AustLit

'‘The novella has a fundamental relation to secrecy’, write Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. ‘Not with a secret matter or object to be discovered, but with the form of the secret, which remains impenetrable.’ A little later in A Thousand Plateaus, they clarify what they mean by linking ‘the form of the secret’ to a moment of perceptual disturbance: ‘You enter a room and perceive something as already there, as just having happened, even though it has not yet been done. Or you know what is in the process of happening is happening for the last time, it’s already over with.’ From this scenario, it’s easy to extrapolate that, for Deleuze and Guattari, the novella is principled on a particular experience of time, one that is marked by a feeling of belatedness – of finding ourselves in the position of having to ask, ‘What happened? Whatever could have happened?’' (Introduction)