Reading James Schulyer’s Alfred and Guinevere, which he wrote in 1952, one marvels at his deployment of the child voice. I sat down and studied the way Schulyer accomplishes this…and one easy word would be “intrusive imaginations,” for the kids are always bringing some wildly imagined thought into the room as an argument.

1. Dialogic structure that imitates the non-sequential talk of kids.

Since Schulyer doesn’t always use dialogue tags, there is a sense in which these dialogues between kids pick up their own momentum, or exist in a world seperate from the linear, explicative, attribute world of adults.

The speakers interrupt randomly, or throw in accusative forms, which allows the subject to be changed, or to open a fold in the backstory of speakers—a lot happens after one of the kids says “You’re just jealous…”, and explains why. Also achieved with “Oh yeah, then what about…?” Whataboutism is very effective at enriching the characterization and tone.

2. Inclusion of random facts as evidence in the dialogue—taking books as real, com-possible places.

There is a constant sense in which all is compossibly true. See page 54 for a sharp example of this taking the book as a place. The kids also reeanctment their readings in scenes from their created plays. Page 53 and 53 give examples.

This constant reference to fictional books gives us a sense of aspiration that is markedly different from that of the adults. Schulyer’s child voices describe the novel’s actions as their own “ambitions.” Real life is constantly interpreted to stories and books so that the indeterminate, or the helplessness of childhood, becomes a mental expansiveness in which anything can happen. Examples on pp. 46-48. Adages and folklore are included as evidence or explanation in the conversations between kids, no book is useless.

3. The intrusion of adult world as a strangeness, another country whose means and meanings need decoding.

This occurs repeatedly throughout the novel, and one sees it in Schulyer’s depiction of the charged, hostile silences between adults (as on p. 50), as well as the childrens’ attempts to make sense of these silences and words. What’s marvelous is overhearing how the kids attribute wild, romantic motivations to particular silences, absences, and patches of evasion in adult-land (see p. 86).

4. Detailed description of gendered socialization occurs through conversation among peers and allusions to media.

We see how girls learn what is expected of them as a particular performative aesthetic in the images cited, and the chit-chat between the young girls, and the vocalizations of adults. Guinevere’s horror at her own freckles is described in this way on pages 49-50.

The duty of aesthetic self-improvement infuses Guinevere’s friendships, and the “freedom” of the female gender in Schulyer seems to end with young adulthood (p. 100). Guinevere repeatedly mourns the way her desire to talk about feeligs or books with girlfriends gets snuffed out because the girls just want to to talk about “stuff”, and stuff-ness (p. 113).

5. Death presented a melodramatic moment of significance rather than harsh reality of non-existence.

There is a romance to the death scenes, as on p. 48. The children cope with trauma by inventing fantastic alternative scenarios which resemble a childhood epic constructed from various fictional heroes and heroines, as seen in the very beginning when Schulyer frames the book as part of this epic, pp. 4-5.

Death is surreal in the child-mind. This also shows up in the hyperbolic language about health that doesn’t take mortality seriously—Guinevere is always imagining she will die of something, and talking about this imagined death (p. 93).

6. Inclusion of random comments from adults that add strangeness and suspense to the adult world.

Page 31. These also include wacky religious or moral commentaries (page 20), or even the forebodingness of conflict between generations, as towards the end when the grandmother is so set in her ways, so dedicated to tradition, that it keeps her from flourishing, thriving, or surviving—but these ways, these traditions, aren’t completely devoid of truth. Where the adult would have a normative binary, the child mind allows both to co-exist in Schulyer.

7. Narrative as a form of power.

The difference between “true stories” and “lies” is the engine of this book, and that becomes clear on pp. 94-95, but the reader feels this already in the tension between adult-land and child-land as well as the competitive tall-tales between kids. Arthur and Guinevere aim to oneup each other in freaky, scary stories, and this is also an element in friendship with their peers (pp. 8-9).

Ultimately, Schulyer evokes the way adult narratives, and the stories adults tell, have power over the young. And kids fight back with their own stories, their own variants—by refusing to write what some might call a “trauma narrative” of child abuse with a plot structured around harm, elucidation, and redemption or therapy—-Schulyer sets us inside the child-mind the whole way through. I read this as an anti-adult book, in so many ways, a repudiation or reclamation of narrative power.

The kids tell stories, or create stories, to deal with the parts of life that can’t be processed or discussed, including their parents’ divorce. Stories don’t solve so much as ameliorate the helplessness, as in conversation on page 76.

“True stories aren’t as scary as made-up ones,” the child-speaker says.

8. Self-help discourse and self-improvement chat is gleaned and modified from adults.

This adds a sort of fantastic layer of meaning to the words “aptitude” and “ambition.” These words sound different when used by children—they feel flimsy, and their constructedness is revealed.

10. Repetition of adult phrases with slight changes in syntax that renders the cliches and platitudes absurd, humorous, silly.

As on page 41.

11. Physical gestures and body as text to be decoded—and performed.

pp. 67-68.

The kids control adults, or influence adults, by “acting the part” (p. 118)—and they are conscious of this. Which makes the extent of their acting other parts—from books, movies, media, etc.—seem less child-like and more integral to social life in late-capitalism.

The book essentially ends in the performance of a good-night prayer, as when Arthur says a prayer so fast it becomes a jumble of sounds, and Guinevere calls him names, and the mood descends into rhymes and a sort of light jibberish. A heavy frivolty.