(i) Wordshit

In The Voice in the Closet/La voix dans le cabinet de débarras(1979), a third is added to the teller and told of Take It or Leave It. In the closet together are “teller told creature,” “créature raconteuse racontée.” Translating from English to French, Federman highlights the primacy of the creature through adjectival forms, suggesting that it is he (or it) who is behind both teller and told. Narrated in the first person and in one continuous, unpunctuated stream, Federman's bilingual novella is the creature's cri de coeur. The narrating I rails against the teller/told, against the writer “sam”/“federman,” who tortures him into speech yet at the same time prevents him from speaking in his own voice. The creature, though predating the writer, is ultimately reliant on the writer's activity. When the possibility of sam/federman's departure is invoked, the text itself starts to fragment with blank spaces (61). The master's dominance, “he thinks his words will make me” (53), is made apparent on the page. For all his efforts to assert his own primacy, the creature is written into existence by “he” who is above. Nevertheless, Federman's bilingual novel continues his hopeless attempt at reversing the natural order and taking Beckett's place.

The failure of this attempt brings forth the creature's true passion, his rage and his love. Sam's importance is established from the opening line, as is his placement above: “here now again selectristud makes me speak with its balls all balls foutaise sam says in his closet upstairs” (23). The “balls” are the font balls (rather than bars) specific to Federman's IBM Selectric typewriter, the “selectristud.” The one called sam is making the creature speak with his (federman or his own?) type balls, symbols also of virility. In the corresponding French: “me fait être devenir avec ses boules orgueils foutaise dit sam” (22). Federman has identified “orgueils” as a reference to the French dish of bull's testicles, “orgueils de boeuf.” The word “foutaise” is a frequent interjection in Beckett's Comment C’est, translated by Beckett as “balls” for the corresponding word in How It Is.