Between 1993 and 2009 Microsoft published a multimedia Encyclopedia called Encarta which could be accessed from various early versions of Windows. During the mid 90’s while not actually programming I enjoyed computer games and read extensively in Encarta. Practically everything I read has vanished from my memory except for one striking prose essay by Wallace Stevens in which he mused about the idea of “supreme fiction.” Stevens must have written this at about the same time that he was composing his poetic masterpiece, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, published in 1942. In an earlier post, Into the Morass, Part I, I quoted some lines from the poem, lines which almost always lead me into an epiphany as they have, just now as I reread the post. (link) At the time of that post I mentioned that Stevens thought deeply about the idea of a supreme fiction and that I would myself consider this idea at a later time. Of course, at the time of the earlier post, October, 2016, I was recollecting the Stevens essay which would be a basis for any further thoughts on my part. But now that the time has come for my thoughts, the Stevens essay is missing and I’m on my own except for the poem and my imagination.

It seems that by 2009 Encarta was overwhelmed by the popularity and the sheer mass of articles in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which revolutionizes research in this day and age. Unfortunately, when Encarta was put to death, the Stevens essay did not make a transition to Wikipedia. I unsuccessfully searched the internet for the essay and then wondered if archaeological remnants of Encarta could be dug up and rendered meaningful. I found that Encarta, if it exists at all, cannot be accessed by Windows 10 to say nothing about Apple’s iOS. Resurrection is doubtless possible, but I no longer have either the time, temper, energy, will or ability for such an enterprise. I searched Amazon and found a book of Wallace Stevens essays, which I bought. The crucial essay is not there and there is nothing about fiction, supreme or otherwise. Literary critics have made the lame suggestion that poetry at large is the supreme fiction Stevens is driving towards. However, the title of the poem, “Notes Toward …” indicates to me that the actual images in the lines of the poem itself point the way to a wordless ecstasy of meaning for the phrase.

For me, reasons for considering “supreme fiction” go beyond the ideas of Wallace Stevens. The attraction is in the craziness of the locution itself, a Zen like phrase which comes out of the West and accordingly, in my mind anyway, allows a different vista of freedom from the milieu of the East.

”Supreme” and “fiction” jar against each other. Although they are certainly not exact opposites, they seem to have an Aristotelian kind of opposition allowing no softening middle between them. If something is “Supreme”, doesn’t that ultimate pinnacle argue for its “reality”. However, I would suggest that being “fiction” exalts the “supreme” beyond any possible mundane reality into a reality that is transcendent.

In the midst of the unbounded expanse of time in which our awareness exists, each day we have a “today” which we attempt to pinpoint in that unimaginable vastness by a formula such as July 29, 2024. On that today I hiked west on the Park Meadow trail from its trailhead on the Three Creeks road south of Sisters, Oregon. The forest along this trail was destroyed by the Pole Creek fire a few years back. Around two and a half miles in I came to a runnel of water called Snow Creek. Being alone and 95, I walked up and down the creek seeking a safe crossing, but found no passage I would risk in my lackadaisical mood. On the way back, about a mile from the trailhead, there was an area where, amid the devastation, the fire left a few clusters of trees, “swags of pines”, as Stevens puts it, mostly Lodgepole. I stopped for a rest and noticed that the tree next to me had the five needle packets of a rare, surviving White Bark Pine. The tree was tall and healthy: a beautiful specimen. I think that this tree will have to be the supreme fiction for today. Perhaps I’ll find another tomorrow. Back to Top