334/334
The final section of the novel 334 is a novella also titled "334". It first appeared separately in New Worlds, 1972. It has six chapters:
This section is unusual in form, consisting of 43 short numbered scenes. It begins with a diagram that arranges 43 numbers on a 3 x 3 x 4 cube (with some numbers sharing the same position), where the three dimensions categorize the scenes in three ways:
- Year: 2021, 2024, 2026. (The final year is misprinted as 2025 in the diagram.)
- Main character: Mrs. Hanson, Lottie, Shrimp. Boz does appear but isn't a point-of-view character.
- Style or focus: "monolog," "reality," "fantasy," "another point-of-view." These categories don't necessarily apply in a literal way, e.g. the "fantasy" scenes may be realistic but involve characters thinking about a game or a dream, and the "another point-of-view" scenes may still be from one of the main three points of view but involve someone else telling them to see things differently.
Some sections contain scenes in chronological order and others don't; the only consistent rule is that each scene can only change one of the three dimensions from the previous scene, so, for instance, a "2024 - Lottie - monolog" scene could be followed by a "Lottie - monolog" scene from a different year, or a "2024 - monolog" scene with a different character, or a "2024 - Lottie" scene that is not a monologue. In the notes here for each scene, the scene's "coordinates" on the diagram are indicated after the title.
Disch compared this structural device to writing formal poetry:
You don't know that you're being controlled by this incredible, intellectual apparatus that is totally artificial—you just read through it. And the challenge and reward of working with an artificial form is that you have to pay such attention to the smoothness of continuity of the "meter," as it were, that the reader glides past these moments. So a difficult form simply tends to create a larger challenge, and if that challenge is met, the form vanishes before the reader. But I just couldn't resist putting the diagram into the book anyhow.
(interview from Science Fiction Studies, #29, Volume 10, Part 1, March 1983 - quoted by Michael Swanwick here)