Week 2: Form, Genre, and Expectations

David Levithan’s short novel, The Lover’s Dictionary, is a love story written, as you may have guessed, in the form of entries in a dictionary, a romance presented as a reference book. The events of the relationship described in the book are not arranged in chronological order, and the story comes together in a disjointed way. The entries are alphabetical, each one evoking a specific memory or speaking to a broader aspect of the relationship for the narrator, who provides “definitions” ranging in length from two pages to one word. The entries are not conventional or consistent as in a traditional dictionary, and consist of a snippet of conversation between the partners, the narrator’s private contemplations, or even a seemingly disjointed series of more words. Because each word evokes specific memories or meditations, the beginning, middle, and inevitable end of the relationship are presented to the reader out of order, always weaving backwards and forwards; an answer appears in the “E’s” to a question voiced later, somewhere between "O" and "R." Beyond this anomalous approach to a love story, the dictionary format draws attention to the subjective nature of language and what different words can evoke or, rather, what different words mean to different individuals. Though the form of the book appears to be a reference-style defining dictionary, it is also, in a way, something like a bilingual dictionary, with translation and interpretation provided by the narrator.

When I first read this book I remember being preoccupied, even as the story drew me in, with the choice to write a romantic account in the form of a dictionary, and an inherent tension I couldn’t quite explain. Now that I reconsider those thoughts in light of this week’s blogging prompt, I think it has to do with implicit expectations I (and perhaps other readers too) have when it comes to the form of a book and its genre. What do I expect from a dictionary or other reference book versus a love story or other novel? What do I think each one can and ought to do or be? One is prescriptive and punctilious, the other has a tendency to be messy and emotional – in this book, you might see the combination of the two as a way of trying to maintain order, organizing thoughts and defining emotions, making sense. At the same time the overly organized form draws a reader’s attention (or at least this reader’s) to the ways in which a love story resists such an approach to understanding or sense making; there is always more, each entry never seems to say enough. Furthermore, the fact that the contents of a dictionary come from one authoritative source never bothered me before, until this one came along. I found myself questioning love stories and reference books alike. As Drucker points out, “a book is not an inert thing that exists in advance of interaction, but rather is produced anew by the activity of each reading,” and I think this interaction is also highly influenced by the other books we interact with before, simultaneously, and after. While perhaps a book does not have an inert existence prior to reading, I think it can certainly exist as an abstract idea based upon the expectations and assumptions we have about its form and genre. 

Drucker, Johanna. "Modeling Functionality: From Codex to e-Book." In Spec Lab, 165 - 174. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 

Levithan, David. The Lover's Dictionary. New York: Picador, 2011.