Box Nine is Jack O'Connell's first novel, and is written in the mode of a detective story. In the novel the detective story is referred to as "the most fitting mode for expressing our contemporary situation" [1], which is seen as a "post-God, post-humanist, post-holocaust, post-literate, numbing void" [2]. Box Nine is constructed around the recurring theme of the incompleteness of conventional language and the resulting impairment of communication.
The novel is set in the city of Quinsigamond, which is very much a contemporary human centre, and focuses specifically on the area known as Bangkok Park, a square mile of vice-ridden urban decay, controlled by an Argentinian crime-lord referred to as Cortez. The protagonist is Lenore Thomas, a narcotics detective, who is paired up with an enigmatic oriental professor of linguistics, Dr Frederick Woo, in order to facilitate the investigation of a new drug named Lingo. Lingo is designed to stimulate the language centres of the brain, accelerating communication; it also produces a feeling of intense sensual euphoria as an added dividend. Lenore's brother, Ike, works at a post office, which co-incidentally becomes the distribution channel for the first shipment of Lingo. As a result Ike becomes involved in the web of circumstance surrounding the drug, as do his co-workers, who are attempting to broker the drug to Cortez for a mysterious personage known as the Paraclete.
Box Nine is written in the loose, colloquial, colourful style of a typical crime novel. Although it is related primarily from a traditional third-person omniscient perspective, the narrative is interspersed with transcribed segments of first person speech from the point of view of Charlotte Pierce, one of Lenore's colleagues who is also investigating the drug. The novel presents the events surrounding both the investigation and the illegal entry of the drug into the open market, and interlaces the perspectives and opinions of the primary characters. It is through this network of perspectives that communication and its inadequacies are dramatized.
The disturbing thesis that the novel proposes is that language as such, when called upon to transmit complex meanings, is not only inadequate, but collapses entirely, leaving the receiver none the wiser for the attempted exchange. This failure is directly acknowledged in a conversation between Lenore and Woo.
'... There's just a whole culture, a whole different set of . . . I don't know. You just have to taste it, you know. Words aren't going to do it.'
Woo sits back. He folds his arms like he's the one who's made some point, waits a beat before quashing an almost condescending smile, leans forward, right in line with Lenore's face, and says, 'That's always the case, isn't it?” [3]
Initially Woo appears to be fairly innocuous, and a rather weak voice through which to directly convey the novel's theme, whereas for the denizens of O'Connell's creation, Woo is the sole accessible source of meaningful information concerning language. As a result he is extremely privileged in that he plays the role of an absolute oracle, and is unrestrained by any controlling forces, there being no greater authority to which he is answerable.
The above extract is not the first instance where the futility of attempting communication via conventional language is explored, though. In an earlier discourse, Ike Thomas discusses the postal system, describing how it falls short in its attempt to allow people to alleviate feelings of abandonment and alienation;
I'm sorry people, you can make the mail system as efficient and elaborate and well connected as you want, but it won't change a thing. It won't make you any less isolated, any less separate, any less alone. You can mail an unlimited number of bulging envelopes, filled to bursting with words of every meaning and message, but that can't change the nature of things. We are alone. And all our post offices are but temples of illusion, intricate attempts to tell ourselves otherwise. [4]
This is yet another reference to the incompetence of language. The 'post-office' in this example is not only a metaphorical formulation representing communication systems in general, but also a manifestation of the short-comings of language. The acceptance of the deficiency of the basic language system is logically expanded into the understanding that any other structure which is dependant on that flawed initial system can never itself be viable.
In the novel, frustration with conventional language stems from the fact that established systems make use of signifiers too far removed from their respective referents, and from the instability of the sign, as a result of the disconnection of signifier from signified, ie: the symbol or icon for a 'meaning' does not correspond exactly with the idea which it generates, nor with any concrete ('real') phenomenon. Two different methods of using concretely representative signifiers as alternative means of communication are investigated.
The first technique is one which has traditionally been considered quite crude, the use of tattoos as a means of expression. The tattoo as a pictographic representation of emotion and character is explored, and briefly detailed in one of Lenore's monologues, which she begins by debating the functions and significance of tattoos. She then continues, in search of personal signifier.
And, of course, I've thought about the design. What would I choose? We can rule out the typical red rose or butterfly right off the bat. I want something unique. Something custom-drawn and more suited to me. And I can't quite come up with what it should be.
***
But sometime in the future, in the days ahead, give it some thought and tell me what you think would be the best sign for me. Something which would just scream Lenore permanently. From underneath my skin. [5]
Although the medium of tattoo art is considered, it is not dwelt upon, as it is intrinsically too constricting and contextually based. To the end of finding a more universal method of communication, the medium of the packages, discovered by Ike Thomas in the ninth rental box at the post office where he works, is investigated. These packages, used by Cortez to communicate with the post office workers brokering the Lingo transaction, contain a collection of objects which together evoke a profound response in the receiver. For example, the first package found contains a neatly dissected fish, which is inhabited by a variety of parasitic organisms.
Through a brutal assault on the senses, there is a subtle manipulation of instinctual reactions rather than specific conventions. The effectiveness of conventional language depends on the establishment of a complex protocol, which is by definition context-specific. Although it is conceptually impossible to forego this system entirely, its inherent restrictions can, the novel suggests, be circumvented by relying rather on basic commonalities, which precede context. This allows for a system which more nearly approaches universality.
Ultimately the author is forced to grapple with the paradox that confronts all post-modernist writers, the fact that his novel, itself being a construct defined and confined by its conventional language base, is doomed to fail as a vehicle of meaning. This occurs as a result of the very breakdown of language which the novel is dramatizing. In its final words, the novel abandons any quest for closure, choosing rather to sacrifice a sense of release for dramatic effect. The mastery of the paradox is acknowledged, and fealty paid.
How can I tell you all out there, how can I tell you? You've got to see it for yourself. Come on down. It's beyond words. [6]