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Spring 2020
PoMo
Exploring the Landscape of Postmodernism
Spring 2020// English 166 // T, Th 3:30 – 5 // Mulford 240
Mark Danner
Postmodernism is one of those peculiar words, like "nonfiction," that struggles to define something by what it is not. Or rather, in this case, by what it comes after: Postmodernism was what came after modernism. In this seminar we'll attempt to go beyond that rather empty surmise to the self-regarding, fragmented, multiform, satyric, parodic, pastichey works themselves. That means readings from Borges to Burroughs to Barth and Barthelme, from Calvino to Carter to DeLillo to Heller to Pynchon and Toni Morrison to Whitehead. Others besides, all in the service of answering the nagging questions: What did come after Modernism? How exactly should we think about it? And where oh where did it go?
Class Requirements This seminar will be a mixture of lectures and discussion, backed up by a large amount of reading, some student presentations and a little writing. The most important requirements are that students
*Attend all class sessions
*Keep up with reading and writing assignments
*Participate in discussions
*Deliver one presentation on a subject related to postmodernism
*Complete the final examination
A student’s record of attendance and participation in class discussion, together with the quality of his or her writing, will determine the success of our class and contribute the better part of the grade. Students who miss classes will not do well in this course.
Schedule Note that all classes will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3 pm in Mulford 240.
Reading Our primary reading will draw on the classics of postmodernism, both novels and short stories. They are listed below under Required Texts.
I strongly urge you to obtain these books in your own copies and in the edition specified, either from local bookstores or from online suppliers, so that we will all be “on the same page” and so that you will be able to highlight and annotate them.
Some excerpts from critical essays collected in the sourcebooks listed below will be distributed as supplemental reading during the semester.
Presentations Students will make one presentation on the theme of the course, with a colleague, in some way tied to the current reading. Use of multimedia and social media during the presentation is strongly encouraged.
Favorite Passages During your reading please make sure to select each one favorite or representative passage that you can offer to the class when called on. These passages should exemplify something about the book or the author that you think is important to the themes of the class – or simply important to you.
Writing Depending on response to the reading there may be an occasional in-class quiz, which will be short “pop” quizzes presented at the beginning of class.
Each student will complete one short paper on themes raised in the course or a text discussed in it or both. “Short” means two to three pages.
To bolster the clarity and vigor of your English prose, I strongly suggest studying two works: George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language” and Strunk and White’s little manual, The Elements of Style.
Office Hours I will count on meeting with each of you individually at least once during the term. We will make these appointments on an ad hoc basis. I am best reached via email, at mark@markdanner.com. My offices are Wheeler 229 and North Gate 32. My writing, speaking, biography and other information can be found at my website, markdanner.com.
Final Examination The final exam will be made up of questions with short answers whose purpose is to ensure, first, that you have read the books, second, that you have listened to and absorbed the discussions, and third, that you have acquired some mastery over what we have read and discussed together. If you attend class and do the reading you will, with little or no additional preparation, do well on the test.
Grading Students will be graded on their preparedness and their participation in class, the strength of their presentations and the quality of their written work, as follows:
Attendance 30 percent
Participation 30 percent
Writing 20 percent
Presentation 20 percent
Required Texts
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (Penguin, 2003 [first published: 1964 – 79])
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (Grove, 1994 [1962] [1941 – 56])
William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (Grove, 2013 [1959])
Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (Harcourt, 1982 [1979])
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (Penguin, 2015 [1979])
Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin, 2016 [1985])
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (Simon & Schuster, 2011 [1961])
David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Dalkey, 2006 [1988])
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Vintage, 2004 [1987])
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper, 2006 [1966])
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Picador, 2004 [1980])
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Dial, 1999 [1969])
Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days (Anchor, 2002 [2001])
Recommended Sourcebooks
Lawrence Cahoone (ed.), From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2003)
Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (Duke, 1987)
Paula Geyn et al (eds.), Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology (Norton, 1998)
Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon (eds), A Postmodern Reader (SUNY, 1993)
Tentative Syllabus
Note: Tentative means the schedule may change. Some short essays may be added and particular stories and excerpts specified with page numbers. Stay tuned.
January 21 – PoMo: An Unending Longing to Define
On the many meanings of a big, greasy word. Era, style, philosophy. The question of periodization. Are we in it? Or of it? PoMo and truth: a dip into politics. A few short examples. Borges and the pliability of time. Barthelme and tragedy.
Required Reading: Jorge Luis Borges, “Kafka and his Precursors”
Donald Barthelme, “The School”
January 23 – Borges and the Modern/Postmodern Borderland
Finding the seam: when did Modernism become something else? And what exactly was that else? The short story and essay. The story as philosophical problem. The story as intellectual pastiche. What do stories do? On Borges and Barthelme.
Required Reading: Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (Grove, 1994 [1962] [1941 – 56]), pp. 9 – 65.
Ihad Hassan, “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism” homepage.westmont.edu/hoeckley/Readings/Symposium/PDF/201_300/221.pdf
https://fliphtml5.com/djyh/mrsi/basic
January 28 – Borges, Barthelme and the Metaphysics of Storytelling
What makes a story a story? Theme and enigma. Do we need character? What exactly is realism and what does it do?
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (Grove, 1994 [1962] [1941 – 56]), pp. 65 – 174.
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (Penguin, 2003 [1964 – 79]), pp. 1 – 120.
January 30 – Tragic Cartoons: Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (Penguin, 2003 [1964 – 79]), pp. 121 – 444, with specific stories to be named.
February 4 – So It Goes: Firebomb Dresden, Napalm Vietnam
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Dial, 1999 [1969])
February 6 – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Dial, 1999 [1969])
February 11 – William Burroughs: Punks, Beats, Drug-Fueled Dreams
William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (Grove, 2013 [1959])
February 13 – William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (Grove, 2013 [1959])
February 18 – Postmodern Paranoia: Pynchon’s America
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper, 2006 [1966])
February 20 – Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper, 2006 [1966])
February 25 – Ouroboros: Calvino’s Self-Consuming Story
Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (Harcourt, 1982 [1979])
February 27 -- Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (Harcourt, 1982 [1979])
March 3 – Pastiche, Fairy Tales, Women’s Voices: Carter’s Fables
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (Penguin, 2015 [1979])
March 5 – Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (Penguin, 2015 [1979])
March 10 – Marilynne Robinson’s Pilgrim Quest
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Picador, 2004 [1980])
March 12 – Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Picador, 2004 [1980])
March 24, 26 – Spring Break (No Class: Read Catch-22)
March 31 – Slapstick of Total War: Heller’s World
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (Simon & Schuster, 2011 [1961])
April 2 – Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (Simon & Schuster, 2011 [1961])
April 7 – Persistence of Airborne Toxic Events: DeLillo’s Prophesy
Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin, 2016 [1985])
April 9 – Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin, 2016 [1985])
April 14 – Unburying History: Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Vintage, 2004 [1987])
April 16 – Toni Morrison, Beloved (Vintage, 2004 [1987])
April 21 – Dystopia or Paranoia? Markson’s Cracked Mirror
David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Dalkey, 2006 [1988])
April 23 – David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Dalkey, 2006 [1988])
May 5 – Charging Culture’s Theme Park: Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days (Anchor, 2002 [2001])
May 7 – Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days (Anchor, 2002 [2001])
May [Date TBD] – Final Examination (Short Answers)
Annotated Syllabus
January 21 – PoMo: An Unending Longing to Define
On the many meanings of a big, greasy word. Era, style, philosophy. The question of periodization. Are we in it? Or of it? PoMo and truth: a dip into politics. A few short examples. Borges and the pliability of time. Barthelme and tragedy.
Required Reading: Jorge Luis Borges, “Kafka and his Precursors”
Donald Barthelme, “The School”
Class Notes:
Postmodernism is a literary and artistic era beginning after WWII
Are we still in the postmodern era?
Characteristics include self-awareness/metafiction and absurdity within the plot
What does “meta” mean? History of itself; self-referential
Reflexivity: fiction about fiction
All these descriptions are very unspecific
It’s trying to locate a kind of era and intellectual art
We’re not exactly sure where it started and where it ended/if it’s still continuing
Initially used to describe buildings emerging in the 1960s
Ex: Disney Hall looks like a wave and is sort of figurative (designed by Frank Gehry)
Modernist Building are much different from postmodernist
Modernism had an austere philosophy for architecture
“form follows function”
Ex: Seagram Building in New York is a straight, black glass, unornamented building (designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson
Postmodern architecture is more popular than modern because it is more ornamented and pleasurable
Not everything in the postmodern era is necessarily postmodern
Some recent postmodern buildings include the Salesforce Building and BAMPFA
PoMo is predicated on irony
These buildings talk to us because they have screens
Irony: The opposite of what is expected to happen, happens
Does BAMPFA’s architecture undermine the seriousness of the museum?
Postmodernist opt to be less serious and more ironic
The past, which cannot be destroyed because then there will be silence, we must revisit with irony
Our age is one of lost innocence
Neoclassical architecture: we live in the shadow of it
Buildings like the MET and the Supreme Court remind us that we are entering western culture and the myth of dominance
British thought of themselves as the dominant western culture
The metanarrative is that they were the most powerful and thought they should spread this “dominant” culture
Marxism and class struggle are metanarratives
Freudianism is another metanarrative
In the broad sense, PoMo’s key attribute, identified by Lyotard, is the end of metanarrative and the treatment of metanarrative ironically
French Writers who became famous in the 60s wrote a lot of theory about PoMo
The School by Donald Barthelme
It’s a monologue
Extremely casual
Missing some things: no dialogue, no real context, no kids’ names (except those who died)
Story has an implied listener
We’re used to realism, so we recognize weirdness
The story has two strong turns
The Korean orphan
Surprising but strangely expected, thus making it absurd
Ending part
January 23 – Borges and the Modern/Postmodern Borderland
Finding the seam: when did Modernism become something else? And what exactly was that else? The short story and essay. The story as philosophical problem. The story as intellectual pastiche. What do stories do? On Borges and Barthelme.
Required Reading: Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (Grove, 1994 [1962] [1941 – 56]), pp. 9 – 65.
Ihad Hassan, “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism” homepage.westmont.edu/hoeckley/Readings/Symposium/PDF/201_300/221.pdf
https://fliphtml5.com/djyh/mrsi/basic
Suggested Reading:
Donald Barthelme Interview with the Paris Review
Jorge Luis Borges Interview with the Paris Review
Class Notes:
Jorge Luis Borges
Borges’s stories oftentimes have many real people in them
However, they haven’t always written what he says they’ve written
He deals with idealism and concepts of what is real v not real
These stories are from the 1940s, but suddenly became popular in the 1960s
Borges was from Argentina but spent a lot of time in Europe
He and Samuel Becket shared an international prize for literature in 1961
Barthelme:
Born around 35 years after Borges
One of the founders of Postmodern literature
“The School” by Barthelme
Ellipses make it feel far more casual—it’s not very descriptive
Concepts of being individually responsible
The children are responsible for what they take care of, but are they responsible for their deaths?
Life and death—everything is passing
The story is ultimately about death
Do we really know how old the kids are?
He’s playing with the reader’s expectation of what a story should be
There isn’t a plot, but there is a gradual intensification off the stakes
The children don’t understand death, but neither does Edgar, really
When the gerbil appears, we know he will eventually die
Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius” by Borges
Borges worked with and was influenced by Louis Aragon, a French surrealist
He was part of the young avant-garde of Argentina
He became a Newspaper editor when he was around 30
He wrote many stories for this paper
His fiction was hardly distinguishable from his nonfiction
“Mirrors are grotesque”
Because they create more people—likens mirrors to copulation
Mirrors make a blurred line between fiction and reality
There are many mirrors in this story
Borges steers towards Plato and maybe even critiques him
Idealism: the philosophy that reality is real because of our perception of it
Tlon is idealism without any backstop
Borges constructs a whole world based on idealism
Plays out paradoxes in this world
Tlon becomes real in two ways
People reading about it and learning about it in school
People finding artifacts from it
The two artifacts that appear are a compass and a heavy cone
There is no independent existence of anything, so can we create anything?
Descartes said “I think therefore I am”
Gnostic: an extreme Platonist who believes the world is an illusion—Gnostics hate the world
January 28 – Borges, Barthelme and the Metaphysics of Storytelling
What makes a story a story? Theme and enigma. Do we need character? What exactly is realism and what does it do?
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (Grove, 1994 [1962] [1941 – 56]), pp. 65 – 174.
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (Penguin, 2003 [1964 – 79]), pp. 1 – 120.
Suggested Reading:
Explanatory Notes for Sixty Stories
Class Notes:
In 1921, Ulysses and The Wasteland were both published
Modernism began around 1914 with the war
WWI interrupted a time of very little world conflict
20-25 million people died
Modern technology that was supposed to improve life was used to destroy it
Key decade of PoMo was the 1960s
started around 1945
Death toll of WWII was around 55 million people
It was apocalyptic
they were killed in an industrial fashion
Produced by a country considered "civilized"
6 million people died in the holocaust
What do Barthelme and Borges have to do with this?
Barthelme's "The Game" is very apocalyptic
irrationalism, war
Borges said there were four devices of great literature
work within the work
evident in many of his short stories
in media res
fictional world within the fictional world
formula: mise en abyme (putting into an abyss)
Contamination of reality by dreams
imagination
reality is unstable
Ex. "The Circular Ruins"
Voyage in Time
Things occur again and again
Ex. The Secret Miracle
Time is malleable
The Double
For Borges, history is cyclical
most of his stories take place in the past or in some indeterminate time
"Pierre Menard"
arcana: secret knowledge
Destroys his own argument about changing the game of chess
Doesn't really have an effect on the objective world
Something willfully playful about destroying what you make
Almost absurd
stays in the realm of imagination--exists only in the mind
"The South"
Dahlmann suffers an injury and is charged
injury is autobiographical--Borges once hit his head while carrying a copy of A Thousand and One Nights
reminiscent of Funes
"Funes"
Funes is mentally and physically paralyzed
He cannot escape the power of his own mind
"Babylon Lottery"
culture and time period of PoMo fit into the story
mass death and the search for an explanation
question of free will or the absence of it
What does the Company represent?
religion
gives reason to determinacy
"Garden of Forking Paths"
The book inside is strangely the ultimate realist novel because it offers choices as in real life
Discusses the novel in a novel, voyage through time, and arguably the double
Same title for Borges's very first collection
Bifurcating series of choices, but he happens to pick the one connected to his ancestor
Why does something stir in his memory?
either it is a reference to him remembering his ancestor or
this has happened before
January 30 – Tragic Cartoons: Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (Penguin, 2003 [1964 – 79]), pp. 121 – 444, with specific stories to be named.
Class Notes:
Similarities and differences between Borges and Barthelme
short stories
Both use humor
Barthelme has a sort of quirkier style
both have a sense of play
Barthelme makes more jokes and is more fragmented
Their relationship to realism is different, but they are both distinctly distanced from it
They both play with the story's form
Characteristics of Realism
everyman character
uniform narrative time
consistent reality
plot, which implies a narrative shape
characters
character development
Characteristics of Postmodernism
non sequitur
open-ended
open-endedness keeps the story echoing
it's fertile
Not always a traditional climax
ex. "The School" is an escalation story
There is progress and narrative movement, but not in a conventional way
"Flat" characters
"The Falling Dog"
not really about the dog
similar to Kafka's Metamorphosis in that something absurd and unexplained occurs
"The Balloon" is most similar to Metamorphosis
"Views of My Father Weeping" is similar to Kafka's first story, "The Judgment"
Barthelme wanted to "find freshness in a much used language"
Barthelme is interested in different kinds of speech
spontaneous
all kinds of voices--> mixture of voices
sometimes very matter-of-fact
anachronism
ex. Cortes and Montezuma riding in a limousine
Borges subjects time whereas Barthelme uses it for play and fun
Barthelme is interested in collage
influenced by pop art, Lichtenstein
uses appropriation, allusions, sampling
"The Falling Dog" continued
the 'poems' are the notes of the sculptor
trying to develop his next work
This is a story that does indeed progress
not in a normal sense
no conflict or climax
we don't know how real any of it really is
We're witnessing the process of creation
It's as though he's explaining his artwork to someone and making up a story of how he was inspired
The image of the falling dog replaces the yawning man
he's made thousands of yawning men, thus mocking the commodification of art
Barthelme's father was a modernist architect and he grew up in a modernist home
"We like stories that have a lot of drek in them"
Barthelme says this to suggest that realist books waste themselves on superfluous description
he says realism is a series of agreements about how to fake the world
"Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning" has a date at the end that is a few months before his assassination
it was written before the assassination though
"The Balloon"
one of Barthelme's most famous stories
Third paragraph is sort of about how we experience art
why bother trying to figure it out
Go to it, experience it, enjoy it
Last couple paragraphs
blather of sociological discussion
The balloon eventually becomes accepted as normal (sort of a joke about New York)
Was the speaker truly responsible for the balloon or not?
February 4 – So It Goes: Firebomb Dresden, Napalm Vietnam
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Dial, 1999 [1969])
Suggested Reading:
Susan Sontag's Essay "Against Interpretation"
Washington Post Essay on Slaughterhouse 5
Class Notes:
Best-selling PoMo novel
This book has a preoccupation with Dresden as well as Vietnam
the children of the soldiers of WWII fight in Vietnam
The two are linked with many things
for instance, napalm
Slaughterhouse Five rose to the #4 on the bestseller list and stayed there for 16 weeks
One of the most frequently banned books in America
Judge in Michigan called i vulgar, depraved, psychotic and antichristian
What makes it PoMo
time travel--makes narrative fragmented, grammar travels through time as well
confusion of whether or not Vonnegut is SciFi
Self-reflexive--meta narrative
The book is composed of reappearing chunks
Vonnegut said his books are a mosaic made of chips and each chip is a joke
His characters reappear in several of his other books as well
The random chunks sometimes work as epithets
ex. Edgar Derby is always referenced along with his death
What is the linear narrative?
The Dresden past, primarily
Is there a naturalistic explanation for the plot?
Yes, the SciFi explanation is that he really is unstuck in time but the naturalistic explanation is that this is the result of PTSD
Many absurd deaths throughout the book
Ex. Billy's father being shot by a friend while deer hunting
Slaughterhouse Five was an underground meat locker of stone
absurd that it saves them from destruction
Dresden is described as a fantasy land, but we never really get a clear, detailed description
Fire bombing is bombing with a mixture of high explosives and then incendiary bombs
trying to create a firestorm where fire develops its own momentum and forms a tornado
"So it goes" appears 106 times
War culture is sort of more a daily reminder that we forget nowadays
What is the sentiment that keeps the book going as a working narrative?
unique perception of time and triviality, which enables Billy to find humanity in crazy situations
Many things we experience second hand
we learn about Billy's trauma through other people
Billy is passive and in some ways his experience with the Tralfamadorians makes him more numb to everything
The theme of this novel is more about cruelty than death
When Vonnegut is at the motel in Boston, he reads two things
1. Words for the Wind, which has a poem that hints at free will
2. The Gideon Bible chronicling the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah, which hints more at an absence of free will
From the Gideon Bible, Lot's wife turns back at the destruction and is turned into a pillar of salt
Vonnegut call himself a pillar of salt because he is looking back
It's a deeply moral book, but it creates its own moral structures
Vonnegut revisits his past through this novel
What does it do to you to revisit your past?
He calls the book a failure because it was written by a pillar of salt
his looking back mortifies himself
Looking back is reminiscent of the story of Orpheus
There is a shape to the book, ending on a question
Billy had a meek faith in a loving Jesus that most soldiers found putrid
He plays the organ at various churches because of his mother, but she never picks one
Billy is Jesus--passivity in suffering, feeling things in a unique way
he's an antihero, but also not
February 6 – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Dial, 1999 [1969])
Class Notes:
Kurt Vonnegut and Science Fiction (Landon and Cooper's presentation)
Born in 1922
Went to Cornell
Studied Biochem
joined the airforce
worked as a reporter
then worked in PR for GE
left in 1950 to work as a full time writer
Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Died in 2007
Genre v literary
In genre, plot comes first, there is a more traditional/basic narrative, and there are often impossible or fantastic events
In literary fiction, there is a focus on characters, there is experimental and complex structure, and there is a focus on social issues
this is what is considered more high art
Science Fiction deals with imaginative and futuristic/alternate realities
confusion of genre v literary
often has elements of advanced science and tech
soft sci fi takes more creative liberties and has less of a concern for plausibility
hard scifi is more rooted in reality and actual science
Vonnegut's first two novels, Player Piano and Sirens of Titan, were more Sci Fi-esque and were marketed as such
Vonnegut didn't like this so he started to deviate from SciFi a little bit
Player Piano was partly inspired by his time at GE
Slaughterhouse 5 is where the genres begin to blend more
there are elements of genre fiction and literary fiction
One of the most notable traits of PoMo is its blending of different genres as well as high and low art
meshing contradictions
SciFi is a very young genre
first really began in the late 1800s
HG Wells is the honorary father of SciFi
Postmodernism dissolves categories
it is aware that the categories are about power and economics
There's pastiche
Pastiche is something made up of different elements
SciFi itself is a type of pastiche
PoMo takes acid to these categories of genre and literary fiction and to literary authority
These categories are historically determined
PoMo has trouble with authority and meta-narrative
Vonnegut struggled to find literary respect
he was mixing categories and that is part of what makes him PoMo
Slaughterhouse 5 is also somewhat humanist
it's antiwar
Billy's last name is Pilgrim
it has a religious meaning
Vonnegut makes a pilgrimage back to Dresden in the first chapter and he makes biblical allusions as well
Billy goes by 'Billy' for business reasons, but it also makes him more childish
The Children's Crusade
What is the drive behind Billy's pilgrimage?
Is this all compensation for his PTSD?
If we read it as a realist piece, this new vision of time is compensation for what he's lost
The book is a complete take down of the narrative of Christianity (if read from a PoMo perspective)
Billy tries to reconstruct a world where he is unstuck in time, there's been this mass cruelty, and his faith can't help
The novel is both Satire and SciFi
in a literary sense, SciFi belongs to satire--it's using a narrative of the future to critique the present
February 11 – William Burroughs: Punks, Beats, Drug-Fueled Dreams
William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (Grove, 2013 [1959])
Suggested Reading:
Wikipedia Article on William S. Burroughs
Wikipedia Article on the Beat Generation
Burroughs Paris Review Interview
Class Notes:
Book went to the Massachusetts Supreme Court in a case against its obscenity, but it was deemed not obscene
You can intersect the text at any point
the book is deeply unconventional
Many consider the novel immoral
It critiques middle class morality
It's sort of a literary experiment
Burroughs was partially interested in Dadaism
Ginsberg and Kerouac helped him chop his original 1,000 page draft of Naked Lunch into what it is today
1954-58 Burroughs lived in Tangier
Interzone--it did not belong to any country and was international
Drugs were fully available in the Interzone of tangier
So was sex, including 'unconventional' sex
Book was partially shocking because of the homosexuality
The beat poets were key figures in the post-war literary movements
This is very much a book of the 50s
50s were a time of consumerism and an era of American prosperity
USA left WWII having 50% of the world's GDP
The US was incredibly rich and prosperous and the baby boomer generations as born
The 50s had the Civil Rights Movement as well as McCarthyism
Homosexuality and any 'unconventional' sexuality warranted arrest and could ruin someone's life
There is a large segment of society that is repressed and under threat of persecution in the midst of this prosperous society
All of this 50s mask of perfection cracked in the 60s giving birth to counterculture
The 50s is the great moment of repression
Various bureaucracies oppress
Drug bureaucracy, mental hospitals, etc.
"The algebra of need" --the more you have, the more you need
"Junk is the mold of oppression" --Burroughs
Given certain unknown factors in an equation with absolute need, the outcome is regardless predictable
Burroughs suggests that the junkies represent everyone
The book is a critique of American society by an exile in Tangier
Burroughs was a little older than some of the other beats
The beat philosophy dates back to Lucien Carr
They were big on transcendentalism and Emerson
Rimbaud
Carr had three main points of philosophy
Naked self expression is the key to creativity
An artist's conscience is expanded by "derangement of the senses"
drugs, alcohol, hedonism, etc.
"Derangement of the senses" is a Rimbaud quote
Art eludes conventional morality
paranoia--fear of arrest, not getting what one needs, loss of control, judgment from conventional society
The novel is very much a pastiche
SciFi, travel, surrealism, pornography, detective fiction,
The narrator is authentic, which lends him some pretentiousness
his is who he is and is not hypocritical or deluded
he indulges his desires
Many of the scenes are thematic representations of the routines of coming down from a high, dreaming, fantasizing, etc.
Ongoing satire of American racism and violence
Psychoanalysis of the American psyche--particularly the darker side
Burroughs grew up very wealthy
his grandfather invented the adding machine
Originally from St. Louis, Missouri
February 13 – William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (Grove, 2013 [1959])
Class Notes:
Burroughs is a unique figure among the Beats
Ginsberg helped extract Naked Lunch from a 1,000 page "word horde" that Burroughs wrote between 1954 and 1958
The word horde wasn't a story but rather a series of routines of coming down from a high, kicking it, etc.
A theme of his work is stripping away the calm face of prosperous Western society and showing the power of media and law that terrorize underneath
mechanisms that control people
Dr. Benway talking about the man who taught his asshole to talk is a very famous part of the book
metaphor for powers of service and consumption
man is reduced to only a mechanism of consumption
Simopath: citizen convinced that he is an ape
Latah: form of involuntary hypnosis and movement native to Asia
lack of control
INDs: "irreversible neural damage"--Benway produces these people
Image of disgusting grey, translucent monkey fetus
a parasite that is nothing but need
Capitalism stimulates this need
This and addiction are a critique of a certain type of society
Salvador Hassan O'leary (character): describes himself as a cancer that must proliferate
he's the friendly face of capitalism
he sells cut antibiotics, adulterated shock repellent, and more things that are really useless
P.32 passage
Categorization of different groups that is very typical of the 50s
Lack of control and stripped agency
People indulging their most depraved desires
scene of decay and moral depravity
Presentation: "The Shootist": Burroughs and Vollmer, by Kathryn Riley and Erika Badalyan
Born in Missouri to a wealthy family
Expressed an interest in writing from a very young age
Injured his hand in Mexico and was treated with Morphine
one of his first exposures
Graduated from Harvard with honors
Traveled a lot and learned a lot about queer culture
Was psychoanalyzed a lot, but didn't really believe in psychoanalysis
this did help him remember that when he was four his maid forced him to have oral sex with her boyfriend
Went to war but got psychiatric discharge
Went to Chicago
worked as a PI and an exterminator
Vollmer was born in 1923 and went to Barnard College
She was roommates with Edie Parker, Kerouac's first wife
Ginsberg and Kerouac introduced Vollmer and Burroughs
They called each other telepathic soulmates
Both had substance abuse problems
Burroughs did Heroin and Vollmer did Benzedrine
Vollmer's first husband left her because of her drug problem
Eventually moved to New Orleans where Burroughs was arrested for heroin possession
They then went to Mexico together
At a party, they say that they're going to do their William Tell act, something they had never done before
She places a cup on her head and he means to shoot it off, but accidentally kills her
He made a cover story that it was an accident, but his lawyer then killed someone and fled
Burroughs was detained in Mexico for 13 days before being bailed out and fleeing himself
Ginsberg though that Vollmer wanted to die and that Burroughs was assisting her
Burroughs then went to Paris and Tangier
He performed experiments on himself where he'd do drugs and mirror gaze
these got him interested in cut ups
cut ups became a way for him to make sense of things
As a shootist, he shot boards and made paintings out of them
He was very passionate about his identity as a shootist
Burroughs's work had a fair amount of gynophobia in it
always used in a way meant to shock people
Females are always portrayed as ravenous
trope of pornography
The hanging thing is also a trope of pornography and there are many others throughout the book
February 18 – Postmodern Paranoia: Pynchon’s America
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper, 2006 [1966])
Suggested Reading:
Wiki Annotations of The Crying of Lot 49
CLASS CANCELED
February 20 – Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper, 2006 [1966])
Class Notes:
Today we had a discussion wherein people wrote questions about anything in the class and we discussed them at random.
Least favorite novel and why
Naked Lunch seemed overwhelmingly the least favorite
not meant to be enjoyable
historical context of the time is important to fully appreciate it
redundant
is it less potent to us because we are desensitized?
would it have been more profound in the 60s?
What makes these works Postmodern?
pastiche
mocking metanarrative
they turn modernism on its head
Why is the end of Pynchon so ambiguous?
whole point of the novel is that everything is in flux
paranoia
Oedipa sets herself as other from everyone else in the story
If there was a buyer, it would give Oedipa a victory no matter what--the victory of satisfaction
What is modernism?
after WWI and during rapid industrialization
focus on consciousness
not as satirical and critiquing as PoMo
expands more on tradition
function precedes form
What makes Barthelme different from the other authors?
more modulated
many different styles of writing from story to story
Is Borges more different from the other authors than Barthelme?
man of his themes occur in the other works
he takes himself more seriously and his work as a sacred aspect to it
he's more esoteric
Barthelme is very interpersonal in some ways, which makes him stand out
Are we still in PoMo?
maybe
PoMo isn't well-defined so it's difficult to say
Can we still define literature in terms of eras?
David Foster Wallace--Concept of New sincerity wherein after PoMo we have to come back to regular narrative
Is irony dead? Have we had irony poisoning?
What is the significance of Pynchon's long sentences?
most literary element to the work
gets you caught up in each moment
aesthetically pleasing?
Contributes to fragmentation
Intentionally overwhelming
How do drugs function in PoMo?
They're a tool
Literally contaminating reality with dreams
Drug use also exploded in the 60s
How does PoMo relate to American culture?
nowadays it connects to the internet and internet humor/irony
Apathy in American culture
after WWII Americans were just in shock and incapable of comprehending such mass destruction
self-deprecation
How do names in The Crying of Lot 49 function?
humor
Oedipa's name comes from Oedipus
may be pointing at the false sense of security
paranoia
destiny
Maybe the names have no meaning
February 25 – Ouroboros: Calvino’s Self-Consuming Story
Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (Harcourt, 1982 [1979])
Class Notes:
The Crying of Lot 49
Element of pastiche and detective novels
If we look at it as a mystery, the mystery gets bigger the more the book goes on
It heads toward a condition of non-knowledge
starts of sort of stable but ends in much more uncertainty
progressive lack of understanding that comes with understanding
conspiracy: many different elements working together to achieve something hidden
different from conspiracy theory
Menippean Satire: something that is not only throwing satirical reflections on society, but is a wisdom narrative
wisdom narrative--she's a different woman at the end of the novel; similar to a fable
What is the pushing force of the narrative?
it's a quest narrative of her trying to figure out the conspiracy
confronting other forces
Oedipa is alerted of some strange reality
Why was she presented with this quest?
Pierce Inverarity is an obscure, all-powerful figure
The book's advancement is thematic
headed toward a larger reality underneath the surface
Oedipa learns about all these underground groups beneath her suburban life
Thematic journey through secret worlds connected in different ways
Reminiscent of Borges
secret groups, reality, Tlon Uqbar, generational secrets
Oedipus gets caught up in a prediction
he tries to avoid it and thus does exactly what it predicts
Inverarity--comes from the latin word for truth, but means "untruth"
Rapunzel paragraph on pg 10 has a switch of registers
goes back to vernacular
Oedipa is trapped
things feel insubstantial and arbitrary
The image of Oedipa trapped is a counterimage to the rest of the world
He dissatisfying, mundane life is the set up of the quest
Pierce may have been trying to reveal a more interesting world to Oedipa
Pierce creates San Narciso
He's the mega-developer full of power and he connects everything
Rapunzel is unique in that the princess actually has agency and acts heroically
When Oedipa arrives in San Narciso, she experiences several revelations
hierophant: the revelation of a god
She senses that there's something more, but she doesn't know what
Presentation: PoMo and Film: The French New Wave (By Alyssa and Mika)
French new wave was mostly in the 50s and 60s
Post WWII revival of French Cinema
Loosely organized, unpolished, disjointed
New directors, actors, styles, etc.
Jean Luc Godard
important figure in French New Wave Cinema
was upset that there was nothing new and unique, so he started making his own unique films
New things like breaking the fourth wall and jump cuts
reminds you that you are watching a film
A Bout de Souffle (Godard)
protagonist is a bad person
role reversal in the end where the woman betrays him
many pop culture references
February 27 -- Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (Harcourt, 1982 [1979])
Class Notes:
Why is this book good PoMo?
60s were a key decade for PoMo
disjunctive decade
rupture between past and future
flowering of social liberation after conforming 50s
US dominated the world after WWII
This book sort of mirrors the shattering of the 50s
1963--Kennedy's assassination
everyone's watching when he is shot and when his killer is shot
Shatters the mirage of invulnerability
idea that we know what's going on
dark looming other reality
loss of trust and confidence in the predictability of the world
Lyotard quote: "I define Postmodernism as incredulity toward meta-narrative"
what is a meta-narrative
the person who the history is about is telling the history
ideological systems we use to make sense of the world--Christianity, Marxism, Freudianism, etc.
It's a larger system for making sense of events
delegitimization--word used by Jurgen Habermas
How can we judge and place values without metanarrative?
This book is about delegitimization and incredulity toward metanarrative
No one ever tells Oedipa how to feel
She's trying to find a connection, but is afraid of what she'll find
Apologue: opposed to a realist narrative, this is more of a verbal fiction concerned with idea, fable, and the shape of language
Characters are plot devices
flat characters that hold up the plot
Story expands, it doesn't narrow down
She's seeing reality for the first time
"Promise of hierophany"--promise of the appearance of the sacred
Revelation that something about the US is rotten
revelation of landscapes
Symbol is a mute post horn
Theme of communication--revelation of isolation
She realizes the power of choice and options
she acquires agency
She loses everyone in the book
strips away everything
Absurdity of the mail being the conspiracy is part of the humor
Oedipa knows she wasn't happy (rapunzel imagery)
Dichotomy of "secret richness"
manifest world is revealed to her as this tawdry place
He new knowledge leader her to ambiguity and even less certainty
Underclass theme--agency of social revolution
Is it Tristero or is it just America?
Sailor is the only character with a strong emotional connection to someone
Oedipa sees him and she sees him burn--hierophany
he's almost being sacrificed
Why is this image an important one?
It's where Oedipa sees the darkest side of America
Tristero is a system relied on by people on the outskirts
March 3 – Pastiche, Fairy Tales, Women’s Voices: Carter’s Fables
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (Penguin, 2015 [1979])
Class Notes:
Mandarin PoMo
high-toned viscosity
He admired Borges and Nabokov
intricate labyrinthine structures
Calvino called this book a "hyper novel" done to the "tenth degree"
"it's a catalogue of anthology novel"
"individual confronted by a menace"
in danger from attraction to a female
Lived in Paris while writing
political turmoil in Italy
reader is reading the description of reading
reading is the one thing consistent in the plot
He stopped writing fiction for three years when he came up with this book idea
He moved to France in 1967 with his wife
Loved literature of the fantastic
He emphasizes his power as a writer
But the book itself contributes to a very PoMo idea of the death of the author
author becomes a character like others
Idea of the artist existing present with the text
destroyed this idea in the text
multiple authors and the privileged author
we're no longer in the hands of the all powerful author
multiplicity of authors and stories
10 stories and the framing narrative
frame is the story of the reader
Very pastiche--made up of chunks of different stories
almost a found object
Calvino, in a 1984 letter, stated that he was parodying Borges and several other authors, like Tanizaki, Rulfo, Chesterton, Bulgakov, etc.
Various readers in the story: us, Ludmilla (the female reader), the reader, Lotaria, Cavedagna
Calvino worked for Einaudi publishing in Italy
There's a character who is the book as an object: Irnerio
He's taught himself not to read
What is art?
it's not necessary
It consumes time
it fascinates us
Tour de force
demonstration
"I can do this"
setting yourself a technical challenge
ex. Chinese boxes, Matryoshka Dolls
Mise en abyme: to but in the abyss
infinite reflection
creating a minor world different from our world
Is this book just a tour de force, or is it more?
renders obsolete the willing suspension of disbelief and tells the truth about reading and how it affects us
it's a book addressed to readers
Showing the two extremes of the critical art world
Ludmilla is the perfect reader
she doesn't try to do anything with it
The main character is contrasted to her
Her reading is so attractive because she just takes the book for what it is
she's an optimistic reader
The power of the narrative art is usually suspense
suspense: contradiction between wanting to know something and being caught in the present
After the first few chapters, suspense is somewhat erased
the burden of suspense is thrust on the frame story
Strange, floating characters is a very Nabokovian idea
The stories are meant to be incipits of stories
The stories are all interconnected
Being told that they're incomplete tries to impede our enjoyment
The natural reading of Ludmilla isn't about meaning divorced from the text
Just the pleasure of reading
realism is built on recognition of emotions and states of being
All of these stories refer to things we experience
recognition remains
This novel is fascinated with erasure
recurring ideas in the stories
Ludmilla
forbidden love
Detective
being watched
plotting
paranoia
losing control to outside forces
others being in control
female characters with narrative power
This is the age structuralism
Calvino's friends are Levi Strauss, Roland Barthes, Raymond Queneau, etc.
structuralism--analysis of elements of a story as related to the structure
Calvino's also related to Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle
"Oulipo"
Queneau, Harry Matthews, George Perec,
Avant garde literary movement that Calvino associated with
creating games and structures that repeat
AJ Greimas--semiotic square
using squares to produce narrative
Always using formulae games
March 5 – Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (Penguin, 2015 [1979])
Suggested reading:
Calvino Reading on Oulipo: "A Crew of Variegated Weirdos", From Harper's
Class Notes:
Calvino's parents were botanists
he was expected to pursue science
He joined Oulipo in the 60s
interested in stories under constraint
aleatory: using luck and randomness in art
Calvino was also associated with structuralism
story structures
false authority of the author
stories themselves use rules similar to the rules used in language and we can analyze them according to these rules
This novel was organized in semiotic squares
semiotics: theory of signs
went along with structuralism
The squares seem like a joke comprised after the fact, but Calvino insisted that this is how he wrote the story
atmosphere of producing art according to these rules
Calvino's conjuring the author and assaulting it
France 1968: huge student protests that overthrew the government
one of the high points of Postmodernism
As a genre this would have been a comedy because there's a marriage at the end
main reader has no expectations or idealism
Ludmilla is much more idealistic and functions as a manic pixie dream girl
They have complementary roles
For it's time, the main reader was a standard male character
Ludmilla is characterized in part as a figment of him
Frame story is a highly self-conscious story about stories
but also a tour de force
Some of the humor comes from the cliche of the frame story
frame story's cliche brings us in as the common reader
The stories themselves border on cliche
At what point in our reading do we come to sterility?
How seriously should we be taking these stories?
There's a significant component of play
Intentional Fallacy: making the writer's intention the main part of the interpretation
passage from "Leaning from the Steep Slope"
you can examine everything and still miss meaning
irony
What gives us pleasure in reading and why?
(not a) Presentation: Postmodern and Modern Art by Herman and Jordan
modernism: generally characterized by a deliberate break with classical and traditional forms
Postmodernism: conscious departure of modernism characterized by rejection of ideology and theory
Dada: political modernist art movement responding to WWI
rejected logic and rationality and embraced nonsense
Dada artist and work
Duchamp--originally a cubist
preferred conceptual art to retinal art
readymades: regular objects labeled as art
The Fountain (a urinal) for example
pop art and Warhol are PoMo descendants of this
Duchamp admired Warhol
Hanna Hoch: German artist, political, focused on collage
nazi censorship stopped her
photomontage: collage of photos of everyday objects
feminist dadaism
PoMo pieces like Retroactive I and Beyond the Pleasure Principle Piece were similar to her work
assemblage: like photomontage except done with physical objects
literary equivalent was cut ups
Surrealism: emphasis on the unconscious and dreams in unlocking the imagination
motifs of nature imagery
rejection of realism and rationalism
influenced the 50s beats
Surrealist Artists and works
Magritte
painting called "The Lovers" where their faces are covered by white cloth
consciousness separate from what we see
many figures in his art as well as nature
idea of the human head
Oppenheim
some concepts of the feminine domestic
objectification of women
PoMo post-surrealist
lowbrow (pop surrealism): opposition to the idea of high art
ex. Hot Rod Race
cartoonish characters
merging of pop culture and surrealism
Difference between Mo art and PoMo art is difficult to define, but it lies in how we view the art
Idea that modernism was killed by capitalism and all that's left is capitalism
PoMo is anti-capitalist and anti consumerism
March 10 – Marilynne Robinson’s Pilgrim Quest
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Picador, 2004 [1980])
Suggested Reading:
Beauty and the Beast, Beaumont Version
Bluebeard, Perrault Version
Class Notes:
First online class
Carter was a British journalist and fiction writer
fascinated with the objectification of women in society
Worked in the 70s mainly
Took Marquis de Sade's works seriously
wrote about why they ported for women
She used her literary award money to get divorced
Moved to Japan
wrote this book shortly after returning from Japan
The language is more lush, romantic, realist, etc.
Why is it in this class then?
it's an excellent example of pastiche
fable, fantasy, gothic
gothic is dark, like Frankenstein, for example. It fits into the world of romanticism
Empires, ghostly castles, threatened maidens, sexual elements, murder, etc.
She was influenced by Edgar Alan Poe who also used pastiche somewhat
Fairy tales were only put into written format in the 19th and 18th centuries
Beauty and the Beast was published slightly before the French Revolution
Story goes back to Cupid and Psyche
Also a fair amount of surrealism
ex. The tiger's Bride
the valet, the mechanical servant, the horses in the dining room
Her intention was not to do "versions" or "adult fairy tales"
she wanted to find the "latent content" of the stories
Freudian idea of latent v manifest where manifest is the literal dream and latent is the dream's meaning
Stories with a fairy tale depth that bring it into a contemporary setting
latent sex brought into the manifest world
sexual underside of fairy tales are much more common now
These were early versions of the analysis of this
Fairy tales show men's power and women's virginity--> power of men over women
Best shown in "The Bloody Chamber"
surrealist element in blood that can't be washed off as well
Universal present of sex and sexual elements to these stories
Commodification of women
ex. In "The Tiger's Bride" she's gambled away
two functions of her work
analysis to bring out latent content
corrective view to make the woman's role different
Tiger's Bride
she belongs to her father and then to the Tiger man
she transforms as well
she refuses to be a prostitute
why does she refuse his proposal
she has nothing to gain from going back to her father
what she's after is liberation
she isn't willing to be treated like a thing
she wants to be deposited at a church for several reasons
that's where you leave an orphan child
she is also a ravaged woman
Responds to his proposal to remind him of what their transaction really is
Trompe l'oeil: paintings that give the illusion of depth
tricking the eye
The horse is munching on painted leaves
She says that as a woman she is like the beasts in the eyes of men--without a soul
male-centric universe where women have no souls
The fall of humanity is a gynophobic story
Why does she change in the end?
she finally comes into herself by becoming a tiger
How does she go from being fake to real?
she gets agency and decides to start
the tiger for is also very beautiful
The Bloody Chamber
Bluebeard story is focused on a woman's curiosity as tawdry
Why does she retain the mark?
she is irreparably changed
otherness and the stain of losing her virginity
Many fairy tales are about metamorphosis
Key metamorphosis for women historically was the loss of virginity
March 12 – Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Picador, 2004 [1980])
Suggested Reading/Viewing/Listening:
Lindsey Ellies Monster Boyfriend video
Album with the Erlkonig (ninth track)
Goethe poem and an English translation:
Class Notes:
Pastiche and recasting of fairy tales to bring out the latent content
recast the roles of women in the fairy tales
pioneered the concept of looking at traditional texts and retelling them
What's her method?
not quite parody, but comes close to it in a serious manner
"The Bloody Chamber"
example of a feminist retelling
some versions of Bluebeard have the brothers save her
much more nuanced to be in first person
we see more of the character's interior
we see that she has doubt and isn't passively accepting everything
she doesn't love him
Exposition on the mother is done without feeling like exposition
She marries him for certain things, but not for love
she seeks independence
he's wealthy
she senses in herself a "corruption that took [her' breath away"
she's intrigued by the idea of sexuality
by looking in the mirror she sees herself through his eyes
She's finally seeing herself as desirable
she compares herself to the past wives, all of whom were famed beauties
The power of sex suffuses this book
women can have sex and enjoy it
Potentiality for corruption is a potentiality for her own power
he's attracted by her virginity/purity
Shows women understanding the power of their sexuality
Phone after sex scene feels very anachronistic
Mother saves her with late-husband's gun
symbol of what's left of her husband
The subtext of the fairy tale is that you can learn to love a much older man
sent a message to young, aristocratic girls who were being given to older men by their families
The Company of Wolves
The girl gets naked and seduces the wolf
"The blizzard died down"--> jump cut
they had sex
Through her sexuality, she saves herself
sex seems to subdue him
it's not just a transaction, it's of her own volition, she chooses to sleep with him
she saves herself and transforms him into something more presentable and domesticated
Virginity makes characters fearless; don't know how to be afraid
The Lady of the House of Love
fearless virgin man
he sucks her blood and turns her human, which kills her
The Erl-King
original is of a father taking home is son through the forest, but the son sees the Erl King who is trying to get him
the son dies in the end
In this version, the girl strangles him to death
Fair amount of evocative language that doesn't really make sense
All of these stories have a lot of eyes
Puss in Boots
How does this fit in with the other stories?
Less interiority; more absurd characters
No pull toward modernity
extra bawdy version of the original
Premise doesn't allow for seriousness
primarily focused on the male perspective
contrast of weeping romanticism and practicality
the cad does everything and the man does nothing
puss is the one running the operation
Carter raises many questions about eroticism and romanticism
Many myths punish women for their curiosity
All these stories have some sort of bloody chamber
decoration is gothic but mentality is contemporary
March 17 – Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Picador, 2004 [1980])
Class Notes:
The Bloody Chamber Cont.
The Lady of the House of Love
female vampires were not very common in 1979
especially facing the male virgin
they're both virgins
Does she have more agency and power?
she has uncontrollable desires and urges
there's a kind of ambivalence
she has to obey her ancestors and caretaker and she's dependent on the tarot cards
Latent content of the fairytale
she can't love, but she wants to
The house is decayed and degraded
weather has gotten into the house
What allows him to survive?
we are told that it's his innocence
he's a hero of the story and he's also a hero in going to France
She cries because she doesn't know how to do anything but kill
with the cards, she sees that she can have something other than killing, but she doesn't know how to get it
He doesn't really know what he is the hero
He kills the last vampire
WWI kills off the old world--modernity turned into blood and violence facilitated by modern technology
her death is connected to the end of Europe
She's ambivalent, but she finally sort of makes a decision in the end
Pay attention to the writing in these stories
It's a very gothic story
The Company of Wolves
She uses her virginity to triumph
The most famous of the stories
She takes off and burns her cloak, laughs at the wolf, and then sleeps with him
Why does she laugh at him?
she realizes her power and ceases to be afraid
She realizes herself as a subject and not an object
extremely old metaphor of the taming of the savage beast by a woman
Realization of female power
Why does she throw the cloak into the fire?
she's laughing at the idea of being kept from her power
Housekeeping
seems less PoMo than many other books
Somewhat resistant text
many dualities
"The surface on which we stand is not fixed but rather sliding"--Emerson
transcendental pastiche
Is it PoMo or not?
some think it's extremely PoMo and others think it's at heart Modernist
an enormous part of this book is its imagery
won many awards
a lot of religious imagery
biblical echoing like Cormac McCarthy
March 19 – Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Picador, 2004 [1980])
Class Notes:
Debate over whether its PoMo or not
25 year gap between after this book was published where Robinson didn't publish any more novels
metaphors derived from nineteenth century transcendentalists
studied and worked with extended transcendental metaphors
collected metaphors on scraps of paper
A very meditative book
"everything that falls upon the eye is an apparition"
Beginning of the novel lies in the transcendental metaphors that she worked with
Argument for Not PoMo (courtesy of Jake Lillian)
more pastoral gothic like Faulkner
No contamination of reality with dreams
p. 116 at the beginning of the page seems to separate dreams from reality
lack of meta nature
Much more conventional in terms of what a novel is
Absence of PoMo attitude--PoMo doesn't conflate humanity as important in the way that this book does
Argument for PoMo (courtesy of Alyssa Martin)
Point where there are different POVs (first omniscient, limited, second, etc.)
Flips through time
A lot of referencing/pastiche-- particularly the bible
p.130-131, contamination of dreams and reality is so well done that you don't even realize it
The whole book uses dream logic as opposed to regular logic
Last page of the book is a hole in the narrative
book isn't plot/character driven
driven by the way in which things repeat
real life is transcendent and magical
makes PoMo even more real
p. 153 paragraph on Lot
what is going on at this point?
it's a book about mothers who have left and departed
Ruthie is speaking at least 7 years in the future
7 is a biblical number and is important in the book
lot's wife left but didn't mean to do so
Talking about a piece of art--Ruthie's making art with the snow out of her imagination
she imagines this creation
pastiche of the bible
intertextuality with the bible in the stories and the rhythm of the prose
king james bible
Makes lot into a universal mother figure to forgive
Feral children are kids who lose their mothers and return to nature
mother figure is forgiven
imagination in the world of feral children
Also a novel about loneliness and transience
Almost deems predetermined that Ruthie will join Sylvie in transience
Fixity v transience
The grandpa and the mother who died are still in the lake
they go ice skating above their bodies
notion of being drawn to the lake
grandpa's death is the first rupture and the second is the mother's suicide
no explanation is given as to why she commits suicide
Does our modern lens prevent us from grasping Robinson's point?
Are these moments tragic?
not really; they are written as simple states of being
Ruthie doesn't sugarcoat her memory of her mother whereas Lucille does
Sylvie is thought of as crazy in the town
her housekeeping is different from the settled community
she gets a deeper sense of being from it
she has a density of experience from her transience that settled people do not get
The end of the book is a liberation
Idea that if you exist in someone's memory, you exist
Idea that the past determines the present
March 24, 26 – Spring Break (No Class: Read Catch-22)
March 30 – Slapstick of Total War: Heller’s World
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (Simon & Schuster, 2011 [1961])
Class Notes:
Housekeeping
p. 77
Sylvie's sick not for Ruthie and Lucille is very funny
She doesn't care about Lucille and Ruthie missing school
The girls decide not to turn in the letter
The letter shows that Sylvie doesn't have a lot of respect for the institution of school
does the note ridicule notes or Sylvie's parenting
She takes Ruthie away from the fallen middle class
they've always been afraid that Sylvie will leave or that she will be taken away from them
Lucille breaks and chooses the middle class life
Ruthie becomes a transient, but it's not viewed as a tragedy; it's more of a liberation
Ruthie doesn't regard her departure with Sylvie as something tragic
p. 168
one of the important metaphors of the novel
Why do they burn the house in the end?
The lake, house, and bridge are primal elements in the construction of the story
the bridge kills the grandfather, the mother, and supposedly Ruthie and Sylvie
it's really the beginning of Ruthie's life
Idea that our imaginations alter what's real
Lucille is in the house seeing the ghosts of the departed who are not really departed
then it's an image of her in Boston seeing no ghosts but putting oyster crackers in her bag and breathing her initials onto the window
The constant negatives are trying to describe what's not there
Sylvie and Ruthie have no idea where Lucille is and she doesn't know where they are
People are composed of different abstractions
The book's descriptions deal with the mystery of perception
Sylvie likes solitude, the dark, and gazing at things
Constant image of inside v outside with glass and light
Catch-22
Originally Catch-18, but it had to be changed
enormously popular
Heller became a huge literary star
Published in 1961 and written in the 50s
highly influential of later novels
Brings absurdity of WWII to the mix of the 60s
absurdity, existentialism, sane man in a sea of craziness
Heller was a bombardier in the war
Flew 60 missions
stated that he never had a bad officer
reminds us that the book is in many ways more about the 50s than the war
manic energy, bureaucratic absurdity, contradictions, paradox
This book looks forward
Many aspects of the 50s are present
loyalty oaths and CID men (like McCarthyism)
Henry Fonda
Globalization
references
obsession with publicity
self-service and officers--permanent military industrial complex
suburban existence
What is Catch-22? What does it represent?
identity and bureaucracy
uncertainty in identity
bureaucratic dominance
absurdity and satire become magical realism
Yossarian prefigures a number of other sane characters in a crazy world
also a Christ figure
April 2 – Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (Simon & Schuster, 2011 [1961])
Class Notes:
Paradox is the driving force of the book
catch-22 is the central paradox
catch 22 takes us to the conclusion that war is crazy
people trying to kill people they don't know is crazy until everybody is doing it
This book was attached for being unpatriotic
50s sentiment of societal conformity is challenged
this "prosperity" covering a lot of really horrible things
Written at the height of the Cold War
absurdism, existentialism, attitudes toward god
absurdity is key
it's a text about absurdity and the way paradox spreads everywhere
It's very inventive technically
moves a lot through time
character's names are often used as transitions
Snowden's death is referred to again and again
it's the closes the book comes to a climactic moment
The book is organized around characters who are almost epithets
What is the central conflict of the book?
Yossarian's recognition of the possibility that he could be killed clashing with Cathcart's ambition
Snowden's secret is a revelatory moment close to epiphany
This is what leads to Yossarian's challenge of bureaucracy
Yossarian fights to save his life and for justice
it's the reveal
When he's walking through Rome, the tone is very different and it's one of the only long descriptions
The book came out before the forefront of Vietnam, but it became immensely popular against the backdrop of Vietnam
Some characters seem unaware they can really die
Yossarian is a very influential character
important trope of sane one among crazies in literature of the 50s and 60s
Christ figure
When he walks backward and people pop out of the bushes, there is a sense that he is carrying all their weight
He can't take the deal to go home because he would become part of the problem
Orr is the one who totally fools Yossarian
he triumphs in the end
One of the derivations of magical realism is satire
Orr is a revelatory figure that allows the end to happen
he leads Yossarian to decide to run
Nately's whore attacks Yossarian because she has no one else to blame
Yossarian and Nately's whore are similar in that they're both determined and will not be dissuaded
She never even liked Nately until the end
Many descriptions are cartoonish
Black humor, caricature, realistic descriptions
Postmodernism in the Present by Kayla and Ankita
April 7 – Persistence of Airborne Toxic Events: DeLillo’s Prophesy
Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin, 2016 [1985])
Class Notes:
parody of the nuclear family
the kids aren't fully related
the kids are also more socialized than their parents
Consumerist culture
The book is somewhat prophetic in what future dynamics will be like
There are parallels between Gladney and Yossarian, but they're in different worlds
consumer culture has taken over everyday life
Murray likens the grocery store to a temple
palaces of consumption
They're surrounded by consumerism with television and stores
Steffie talks about the Toyota Celica in her sleep
everything has become permeated by TV
see Baudrillard and Barthes
consumer culture and the language of signs
DeLillo had a job where he wrote advertising promotions
A lot of humor about death focused on the Postmodern family as a sort of tribe
the children are connected to all parts of the world through their mothers
their mothers, and Jack, are all connected to intelligence services
Estrangement of daily life that we take for granted
There's a search for meaning in a post-god world through consumerism and TV
meant to protect us from the coming of death in the way that religion does
Consumerist secular world where consumerism doesn't protect you from death in the way that religion does
This book is also a pastiche
satire, detective, family, surrealism, dystopian, etc.
neo-pastiche noir at the end where Jack plans to shoot Mink
Murray is like a Mephistopheles character who leads jack to talk about death
there's an almost bildungsroman spiritual search
Wilder is the only character not afraid of death or confronted by consumerism
he doesn't speak in pre-formed phrases from the TV
when he cries, it's not about death
Secularism, fear of nuclear war, fear of an airborne toxic event
This book came out 2 months before the Union Carbide disaster where toxic gas in India emitted during the night killed 2,500 people
Murray says that Tibetan's see death as the end of attachment
explains his view of consumerism and how grocery stores function like the place of recharging
Supermarkets are also where they get tabloids
Incomprehensibility of contemporary life
The airborne toxic event has to do with how contemporary science and technology rule our lives even though we don't understand them
Heinrich has an underlying skepticism of science and technology
they're supposed to be rational but become a threat we can't comprehend
General contempt toward religion
Television and technology are motors of consumerism
Heinrich makes the point that we think we're so advanced, but technology is as elusive to us as god
Technology is an unclear realm, and yet everything is centered around it
it's as ubiquitous as the great beyond
This novel depicts a blended, post-nuclear family
defamiliarizes the familiar
ex. the family going to a drive in and eating chicken
ostrene: Russian word for estrangement
DeLillo takes the world we take for granted and shows how weird it is
April 9 – Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin, 2016 [1985])
Suggested Reading:
The Art of Fiction, Joseph Heller, Paris review
Class Notes:
No final and deadline for paper has been moved to April 21st
Postmodernism traits
pastiche, irony, self-reflexivity, parody, cartoonishness, technique experimentation, satire, surfaces, depthless characters, simulacra, images produced by society, popular culture, consumerism, politics
Hitler was an enormous public phenomenon
Gladney is obsessed with German and is hung up on technology
Many aspects of Modernism predicted Postmodernism
periodism can't really be done with perfect accuracy
Deja vu here is a symptom of the phenomenon
Gladney does everything to deny that Steffie may actually be having signs of disease
Gladney is a professor of Hitler studies and created the department
part of the pastiche is the academic novel
Why does Hitler play such a large role in the book?
in popular culture, there is a sort of cast of characters
Hitler is a constant in popular culture
Gladney also has a fascination with authority, and Hitler epitomizes this
Gladney depends on Hitler
continuation of the satire of academia
Same thing when Murray tries to make an Elvis department
Idea of the consumption of disaster
There's an omnipresence of fascism
Hitler was a historian's dream in that he enacted the stuff of nightmares
Murray and Gladney talking about Hitler and Elvis's mother
Gladney is trying to help Murray get the Elvis department and it turns into an academic duel
a very absurd scene
they're both pop-culture figures with charisma
In talking about Hitler, Gladney creates his own crowd
Presentation: Metafiction and Postmodernism by Chenxin and Di
metafiction
first used by William H. Gass to mean fiction about fiction
novels and stories that draw attention to their compositional features
Fiction about fiction and stories about stories are not quite the same
Metafiction is an important aspect of PoMo, but it can be traced back to older literature
Characteristics of Metafiction
narrator addresses reader directly
narrator comments on the story he/she is writing (self reflexivity)
narrator explains the process of creating the story/characters
narrator reveals the artificiality or fictionality of a text
The narrator presents the paradox between fiction and reality
Metafiction in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
reveals the essence of the novel
addresses the readers directly
reveals the artificiality of the novel
Sterne and Diderot were some of the first to use metafiction and they influenced Calvino
Appeal of play-freedom from rituals and forms
Novel as an essayistic endeavor that views 19th century realism as a dead end path for literature
PoMo/metafiction hearkens back to much older fiction
April 14 – Unburying History: Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Vintage, 2004 [1987])
Class Notes:
White Noise
DeLillo is almost entirely oriented in the present
the past exists through the wives and Hitler, but even Hitler is a very present figure
relentless interrogation of the present
Beloved is obsessed with history and how to bear the burden of memory
the books are complementary in that they don't overlap
Recurring theme of secret patterns in our lives and lonely men in rooms
The dark side of consumerism
DeLillo stated that his work does not offer comfort to readers
Heinrich is the voice of dark reason
DeLillo says that more comforting fiction doesn't show that society hasn't changed much from the past
DeLillo's work is driven by the language that records life
Great sensitivity to spectacles in this book
Consonance is in many of his sentences
Fascination with the spectacle of violence
Question whether we should take Murray's words seriously or not
Idea of contemporary violence as a sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfillment
In a world without god, people think that consumerism promises happiness, fulfillment, and meaning
If one can't find this meaning, it produces frustration and loneliness, thus the solitary man in a room
Consumerism has made us into spectators of violence as people who demand titillation, but it doesn't satisfy
Why do people try to acquire meaning through violence?
When Jack shoots the man, there's a sort of faux climax
the nurses afterward are completely faithless
DeLillo's prose is a lot about lists and rhythm
Beloved
elements of magical realism
present is 1873 Cincinnati
around where Morrison grew up
Morrison was influenced by Faulkner and Woolf
She was an editor at Random House for many years
Beloved is based on/inspired by a true story
a mother killed her child
Presentation: Simulacra and the Hyperreal, by Sharece and Randall
Simulation and representation
representation: refers to or is exchanged for the real
simulation: refers to exchange for itself
simulation absorbs representation in the "phases of the image"
Successive Phases of the Image
image functions as a reflection of a basic reality
then the image is considered to be masking and preventing basic reality
Marks the absence of reality
Bears no resemblance to reality
Hyperreality: when what is real and fictional blend together so there is no distinction between where one ends and the other begins
commodities are transformed in the hyperreal
Ex. of simulacra
Borges's story where they try to make a map as accurate as possible
Scientific progress/positivism is a metanarrative of modernity
PoMo throws this perspective after nuclear warfare
Critique of how scientific models supersede phenomena
skepticism of science
In White Noise the most photographed barn becomes a spectacle and thus an instance of simulacra
There's an aspect of simulacra that is communal
April 16 – Toni Morrison, Beloved (Vintage, 2004 [1987])
Suggested Reading:
Wikipedia Article on Margaret Garner
Songs of Strange Fruit, by Billie Holiday
Class Notes:
third person omniscient, some first person, stream of consciousness
influence of Joyce, Faulkner, and Woolf who were all huge modernists
There's an elusiveness to the text
The Bible is a very looming text throughout the book
Lot's wife
resurrection
4 horsemen of the apocalypse
The word 'beloved' itself
The party that Baby Suggs gives with the berries and pies--out of the gospel
Symbolic structure of the novel with several large symbols
the Ohio river dividing the lands between freedom and slavery is like the River Jordan
also about the passage from life to death
hangs over us as a master symbol
Morrison followed a lot of aspects of the Margaret Garner story that inspired Beloved
Other symbols:
the tree on Sethe's back
Tobacco tin replacing Paul D's heart
Tobacco tins used to be a classic thing that you used as a container for old stuff once the tobacco was finished
He can't live in any forward looking way without putting away his past
Morrison thought this book would be less popular because it's about something no one wants to remember
a novel very much about coping with the past
deals with a social reality that the characters feel as a burden and an obstruction, which is reflected nationally
Morrison is writing in the 80s where there's a conservative revolution
Reagan started his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the freedom riders were killed trying to register voters
The book had a present-day vitality that was very important
it was very controversial--it won the Pulitzer in the wake of its loss of the National Book Award which many claimed was racist
Parallel of bringing back memories and the difficulty of living with that memory
Names are important
Baby Suggs, Sethe, Paul D, Stamp Paid
The significance of their names give the book a historical and mythical richness
Book is dedicated to "60 million and more"; the number of slaves taken from Africa
some people thought this was showing up the Holocaust
The house (124) emanates meaning
First sentence of each section help to structure the book
Part 1: "124 was spiteful"
she has four kids but the third is dead so the three isn't in the house number
three is a number with religions significance as well (ex. holy trinity)
Beloved is reborn in the water
the fact that Beloved was already crawling at such a young age suggested that she was gift
Sweet Home also looms over the story
124 originally belonged to white people (abolitionists) who now rented it to Sethe
they're not trying to repress one bad experience but an entire life of pain
Sethe doesn't regret killing Beloved because she was trying to save her from a fate worse than death
her attitude is part of the reason people avoid her
In the original case of Margaret Garner, there was a debate over which she should be tried for murder or destruction of property
there were 28 days of freedom between when Sethe arrived at 124 and when the 4 horseman arrived
Paul D reminds Sethe that she has 2 feet, not four
reminds her that she's not an animal
To Sethe, she became a higher moral being by protecting her child
This is kind of a neo-slave narrative
Presentation: Postmodern Narrative and Mathematics, by Nathan and Abhishek
Why do people study math?
it produces definitive truth
ABC Conjecture: a famous unsolved problem in number theory relating + and x
In 2012 Shinichi Mochizuki published 600 pages of math claiming to have solved it
used many new techniques
an international team was organized to see if his work was true or not
In 2018, Sholze and Stix visited Mochizuki (who refused to leave Japan)
they said there was a gap in Mochizuki's proof (which he of course denied)
Mochizuki decided to publish it in the journal for which he was editor-in-chief
Most mathematicians don't believe the proof, but a cult group of Mochizuki's follower do
2 papers in the Annals of Mathematics prove contradictory things
neither has been retracted
One is more believed but very few people know which it is
Basic meta-narrative about scientific inquiry is deconstructed
instead of truth, we no meander among insubstantial claims
Scientific knowledge is imagined to progress constantly
but is this true if we don't have all the facts?
Math is loved for its aestheticization of the truth
Mochizuki's paper is a simulacrum of a proof
the idea and aesthetics of a proof without a definitive truth
These become subjective ideas of truth
Is this a postmodern era of mathematics?
April 21 – Dystopia or Paranoia? Markson’s Cracked Mirror
David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Dalkey, 2006 [1988])
Class Notes:
Beloved
influence of Faulkner and Woolf
the way the past weights on the present
2 great modernists fascinated by memory and time
Can a nation escape what it's done to itself?
It's left to us to sort out what this ghost actually is
When Beloved first arrives, the POV changes to third person omniscient
when she walks out of the water it's a mythological birth
very material prose to describe a very immaterial thing
It's a well-known truism that ghosts don't have lines on their hands
also reinforces how new she is
With the rebirth of Beloved, it's almost as if Sethe's water breaks again
there's a rebirth occurring
There's an attempt to leaver certain things open to different interpretations
an attempt to deny the supernatural-ness
maintains ambiguity
Beloved shows up after the carnival
right when Sethe seems to have found a new beginning
She shows up and reminds them of the transgressions of the past
The novel deals with not only women but also stolen masculinity
Presentation: it's postmodernism, by Jake
Pynchon, Paranoia, and Pomo'merica
Pynchon was born in 1932 in Glen Cove, NY
Worked construction with his dad
first published in his high school newspaper where he was eventually banned
Brief stint in the navy
his file burned in a fire
He's a known recluse
very few photos or interviews with him
gave his first ever interview earlier this year
Won the national book award in 1974 for Gravity's Rainbow
sent a comedian to accept the award in his place
there was also a mysterious streaker during the awarding
Married Melanie Jackson in the early 90s
names their son Jackson Pynchon-Jackson
Wrote letters to tabloids under the alias Wanda Tinasky
Lived in houses owned by his characters
His first novel, V, was published in 1963
won the Faulkner award
He hated The Crying of Lot 49
The crux of paranoia is "interpretive distress"
Uses the Freudian definition of paranoia that has to do with sexuality
Finding order in disorder
"reflex of seeking other orders behind the invisible" --Pynchon
universalizing paranoia
opposition by doubling
In Pynchon's work, there are many complex sentences that wrap around many plotlines before returning to the present
Pynchon's characters thrive on invisible paranoia
How did we get to PoMo America?
American idealism died in the 60s
April 23 – David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Dalkey, 2006 [1988])
Class Notes:
Beloved
Beloved can be read as a ghost story
Denver arguably is the survivor of this novel
Sethe ends up sick and bed-ridden
Denver is isolated and lonely, but she's able to leave the house and become a functioning person as a result of Beloved's arrival
You can't escape the past except by moving through it
Sethe has her lie sucked out of her by the past
Denver is able to transcend it
Beloved is irreducible
Paul D is the one who impregnates Beloved
Paul D initially tells Sethe that he wants her pregnant, but Beloved is the one who gets pregnant (and then disappears)
Beloved takes the sins of slavery upon herself
Paul D sort of ends up with Sethe, but Sethe's end is very ambiguous
Presentation: Postmodern Architecture, by Colton and Aidan
Modernist architecture started in the 1910s
form follows function
stylistically reserved, austere
Bauhaus
1920s-30s, Bauhaus was a German art school that spearheaded the modernist architecture movement
promoted minimalist style
PoMo architect Robert Venturi said "less is bore"
PoMo architecture reacts against the austerity of modernists
playful and attention seeking
buildings are works of art
Robert Venture was a pioneer of PoMo architecture
started working under 2 prominent modernists until 1958 when he started teaching at Yale
Guild House (1960) was the first prominent PoMo building
coined phrase" decorated shed" while leading students in research on the Las Vegas strip
Charles Moore
was an architecture professor at UC Berkeley
loud color combination
non-traditional materials
Frank Gehry
abstract geometric shapes made up of chrome panels
buildings that seem implausible
Often times those who praise architecture ignore the efforts of those who physically put the piece together
April 28 – David Markson, Wittgenstien’s Mistress (Dalkey, 2006[1988]
Class Notes:
one character
monologue style
written sentence to sentence
pace is often compared to Wittgenstein's first novel
Wittgenstien worked with Bertrand Russell and Whitehead
Misleading use of language
constant corrections about what language says and doesn't say
Dystopian novel
end of the world, or so we think
Some people interpret the novel as being about loneliness and madness
foreground of the present
written in real time
no sense of linearity
jumping around from point to point
All the other characters are historical/cultural figures
obsession with ancient Greek culture
Presentation: Theme Parks and Post Modernism by Catherine and Melanie
PoMo conditions:
euphoria and intensities
specificity
orientation and disorientation
pastiche
depthlessness of consumer culture
hyperreality
1884--first roller coaster is built in the US (Coney Island)
1955--opening of Disneyland
Feeling of euphoria on a roller coaster
Simulation of risk, danger, and pleasure
Parks now compete to have roller coasters that will attract the most people
Baudrillard explained that Disneyland is a major example of simulacrum
Pastiche of themed sectors in theme parks
allows guests to connect and feel like they're somewhere else
PoMo aspects of theme parks that disorient the senses
forced perspective
smellitizers
sounds according to land
Many of the attractions are connected to films
Culinary tourism with themed food
Vegas is also PoMo (a theme park for adults)
signs can be read from a distance in a far
casinos have no light or sense of time
April 30 – David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Dalkey, 2006 [1988])
Class Notes:
Confusion and ambiguity in language
theoretically a novel about only one person
She introduces a bunch of characters who are cultural and historical figures
Stories that occur over and over again
Bricolage: physical equivalent to pastiche
Is there a plot?
There is a very present tense that's in real time of her writing
present day things and the present of her mind going back in time
Is she crazy or really the only person left?
Her thoughts are all that she has left
she is all that is the case
She's the only case of consciousness left over
This is a book about skepticism
Her trauma may come from the deterioration of her family
Her child died of an illness and wasn't taken to the hospital soon enough
She has a lover too during her marriage
She has a lot of guilt about this and her son's death
she even mixes up all their names
Presentation: The Sokal Affair and Postmodernism: By EJ and Alex
Art is a constantly changing and reactive phenomenon
PoMo reacts against modernism
initially controversial, but then became the dominant ideology
Science Wars
conservatives disliked PoMo
thought it was too obsessed with relativism and ambiguity
Scientists were irritated at humanities scholars
Social Text
leftist academia journal at Duke University
summed up leftist academia
Alan Sokal--NYU Physics professor
said he was troubled by the decline of standards of intellectual rigor
experimented: would they publish a nonsensical article if it flattered ideological perceptions?
"physical reality is just a social construct"
Social Text published Sokal's piece, but later claimed that they thought it was suspicious when the truth came out
even exhibited cautious sympathy with Sokal
Connection with White Noise
moral relativism to Hitler studies
Heinrich is an excellent example of Sokal's parody
Parody of academia is itself PoMo
Sokal Affair shows a potential problem with PoMo
also a lack of standards in academia
Po-PoMo
Barthelme predicted the death PoMo
PoMo's subversive force has served its purpose and is no longer responsive to present cultural shifts
Irony is the main tyrannical force of PoMo
We see Cynicism in The Crying of Lot 49, Housekeeping, White Noise, Catch-22, etc.
Cynicism presents an opposing viewpoint of accepted ideals, but through overexposure--causes pessimism
Self-reflexivity dismantles classic ideas of narrative without expanding on the idea of the self
not a depiction of a person's identity
Will we return to sincerity as a reaction against PoMo?
May 5 – Final Class Wrap Up
Suggested Reading:
"Modernism, Postmodernism and Metamodernism: A Critique"
May [Date TBD] – Final Examination (Short Answers)
Further Reading
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
William Gaddis, The Recognitions
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
Thomas Pynchon, V.
Joseph Heller, Something Happened
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Donald Barthelme, Forty Stories
John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse
Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone’s Death, The Unnamable
John Barth, The Floating Opera
Further Viewing
Breathless
Adaptation
Donnie Darko
Inside John Malkovich
The Last Seduction
Red Rock West
Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind
Blade Runner
Pulp Fiction
Blue Velvet
Memento
Waltz With Bashir
sex, lies and videotape
Chinatown
Shampoo
Act of Killing
Battle of Algiers
Her
Chungking Express
Jackie Brown