Bridging aspects of rhythm and prose fiction and Demi-Gods

My novel, Demi-Gods, begins when nine-year-old Willa meets Patrick, eleven, in 1950. Patrick is visiting
\ntheir Salt Spring Island beach house from San Diego. On the first morning, Willa follows him to the
\nbeach, where he coaxes her into a dilapidated rowboat. Their cruise ends when she is stung by a jellyfish
\nand Patrick convinces her to urinate on herself. This transaction, in which Patrick asserts authority over
\nher body and she complies, cinches a knot of power between them. As the years proceed, this bond
\nthickens. It’s not until later that she realizes their relationship is essentially self-effacing. Willa has never
\nfelt exalted under anyone else’s gaze, and Patrick has never felt as powerful. The knot of power has altered
\nthem both.
\nRather than explore my creative practice thematically, I have found it more fruitful to unpack a concept
\ncentral to the novel’s form and formation: rhythm. My thesis seeks to understand that centrality—how
\nrhythm initiates and sustains my writing and fiction more broadly. Before Plato emphasized the link
\nbetween rhuthmos (ρυθμός) and metron (μέτρον), rhythm signified a fluid or flowing form. The first
\nchapter contrasts two traditional metaphors for rhythm, rheos vs. cadentibus guttis. By tracing the
\netymology of rhuthmos, I find these metaphors are not mutually exclusive. In the second chapter, I
\nquestion the metaphors we use to identify “presence” in prose fiction. I draw upon Derrida’s
\ndeconstruction of the presence-absence hierarchy and pitch rhythm as an alternative metaphor to “voice.”
\nThe final chapter draws parallels between my study of rhythm and Henri Bergson’s theory of duration,
\nwith a focus on the grammatical verbal. Here, I apply the concepts I have been discussing to Virginia
\nWoolf’s The Waves. In its entirety, my thesis contemplates the ways in which rhythm bridges the
\nexperience of the reader with the experience of the writer, and how rhythm calls to me personally.

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