Blackouts Essay Questions

Why is the novel called Blackouts? What is the significance of the blackout poems that appear alongside the text, and why are they included?

The novel is explicitly interested in ideas about erasure – how might erasure be used as a liberating tool, how might something be gained in the act of erasing, and what is forged in absence. The blackout poetry is made from the primary source material Sex Variants, a book that co-opted good faith research to instead categorize the patterns and behaviors of what was widely considered a perversion. By blacking out parts of the original text, the participants are able to re-assert some of their own individuality and reclaim some of their desire.

How would you describe the friendship between Juan and nene? How might you characterize this central relationship of the novel?

The bond between Juan and nene is a significant one despite the fact that they had not seen each other in many years, and had only spent a few weeks together at the time of their meeting at the psychiatric hospital. By nene's descriptions, Juan had haunted him ever since; he was convinced that the cross necklace he wore around his neck was a clandestine gift from Juan, and he somehow knew that Juan was dying at the Palace and that he should go to him, though how he found this out is never actually articulated in the novel. The how of it does not seem to matter – there is a kind of deep, mystical connection between the two of them, one forged in love between an elder and a young man. Their friendship is based in learning and mutual understanding.

How might you describe the shape of the novel? How does its structure generate the novel's questions and interests?

The novel is structured around a conversation, and so the shape follows accordingly along a series of meanderings and digressions, pauses and flashbacks. Whereas a traditionally plotted novel might have a clear beginning, middle, and end, Blackouts rejects that structure, forcing the reader to reflect on what it means for something to be a novel. Can a text containing dozens of photos, paintings, and poems still be a novel? We know that Juan is going to die from the book's opening, so the tension is not located in the plot; by knowing the outcome from the beginning, we are forced to alter our relationship to the text, to read with a different set of questions.

How is time handled in the novel? What is your experience of time while reading it?

The exact amount of time the present action – nene with Juan in the hospital – takes place is unknown, but there is a dilation of that span of time since the entire 300 pages of the novel occurs during it. The cyclical, refracted nature of the ongoing conversation, which meanders into long stretches of memory, contributes to the sensation of time stretching and expanding. In the hospital, most of the scenes are at night, in darkness, and because we get so little by way of description – it is mostly in dialogue, or description of past events – there is a feeling of being outside of time, of not moving any direction at all.

Discuss the role of seeing in the novel. Who is interested in seeing, and what is meant to be seen?

Juan, like Jan, is interested in seeing. Jan wanted to see the people around her, the people who were living lives that were not allowed to be seen. By documenting those lives, Jan hoped to give them the sight they deserved; to be seen is to be given a kind of dignity. For Juan, the past and all its stories holds a similar need. He tells nene that the ghosts can either be ignored or listened to. By the end of the novel, nene is still too afraid to really look at the past, but he is trying to glance at it more and more.