Charlie Bertsch's English 596L, Spring 2004

Local Reader Response

Here's what Amanda G, who missed last week's class, had to say about her experience of reading Alamanac of the Dead. It seemed like a good springboard for tomorrow's class discussion (today's, actually):

Having missed the first class, I feel as if some of my observations might be a bit passé, but this book really struck a chord with me--I absolutely loved it. One thing that the book challenged for me, was the way in which we often allow ourselves to imagine the space of the story, or the setting, and how in thisbook, the setting was far from imaginary. How do we feel differently about stories if they are set in our own hometown? Do they seem more real? How does fiction become metafictional, even, when one aspect is no longer fictitious toyou as a reader? Clearly many stories are set in real places, despite the fact that they do not seem real to us. They might be far away, foreign lands which seem as mystical and unreal as a fairy tale land. In previous weeks, I have wondered quite extensively about our investment in stories we perceive to be "true," rather than those we think are purely fictional--I wonder, then, how a setting we perceive to be more "real" for fictional characters might change the stakes in a story like this one.

For us, when Seese comes to Tucson, it feels very different to us than it might to other readers for whom the alien desert landscape might seem an incomprehensible exile. For us it might be more soothing. What effect does personal investment have upon our interpretation of narrative? Often times, people of color work on race studies and women work on gender studies and homosexuals work on queer theory--what is it that is so comforting about dissecting and analyzing our own lifestyles? So I wonder if we are somewhat more invested in a book like this one because it connects us to things we know, like the land, Hotel Congress, Miracle Mile, Professor X's house, whatever...or if there's something else.

Part of the reason why I see our discussion of Silko's novel as the "center" of the course is that it has precisely this power of proximity. How would we feel about 100 Years of Solitude if our ancestors were from Colombia or about Artificial Respiration if we had lived through the darkness of the mid-1970s in Argentina?

Tomorrow

My regular computer is out of commission and I wasn't able to post over the weekend. But I just wanted to remind you that we are finishing our discussion of Almanac of the Dead tomorrow, with Adrienne's held-over presentation and then a general discussion of the book as a whole. We will discuss Dream Jungle next week.

This Week

I'm assuming that you all have managed to do the readings for this week. If anyone has a response ready early, please send it my way. I think I'm going to quote from some responses on the weblog this week. That might be one way of getting the comments rolling again.

Reading for Next Week

I want us to have a broader perspective on issues of historical representation as we prepare to discuss Alamanac of the Dead and continue processing Libra, Artificial Respiration, Beloved, and 100 Years of Solitude.

Two of the links I've just added take you to an issue of a journal. You can decide which articles within those issues merit your close attention or perhaps track down other articles in different issues of those journals. I'd like you to be generally familiar with both the issues I've linked to and to have thought about what the journals in question seem to be striving for.

The other two articles are quite different from each other, both in subject matter and disciplinary perspective. As you read them, try to keep mental, paper, or electronic notes on methodological questions that strike you as significant, as well as the usual matters of interest such as "postmodernism" and "historiography."

Also, if you can find it in your heart to post responses to the issues or individual articles, I will be most grateful.

Twenieth Century Literature

You may recall that one of your assignments for the course was going to be responding to a real Call for Papers. I'm going to be providing some links on the weblog that will direct you to possible sources. In the meantime, however, I'd like you to review the program for the conference I'm presently attending.

Twentieth Century Literature strikes me as an excellent conference for graduate students. There are enough panels -- 17 sessions per time slot this year -- to ensure a diversity of choices, but the atmosphere remains relaxed and collegial. I had the impression that conference organizers and moderators went out of their way to level the playing field for graduate students.

Like any large conference, the papers themselves range widely in quality. I saw a few excellent papers, many good ones, and some that failed to achieve the presenter's aims.

As a way of recharging our discussions here in cyberspace -- thanks, Megan, for the impetus -- I'd like you to print out and study the program for the conference, with a special eye -- naturally -- for the word "postmodern."

You will find it here:

20th Century Literature -- Conference Program -- 2004

Paper Topic Extension

Since we're running behind a bit after the two weeks of attending readings, I'm deferring the paper topic for one week. Basically, the idea is for you to look ahead in the course -- scanning through the reading material, reflecting on the possible connections between different books -- and come up with a broad idea for a topic. I'm not expecting perfection here, just a general direction that you wish to head in. But you have an extra week in which to pull something together now.

Going to Things

I'll say this again, perhaps more than once, but am doing it here, now for the record. Part of the responsibility that comes with being a graduate student includes participating in the intellectual life of your Department, even when you're busy, tired, or sure that the matter at hand does not concern you. It's part of being a "team player." More than that thought, it's a part of your intellectual development.

Taken as a group -- I know, some of you aren't graduate students yet, but it doesn't hurt to get a head start -- the students in this class are much more likely to attend events in the English Department than the majority of their classmates. I see many of you at the events I attend. And your presence is duly, delightedly noted.

My comments here serve then, not as a chastisement, but as an encouragement to keep on keeping on. It also wouldn't be amiss for you to do a little proselytizing of your own on this score. Pick an event. Tell your fellow graduate students about it. Use a little peer pressure to get them to accompany you. It's always eaisier to rationalize setting aside time for an event when the promise of conversation with friends and those who may become friends -- or even more than friends -- awaits at the event's conclusion.

Part of the reason why I decided to make us all attend those back-to-back poetry readings, pleasantly disruptive as the experience was, was that I wanted to give those of you not otherwise inclined to attend them of the intellectual and social benefits they bring. For most of you, neither reading was directly relevant to your present academic work. But, as your responses and comments in class indicate, the experience of going, listening, reflecting, and conversing afterwards helped to broaden the scope of your thinking about literature.

Similarly, those of you who attended the lectures and/or brown-bag lunches by Viet Nguyen and Marilyn Gaul -- especially those of you who were able to attend both engagements for the same speaker -- gained insight into problems and possibilities of literary study that you might otherwise not have realized later, if at all. I know I did.

I recognize that the demands of teaching and coursework sometimes prevent you from going to events. With advance planning, though -- talking to professors, swapping classes with another graduate student for a day -- it's usually possible to free up enough time to attend several of each semester's Departmental events. There aren't that many, after all. Let your fellow students know how easy and productive it can be to free up time to that end.

Also, let me note, in closing, that there is no easier way of impressing a faculty member you are working with or wish to work with than showing up for an event and asking good questions or provoking good conversation afterwards.

No Place for Fiction

Since the first grumblings about Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia have now been voiced, I want to confess that I actually like the book. I freely acknowledge that the writing is not particularly elegant or complex, by our early twenty-first century standards, but I think that's part of the point. Ecotopia takes us back to the Utopian fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in which the need to convey details tended to overwhelm the desire to exhibit good form.

A common adjective used in criticizing that fiction, one which could apply to Ecotopia too, is "clunky." The word suggests, not only that the texts to which it is applied are like machines -- as opposed to natural creations with a life of their own, I suppose -- but that their mechanical parts are not engineered or oiled well enough to function smoothly. Of course, the idea of the deus ex machina, which long precedes the advent of modern machinery, is also contained within the metaphor invoked by "clunky." But there seems to be something specifically modern about the sound associations it conjures.

Perhaps we should shift our approach a bit and talk about the literary "device" instead of the literary "machine." Good literary breeding typically conditions people to regard literary devices unfavorably when they don't disappear into the story or imagery that they help to structure. I can imagine a critique of Beloved that would complain that the haunted house dimension to the novel remains too visible as a device for the book to really "come to life." I don't feel that way myself, but I can see the possibility for feeling that way.

With Utopian fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the device is often all-consuming. Reading it, we have a hard time paying attention to the development of character or to the turns of phrase with which the plot is ornamented, because our eyes are drawn to the massive, unwieldy device that makes the work work.

I fear that Ecotopia will produce a similar effect in many of you. With that in mind, let me propose that you leave room in your minds for the possibility that Callenbach wanted to achieve that effect, that he may, indeed, have set out to write a 1970s version -- simulacrum? -- of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Utopian fiction.

I'm adding two new links to the right. One is a Frederic Jameson essay directly relevant to the discussion of Utopian fiction, which you should read prior to next week's class on Ecotopia. The other is an interview with Frederic Jameson that gives a sense of the way he views history, specifically as it relates to thinking about theory, which often proceeds in a strangely ahistorical manner.

Haunted House

What are the advantages and disadvantages to using the haunted house genre -- let's call it a product of the mid-to-late 18th century Gothic sensibility -- as a means of depicting historical trauma? Does the compression of complex historical events into domestic space make it harder for us to get a grip on them? Does that compression win back in intensity what it loses in complexity? To what extent does the fact that the word "economy" itself derives from a domestic situation complicate our sense of a history domesticated?

Post Readings Post

I've added four new links on the right, all dealing with one or more uses of the prefix "post." For priority's sake you should read the Susan Sontag interview first and the Jeff Karem article second.

When you've read the Sontag, feel free to post your comments here. Or, if you have something longer to say, you can send me a message and I'll quote you in an entry of my own.