Historicity April 10, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Vonnegut
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Slaughterhouse Five and The Plot Against America both provided a counter to consensus thought, but for the most part the dissonance was more explicitly defined by Roth than by Vonnegut. Roth formed a narrative that took advantage of the underlying historical structures available to him from the period, which threw into sharp relief the deviations from the accepted facts that made up the core of the novel’s effect. Vonnegut avoided these historical references for the most part, until the very end of the novel. He then introduced Billy’s hospital roommate, Professor Rumfoord, who taught history at Harvard. This character articulates the consensus, impersonal perspective of the Dresden raid (and by extension, war itself), and is shocked by Billy’s reaction to his academic stance. To me, this was the anchor point within Vonnegut’s text that grounded the disruptive narrative structure in a framework that allows the reader to place the novel within the historical context and clearly see the departure from consensus within the text.
Experience-Memory-Myth April 3, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Momaday
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The excerpt from Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain seemed unique to me in the way that it blended and linked experience, history, memory, and myth to create a reflection on the author’s heritage. One of the techniques that Momaday used was to take a natural object and cast it in the light of its place in Native American, and specifically Kiowa, tradition and myth. For example, he related the Kiowa legend about the origin of Devil’s Tower and the Big Dipper, in a way reappropriating them in the symbolic and mythical tradition of his people. This was particularly of interest to me, as I have been to Devil’s Tower and am obviously familiar with the Big Dipper, but to consider those things in this mythical way was somewhat disruptive to me. Momaday also used a familiar natural phenomenon, the 1833 occurrence of the annual Leonid meteor shower, to signify a shifting in his culture from myth to history. However, his descriptions of the memories and experiences of the “historical” period are inextricably linked to myth in a way that forces the reader to consider his portrayal of the Kiowa tribe’s past and heritage in a unified way.
Carbon March 27, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Lorde
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Audre Lorde’s poem “Coal” was very interesting to me in the way that she played with the chemical relationship between coal and diamonds and transposed that dichotomy to her own existence as a black woman. The image turns on the fact that coal forms from the compression of carbon-rich remains of dead organisms, and when it is subjected to the extreme pressures deep in the earth its crystal structure realigns to form a perfectly-ordered diamond. This is freighted with meaning in the context of the poem, as it speaks to her understanding of her heritage and her perception of conflicting attitudes about her, specifically her race.
Alternate History March 20, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Roth
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The Plot Against America is a novel of alternate history, which is personally one of my favorite types of book. I always enjoy seeing the author’s speculation about the familiar events of history unfolding in dramatically different and jarring ways when certain influential events are changed. In this case, the thing that I found most striking about Roth’s depiction of 1940s America was that the events of the fictional Lindbergh administration do not actually change the results of World War II from a global perspective, only delaying Pearl Harbor by a year and V-E Day by even less. However, Roth’s novel clearly illustrates the massive impact of the events on a personal level, shown in the Roth family’s troubles, which are most likely representative of the experiences of the wider world.
Sensory Figures in Selected Poems February 27, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Plath, Sexton
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One of the most prevalent types of figure in both “Blackberrying” and “Starry Night” was sensory description. “Starry Night” was prefaced with a Vincent van Gogh quote, clearly linking the poem to the painting of the same name. This connection made it obvious why all of Sexton’s sensory description was visual imagery, because the poem was in many ways a textual representation of the visual abstraction of the painting and the author’s reaction to it. In contrast, “Blackberrying” relates an actual event, and as a result Plath employs language of all five senses to fully express her experience through the medium of the written word.
The Beat Generation February 18, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Ginsberg, Kerouac
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While reading Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg for class today, I was struck by the extent of their rejection of traditional American social conventions. The movement that grew out of their ideas and patterned itself after their writing completely denied the sensibilities and the responsibilities of the generations prior to theirs, choosing instead to explore a counterculture of sex, drugs, and Eastern mysticism. To me, the connection between this movement and the radical counterculture of the Vietnam era seemed obvious; however, I was surprised to find out that Kerouac broke with Ginsberg and rejected the hippie movement as little more than an excuse for wildness and as destructive of American culture. This caused me to wonder what exactly Kerouac’s conception of American culture entailed, because from the reading it seemed like the only positive thing he has to say about American culture is that it tolerates his countercultural behavior.
Entropy February 13, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Pynchon
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Thomas Pynchon’s short story Entropy was an interesting perspective on the trends of post-World War II American society. The juxtaposition of the chaotic party in Mulligan’s apartment with the discussion of entropy by Callisto functions as a lens through which to view the consumerist nature of the modern world. The relentless drive to acquire new things and keep up with social trends and fashions has led to an irreversible loss of individuality, replacing an ordered system of unique parts with a random jumble of identical and interchangeable subunits. Corresponding to the inevitable “heat-death” of the universe, this trend is seen as a regrettable but ultimately unavoidable consequence of the modernization of society. A key component of this modernization is communication, which is captured in the picture: a composite representing the number of cell phones discarded in the United States each day.
Flannery O’Connor February 6, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: O'Connor
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When I saw that I was going to have an interview and miss class the day we discussed Flannery O’Connor, I was immediately disappointed because she is one of my favorite authors. I have read most of her short stories, either for lit or religion classes, and the thing that has always struck me as most unique about her writing is how she uses her narrative and characters to reappropriate traditional ideas, particularly those concerning Christianity, and express her own views which often contradict the mainstream perspective. In both of the stories we read, The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Good Country People, the tension in the text stems from the disconnect between perceptions which are rooted in traditional Southern, ostensibly Christian values, and the motivations and actions of the characters that exploit the holes in these beliefs for their own advantage. O’Connor is not saying that these antagonistic characters are representative of actual Christian morality and behavior, but that the lens through which the traditional characters view the world and those around them is ultimately flawed due to their own misunderstanding of Christianity. In her stories, O’Connor makes the case that Christianity is not the passive set of rules that guides the upright behavior of “good country people”, but instead a vibrantly dynamic faith that allows a person to experience the world as it truly is and not as their misguided beliefs have led them to think.
Intersections in Ragtime January 31, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Doctorow
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One of the things that struck me most about Ragtime was the amount of connections between the characters. Although some are essential to the plot of the novel, others seem to be strewn throughout the narrative in a manner that is carefully contrived to appear random and coincidental. Doctorow uses to great effect his authorial control over the text to arrange these intersections of character threads without it feeling too heavy-handed or forced. I was particularly impressed with the repeated connections between the little boy and the little girl. Their chance meeting at the trolley stop (which ties into a whole other level of connectedness involving the grid and characters such as Coalhouse) and the boy’s recovery of the discarded silhouettes, passed through Evelyn and Younger Brother, of which he immediately gravitates to the girl’s portrait, lead up to their meeting in Part III, which results in their budding friendship and eventually them becoming siblings. Also, the pair turning out to be the inspiration for Our Gang was a particularly delightful integration of the fictional characters into the historical record, the closing scene of an entire narrative that turns on just that effect.
