SOURCE: Hawkins, Susan E. “Memory and Discourse: Fictionalizing the Present in Xorandor.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 3 (fall 1989): 138-45.

In the following essay, Hawkins discusses the complex relationship between fiction, memory, narrative, language, and discourse in Xorandor.

The processes of remembering and fictionalizing share certain features. Both are revisionary, and both construct a past through selection, deletion, compilation of detail, characterization, sequence, and action. They also share similarities in more esoteric, less substantive ways. When we remember, we may or may not be in control of our editorial choices. Sometimes events from the past do not always take the same shapes; they segue into different contexts, reveal new sections of the memorial vault, shift into strangely unsettling spaces. Memories may provide escape or comfort or terror; they may be, at times, inescapable. Often, it seems, memory exists at a zero hour. We do not grow old or infirm...