Novel Experience & Expression » aletheia

Preterition

Gary Hink — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:17:15 +0000

M 23-Nov Due: Response 6 — Part I (1:55pm) Creative Prompt

— Part II: Analysis of Classmate’s Entry (due 11:59pm). Prompt

Extra Credit (optional) Analytic Response — Prompt

Response 6 Extra Credit Prompt: 500-600 words, 10 points; due M 23-Nov (11:59pm)
Review assignment criteria here

Crying of Lot 49 Narrative & Knowledge Analysis

As an “anti-detective” novel, there is less certainty at the conclusion — inductive logic does not produce “resolution,” through the proliferation of “clues.” Simultaneously, “revelation” or “discovery” of the truth does not occur, even with the narrative of “reduction” of possibilities — as dramatized in the progressive elimination of characters from Oedipa’s “social network.”

Oedipa’s failure through her reduction to binary logic and the novel’s overall absence of closure suggest another mode of thought is necessary, other than truth as aletheia (disclosure): Pynchon presents a network (or “assemblage“) of narratives, figures, possibilities, histories, logics, and….and….

Prompt

First, discuss the consequence of Pynchon’s redirecting our focus off of “what happens” at the “conclusion” onto the multiple narratives; how can we interpret the novel other than “meaningless” or incomplete (reductive/exclusionary logic)?
As illustration (support), briefly describe how some of the narratives relate or operate, with specific references (summarize concisely). Besides the “paranoid conspiracy,” consider a simple example from Abbott: the way that seemingly “supplementary” developments become “constituent” information or events for Oedipa. (This is just one Cambridge example; use any/all topics from our study of narrative this term.)

Next, and most importantly, discuss how two (or more) disparate elements or narratives resonate, through Pynchon’s poetics. What is the effect? the consequence?

Finally, (as conclusion)

describe any new insights or overall understanding of
expression, knowledge (”Truth”), modes of thought besides binary;
and/or “interface metaphor” (with?), as well as narratives functioning as interface (with?).

From this, what is one lesson or technique you’ve learned from Pynchon, for our project?

W.A.S.T.E.

Gary Hink — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:11:01 +0000

“The next story I wrote was The Crying of Lot 49,
which was marketed as a ‘novel,’ and in which I seem
to have forgotten most of what I thought I’d learned up until then.”

– Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner, 1984.

M 16-Nov Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (through Chapter 3) Pynchon Wiki: Annotations (Laura Navia & Audrey Bannon)

W 18-Nov Crying of Lot 49 (Chp. 4-5) (Anna Bernstein)

F 20-Nov Crying of Lot 49 (Chapter 6) *plus* Lot 49 Short Film (Maria Tamayo)

M 23-Nov Due: Response 6

Resp 6: Narrative Interface and Crying of Lot 49

Part I: Creative Writing Entry; 400-500 words; due M 23-Nov ( 1:55pm)

Part II: Analysis of Classmate’s Entry; ~200 words; due M 23-Nov ( 11:59pm)

Review assignment criteria below; — also remember extra credit opportunity…
note: read prompt closely — three main instructions.

Part I Prompt

Creative writing entry; structural role: put yourself in Oedipa’s position, “detective” seeking “the Truth” of…(?) (Note: can be composed in first- or third-person perspective).

Key task: express one specific affect of this experience, indirectly through vignettes with original narratives and Pynchon’s figures.

e.g. uncertainty, disorientation, “groundless,” lack of reference, hopelessness, disinheritance, disposession, lack of agency, “undocumented person,” persona non grata, in vino veritas…

* not “paranoia,” “schizophrenic,” etc. (psychiatric diagnoses)

Composition method (all required):

Compose several (3 min.) vignettes (brief narrative fragments), with each of the following three components, in the style of Pynchon — “faithful” (accurate) to each type of discourse.
(Clarification notes below / here.)

In your entry, use:

1) original narrative (fragment/s)
within Oedipa’s 1960s social network (diegetic characters, settings, “rules,” etc);
you are Oedipa, (inter-)acting within her situation in “seeking” but not “finding” truth — of?
(Choose one “target/goal,” as motivated by a question: “what is ___?”) Describe how you would proceed, as if you were Oedipa, but withhold “reaching goal” — remember, narrative has constituent and supplementary events (review notes/Abbott).

Notes below (click here)

2) historical reference (factual details, event, etc.) — specific, from Pynchon (essential to research)

Notes below (click here)

3) an “interface,” from:

myth/belief
science/reason (including history)
or your disciplinary knowledge, set within novel’s context
(N.B. Pynchon was first an engineering major at Cornell)

Exceptions:
muted post-horn; circuit-board; “Bordando el Manto Terrestre” (painting)

More notes below (click here)

Note: none of these three are “allegories” or “symbolic” of the others, and one does not “explain” other(s); rather, expression through resonance between them.
– we’re composing an “assemblage” or network of narratives and figures; result is not a homogeneous composite product…

Composition mode = Indirection:

Remember, Experience of Lethe = “secret” (Blanchot), concealed; never appears, unlike truth as “illuminated” or “unconcealed” (Aletheia).

“The philosophical genealogy of divination begins with Heraclitus declaring that the oracle at Delphi does not reveal or conceal, but intimates.” — Ulmer

Part II: Analysis of Classmate’s Entry; ~200 words; due M 23-Nov ( 11:59pm)

Choose one classmate’s entry to analyze;
ASAP, post a comment on their blog, for equal distribution (i.e. everyone’s should be read, without duplicate readings) — even if to let them know you’ll post your analysis later.

On your blog (required, so I can include as part of Response 6):

in a paragraph (~200 words), describe the affect that you intuit from your reading, and how the author expresses it; on the latter, discuss their poetics, specifically techniques and unconventional (”novel”?) discourse.
Feel free also to describe the extent to which the entry demonstrates the aesthetic apparatus of expression (or either mode of judgment, for that matter: belief/myth or reason/science; review chart).

Lêthê Dis-aster

Gary Hink — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:36:46 +0000

(Audio) CBC | BBC (original broadcasts, 16 Feb 1945)

Notes and Context for Wed 07-Oct

When all is said, what remains to be said is the disaster. Ruin of words, demise, writing, faintness faintly murmuring: what remains without remains (the fragmentary). — Blanchot (33)

“And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like Poo-tee-weet?” — Vonnegut (24)

Notes and Context for Wed 07-Oct

Context:

Paradox of “writing experience” (writing the disaster)

Greek etymologies:

word for “truth” is “alētheia” : unconcealment, disclosedness (Heidegger) // (classical intro.)

Q. what of a truth (of experience) that is not disclosed?

“catastrophe” = katastrephein {kata “to overturn” + strephein “turn”; or strophe “a turning”}
= “reversal of what is expected” (originally in drama)

Q. in what does a “turn” occur? (hint: EXP)

Blanchot: The Writing of the Disaster

“disaster” as “dis-aster”

– literally, separated from the stars (astronomy/astrology = fate)

“The disaster: break with the star, break with every form of totality…;
the disaster: prophecy which announces nothing but the refusal of the prophetic as simply an event to come, but which nonetheless opens, nonetheless discovers the patience of vigilant language.

The disaster, touch of the powerless infinite: it does not come to pass under a sidereal sky, but here—a here in excess of all presence.” (75)

→ thus, not accounting for experience of disaster by fate/destiny/fortune

Problem: Neither Belief (faith) nor Knowledge (reason/science) addresses or includes the “human element” of EXP…

“Target” (object/area of concern): experience of disaster → writing of experience?

i.e. how to write the experience of the disaster?

“The disaster, unexperienced. It is what escapes the very possibility of experience—it is the limit of writing.
This must be repeated: the disaster de-scribes.
Which does not mean that the disaster, as the force of writing, is excluded from it, is beyond the pale of writing or extratextual.” (7)

* Note Vonnegut’s foregrounding his writing of the novel, in the metafictional frame (and emphasized through other textual elements.

→ hypothesis: experience is (in/of) writing

Q. What lesson(s) to take from Vonnegut, from reading the novel?

Q. (more immediately) Vonnegut’s using disaster as figure:

if the event is the vehicle, what is the tenor (expressed element)?

Literary Definitions: Simple || Extended

Note: I am not using “Figure” to mean metaphor; if anything, closer to metonymy… I can further explain rationale and distinction later; logic simply stated: contiguity favored over substitution.

Q. hypothesis / premise:
if memory concerns truth that “manifests” (as Alèthéia),
then what of the absence or absent-truth?

note: Lêthê (Greek) = “forgetfulness” or “concealment.”
         (thus, a-lêthê = Alèthéia = unconcealed Truth.)
        Also: in Hades (mythology),
        the River and spirit/goddess “Oblivion”—opposite to Mnemosyne (Memory).

Blanchot: “Forgetfulness” — “refers us to nonhistorical forms of time, to the other of all tenses, to their eternal or eternally provisional indecision, bereft of destiny, without presence.” (85) → i.e. oblivion

Q. What is the (forgotten) experience of oblivion?
Or perhaps an oblivion-experience (the disaster). How to express this?

Additionally, note the different conceptions of time in Slaughterhouse Five…?

Simultaneity of past – present – future (at/as one moment) = Eternal Moment

Ethical implications? (beyond “illusion of free will” vs. “determinism/fatalism”)

cf.

Eternal Recurrence

ewige Wiederkunft

not literal, but “thought of perpetual recurrence” as if, not as such

Looking further ahead:

Potential discussion in next week’s blog entry:
reflection upon the “catastrophe” (turn) of experience — writing (of) experience.
(premise / hypothesis: the “turn” happens through writing experience…)