NASMIJANO BEZUMLJE U IZVANBRODSKOM DNEVNIKU SLOBODANA NOVAKA
SMILING INSANITY IN OUTBOARD LOG BOOK BY SLOBODAN NOVAK

Summary/Abstract: The paper argues that the starting point of Novak’s novel Outboard Log Book is a “twisted” world based on a paradox, which influences the main elements and strategies of narration. Due to this “twisted” feature of the novel, which is determined mostly politically and ideologically, the “disturbed perspective” prevails in the text. Since the basic strategy in the novel is the pun, i.e. world play, whose symbolism and meanings interconnect the plot, composition, narration, and the signifiers. The character of Magistar, transformed into a fool and an outcast in this upside-down world, can oppose the ideology and language as its main stronghold, only with “silence ideology” (known from previous Novak’s novels We Should Think Further, Southern Thoughts, and It Should Die Logically.), or he can try “to undermine it with the language itself”. When the world cannot be interpreted by language, almost all its functions are lost. What remains is the poetic function that becomes embedded in irony. The paradigmatic syntagm a shell that makes a noise embodies the individuality and further justifies literariness. However, it becomes obvious that even that “pledge” of art can be both disruptive and contradictory. The protagonist’s return to the island signals a circular structure of the key narrative strand, as well as his journey. Puns, playing with paradoxes, twists and replacements, as well as “the aspiration for logical dying” “are reconciled” at the end of the third part of the novel entitled Necropolis, which is visible in the “equalization of the opposing worlds”, and in finding a solution to the problem of temporality.

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