Structure
Cassie Carter
When taking a "deep dive" into a book, I've often found it helpful to
start by looking at the book's structure.
The Petting Zoo's structure is like an onion or a prism or something.
It's got a lot of layers and facets. I helped put the thing together
and I'm still trying to figure it out.
I hope to hear from all of you about the structure . . . and please
don't take what I say as gospel.
The main "real time" plot is simple. It starts in mid-October 1989,
the day of the opening of the Velazquez exhibit at the Met, and ends
in January 1990, the last pages of the book. The main time frame of
the novel is only three months. Billy goes to the Empire State
building, goes to the Met and freaks out, visits the petting zoo, and
ends up in the mental ward. He spends two days in the hospital, then
goes into "reclusion" for exactly 40 days, during which time he gets
addicted to TV, gets addicted to pool, and loses his virginity.
After driving Marta away, he pushes his obsession with pool to the
outer limits before finally beginning to paint. There are specific
cues throughout that tell you how many days have passed, though in
Billy's world time has gone amok (like Billy Pilgrim). Billy
completes the paintings for the opening in 25 days, the show is put
together, and the opening happens. That night, Billy goes home,
resumes playing pool, and . . . dies the next day.
I just realized how much subjectivity goes into a summary. My god.
No raven. (And I love the raven!) Well, as Billy and the narrator
often say, subjective opinions are not binding.
Anyway . . . there's more to the structure.
Another, much broader, subplot is Billy's past. This book doesn't
tell us everything, but we get the whole range from his conception to
. . . his death, because the subplot feeds into the "real time" plot.
Billy's past is not just "background info" but a novel unto itself.
It's tempting to try to piece the whole thing together in
chronological order to see what it looks like . . . which brings me to
a more important observation about the book's structure.
Jim Carroll intentionally and very carefully disrupted linear
narrative with this book. Every attempt to read this book as a linear
biography of the artist or a time period is thwarted. When I was
working with Jim and had just read the manuscript for the first time,
I could not figure out why he had the gallery opening where it was and
the way the opening bleeds into the past was confusing to me. I had
the unique honor of being there while Jim revised ONE sentence to make
the latter all clear. It was absolutely amazing. See Part 3, Chapter
4. I have read this again and again and I am repeatedly astounded by
the time transition that happens here. This is some seriously fine
writing, IMHO.
Yes, it seems like the book is very disorganized, but the
disorganization is very consciously organized. The book is a tryptich,
and it was stunning to me that the actual page counts were balanced
like a tryptich. The middle section is the biggest, and the first and
last sections are almost exactly the same size. A working title at the
time of JIm's death was actually "triptich." Oh, so you don't have to
look it up, a triptich is a three-paneled painting, usually of a
religious nature. (Okay, look it up!)
Did I mention religion? Oh, that must be for another discussion.
Please share your thoughts!
Cassie