportunity to make his/her hidden wish for a writing role come true. This game means an ideal collaboration between a writer and a reader rather than an endless struggle. This last version, at the moment, is at least the third that I have decided to stop going on with. One may argue that dealing with drafts of a noncreative literary work may be somehow needless and useless. Generally, one cannot but agree, because the dierences between a descriptivetheoretical work and a creative literary work are truly decisive and crucial. If I need to complete a descriptive article of three drafts and even more, how many drafts does a writer need to nalize a literary work?! Once I had stopped (not nished) working on this articles version, I sat down to title it. Here, I faced the problem of choice. I have thought of six potential titles: Literary draft Between metatextuality and hypertextuality; Literary draft The powerful form of meta-writing; Literary draft Reconciliation between writer and reader; Literary draft The semiotic power of the lie; Literary draft The exchange of roles; Literary draft The lie of language, and Literary drafts The power of the babushka. But I totally failed to grade them in accordance with some measure. Although I have made a decision in this respect, I truly still feel some confusion about the very proper and the most accurate one for this version, and maybe for the versions to come as well. Only now, after deep thinking on the topic of literary drafts, I do feel condent to regard my previous thoughts as an established preface for the version to come.

Notes
1. For more details about the steps and the conceptual stages of both prewriting and writing processes, see a very descriptive study by Kakonis, Wilcox, and Schultz (1971). 2. According to A. J. Niesz and N. N. Holland, one of the major contributions of hypertextuality, as a postmodern form/genre, is that writing and reading as processes replace

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writing and reading as products (1984: 127). Without doubt, textuality, especially literary drafts, and hypertextuality have lots of features in common as specied in the course of the article. This combination primarily means that a writer/artist is not an individual, but he/she absolutely belongs to a wide context, as stated by Pierre Macherey: Now, art is not a mans creation, it is a product (and the producer is not a subject centered in his creation, he is an element in a situation or a system) (1995: 231). For more details about this topic, see Mazurek (1995: 195204). Dealing with the relationship between language and the world, Mark Currie puts this statement by Waugh as follows: Metaction is only half, the ctional half, of a process of challenging the boundary between ction and criticism, and therefore its explanation requires that it be articulated across the boundary, connecting it to the selfconsciousness of criticism (1995: 2). Patricia Waugh believes that meta-ctional works are those that explore a theory of writing ction through the practice of writing ction (1995: 40). See very detailed observations, clarications, explanations, and comments about his specic novel The Name of the Rose and about theoretical topics in literature (1985). David Lodge contests, as a novelist, the remarks made by R. Barthes concerning the complete separation between a writer and his/her text. He says to Barthes that I do feel a kind of parental responsibility for the novels I write, that the composition of them is, in an important sense, my past, that I do think, suer, live for a book while it is in progress (1990: 15). Despite the fundamental dierences between textuality and hypertextuality from many aspects, as detailed in Riaterre (1994: 779788) and Hillis Miller (1995: 2739), one may term the literary draft the paper version, so to speak, of the hypertextuality. For more details about the points of resemblance between textuality and hypertextuality, see George Landows work (1992, 1994, 1997). Good work has been done by David Hayman, Danis Rose, and John OHanlon in prefacing and arranging the drafts, typescripts, and proofs of some chapters of Finnegans Wake. For details, see Joyce (1978). Robert Scholes believes that a text of metaction may implement various perspectives, theories, and methods (1995: 29). Unlike a typical/ordinary form of meta-writing in which meta-narrative codes may function as a program of decoding in the literary text, as rightly stated by Gerald Prince (1982: 124126), literary drafts can be used by the writer to sophisticate his/ her message more and more. For a conclusive article of dierent views and methods of this topic, see Taha (1997: 131150).

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4. 5.

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11. 12.

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References
Barthes, Roland (1977). The death of the author. In Image-Music-Text, Stephen Heath (ed.), 142148. New York: Hill and Wang. Burke, Sean (ed.) (1995). Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Currie, Mark (ed.) (1995). Metaction. London and New York: Longman. Dipple, Elizabeth (1988). The Unresolvable Plot: Reading Contemporary Fiction. New York and London: Routledge.
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Eco, Umberto (1985). Reections on the Name of the Rose. Trans. by William Weaver. London: Secker and Warburg. Hillis Miller, J. (1995). The ethics of hypertext. Diacritics 25/3, 2739. Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in Interpretation. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Iser, Wolfgang (1971). The reading process: A phenomenological approach. New Literary History 3, 279299. Joyce, James (1978). Finnegans Wake, Book II, Chapter 2: A Facsimile of Drafts, Typescripts, and Proofs. Edited by David Hayman and Danis Rose. New York and London: Garland Publishing. Kakonis, Tom; Wilcox, James; and Schultz, Helen (1971). Strategies in Rhetoric: From Though to Symbol. New York: Harper and Row. Landow, George (1992). Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (ed.) (1994). Hyper/Text/Theory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (1997). Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lodge, David (1990). After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism. London and New York: Routledge. Macherey, Pierre (1995). Creation and production. In Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, Sean Burke (ed.), 230232. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mazurek, Raymond (1995). Metaction, the historical novel, and Coovers The Public Burning. In Metaction, Mark Currie (ed.), 194205. London and New York: Longman. McCaery, Larry (1995). The art of metaction. In Metaction, Mark Currie (ed.), 181 193. London and New York: Longman. Niesz, Antony and Holland, Norman (1984). Interactive ction. Critical Inquiry 11, 110 129. Prince, Gerald (1982). Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton Publishers. Riaterre, Michael (1994). Intertextuality vs. hypertextuality. New Literary History 25, 779 788. Roth, Philip (2002). Philip Roth attacks orgy of narcissism post Sept 11. Report by Sam Leith. The Daily Telegraph Saturday, October 5, 21. Scholes, Robert (1995). Metaction. In Metaction, Mark Currie (ed.), 2138. London and New York: Longman. Sebeok, Thomas and Danesi, Marcel (2000). The Forms of Meaning: Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruter. Taha, Ibrahim (1997). The literary communication pact: A semiotic approach. Semiotica 114 (1/2), 131150. Waugh, Patricia (1995). What is metaction and why are they saying such awful things about it? In Metaction, Mark Currie (ed.), 3954. London and New York: Longman.
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Ibrahim Taha (b. 1960) is Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa 3itaha@research. haifa.ac.il4. His principal research interests are semiotics of literature and modern Arabic literature. His major publications include The Palestinian Novel: A Communication Study (2002), Semiotics of ending and closure: Post-ending activity of the reader (2002), Semiotics of literary meaning: A dual model (2002), and Semiotics of minimalist ction: Genre as a modeling system (forthcoming).