Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 10

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Popular Culture Review

renovation-recycling process in literature. In addition to placing form
above content in importance, these Russian Formalists (as they came
to be called) emphasized "'device' over message, and strangeness over
familiarity" (Holman & Harmon, 1986, p. 212). According to Holman
& Harmon, they believed that literary language, because of its
distinctive qualities, should "break up predictable patterns-of
sound, grammar, plot~by means of conspicuous 'defamiliarization'
(ostranenie) that restores freshness and vitality to language."
The idea, here, of breaking up predictable patterns of plot by
"conspicuous ’defamiliarization'" becomes all the more interesting
when we look at a curious and intriguing short novel (ignored,
apparently, by the critics ever since its publication in 1976) about
cowboy stories: The Invention of the West, by Alvin Greenberg. Early
in the present century one of the more imaginative and penetrating
Russian critics in the Formalist movement, Shklovsky, wrote
extensively on the subject of plot in its complex relation to the story
itself. Another major figure in the Formalist group, Boris
Eichenbaum, called attention to Shklovsky's contributions in this
regard. He pointed out "special devices of 'plot construction' and
their relation to general stylistic devices" found in certain major
works. His findings on "plot arrangement.. . changed the traditional
notion of plot as a combination of a group of motifs and made plot a
compositional rather than a thematic concept." Plot and story could
no longer be taken as the same thing. Thus as Eichenbaum explained
Shklovsky's influence, it was natural for the Formalists to make plot
construction the basic subject of their concern, since plot is the
distinctive element of the art of narrative. Whether Greenberg
consciously adapted Formalist principles relating to plot cannot be
known, apparently; his novel was not even mentioned, after its
publication, in the annual volume of Book Review Digest. Yet in a
way he might have outdone the Russian Formalists, in theory and
practice, at their own game.
In one of the many comic scenes in The Invention of the West,
the old-fashioned cowboy hero, MacLean, gives his two followers (or
trackers) the lowdown on how story (not the story, but story per se) is
told. Author, protagonist, reader: all are part of the storygeneration process, all do the essential inventing. Here is Maclean on
the subject of invention. He has just been asked about his own concept
of self, what he thinks about his position in the world and about his