Brett DeFries, "The Great American Novel"

What strikes me about Gouldthorpe's fascinating "Great American Novel" is not narrative but simultaneity. That each image is all-at-once with the others, no one depending on another's cause, indicates that any narrative is one the viewer must supply to fill the causal gaps. Did the men beneath the revolver pull its trigger to kill some person or animal? Did an unpainted someone kill those men with the revolver? Or is the men's only relationship to the revolver one of nearness on a wall of painted images? Did the sighted rifle kill the sow? That would be strange and superfluous, though what I see is a sow facing a heart (its own?) beneath a sighted rifle. Rather than suggest a narrative, I did my best to let the painting—not it's representation—narrate itself. When I give up the desire to narrate "The Great American Novel," I see things existing simultaneously with others, no one acting on an other, but all of them acting on me, the also active viewer.