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?

“Spinoza’s ethics has nothing to do with a morality; he conceives it as an ethology, that is, as a composition of fast and slow speeds, of capacities for affecting and being affected on this plane of [Nature]” (125).

–”you do not know beforehand what good or bad you are capable of…what a body or a mind can do, in a given encounter, a given arrangement, a given combination (125).

–Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy

 
 
M 02-Nov          Ceremony     (through p.186 )            (Jessica Brousseau & Phil Cafaro)

 
W 04-Nov          Ceremony     (through end)            (Eric Roe & Jake Jacob)

 
F 06-Nov      No class (away at conference)
                     Due: Blog entry (Friday this week)
 
 

 
 
 
 

Resp 5: Myth and Experiential Narrative in Ceremony
500 words min., 10 points; due W 11-Nov (deadline TBA)
Review assignment criteria here — also remember extra credit opportunity…
 
note: read instructions closely — three main tasks/objectives.
 

“Languages are more or less thick; certain amongst them, the most social, the most mythical, present an unshakeable homogeneity..: woven with habits and repetitions, with stereotypes, obligatory final clauses and keywords, each constitutes an idiolect or more exactly a sociolect.”
 
— “the antidote of myth would be the extreme pole or rather the region—airy, light, spaced, open, uncentred, noble and free—where writing spreads itself against the idiolect, at its limit and fighting it” (168).

Roland Barthes, “Change the Object Itself: Mythology Today” (1971). Image-Music-Text

 
Prompt:
Choose one Laguna “story” (myth) that Silko includes—

e.g. “Thought Woman,” Ceremony (frame); drought/rain; “Spider Woman” and “Gambler”; Fly & Hummingbird; Gallup Ceremonials; “Shush” / Bear; Coyote (Ck’o'yo magician) and Big Fly; Descheeny and captive girl; Witchery; Mountain Lion & T’seh; Sunrise offering.

 
— use this story to understand an historically specific experience in the novel’s diegesis/plot, not in mode of belief but expression (life).     review: Apparatus

 
First, briefly discuss affect that you intuit (third mode) from reading the aesthetic figures and the myth together (novel expression); describe the objective experience/situation in particular and concrete terms, avoiding generalization and abstraction. What is this experience? (focus should be specific, within Tayo’s overall narrative/s)

Tip: review your last Reading Response; likely need to describe experience in affective terms to greater extent (embodied exp., subjective, feeling but not “sentimental” or cliché emotion).

 
 
From this, address key question: how does this relation of myth and experience “negotiate” or “mediate” 1) {the past, culture, tradition} and 2) {historical situation or event, individual’s circumstances and identity}?
In contemporary terms, perhaps helpful to think of myth as “interface” for understanding subject’s (Tayo’s) “situation.”

Tip: review notes on “loss,” beyond single individual; on nature (esp. “the land”) and Nature; on “good/bad” (ethics) over “Good and Evil” (morality); on memory/forgetting, presence/absence, and reconfiguring these binaries.
Also see additional quotes from Barthes, below.

 
 
Finally, consider in relation with other “storytelling”:

either a form of narration within the novels
(e.g. Nick Carraway, metafictional Kurt Vonnegut, anonymous Jazz narrator)

or a story with which you are familiar, in “mode of belief” (from personal experience/knowledge):
e.g. parables/fables, religious/spiritual narratives, Greek mythology

Beyond compare/contrast (which is fine to limited extent), discuss the relation of narrative and experience, from this perspective — particularly what you’ve learned from Silko, in terms of expressing affect through aesthetic figures and “stories” (myths).
Speculate how we might apply your insight(s) in our experiment–not in the mode of belief (avoiding judgment), but concerning experience (Life).

After all, we are not passive receivers inheriting myths (and values) but active producers of culture and knowledge.

 
“By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.”

– Plath, “The Hanging Man” (1960)

At work in novels is “a new logic, definitely a logic, but one that grasps the innermost depths of life and death without leading us back to reason. The novelist has the eye of a prophet, not the gaze of a psychologist” (82).

– Deleuze, “Bartleby, or the Formula” (1989)

 
M 21-Sep      Plath: The Bell Jar     (through Chp. 9)           (Sarah Zimmerman)

 
                      ”Plath’s Life and Career” (Illinois)

 
 
W 23-Sep      The Bell Jar     (Chp. 10-14)           (Krystal Sardinas)

                       plus poems (optional / select) — see below.      cf. List: all poems (Stanford)

 
 
F 25-Sep      The Bell Jar     (Chp. 15-20)           (Jessica Brousseau)

                       plus (required):
                       “Ariel” (1962); “Daddy” (1962); & “Lady Lazarus” (1962)

 
                       Due: Response 2 — Prompt

 
Response 2: Bell Jar and Experience
 
500 words (min.); 10 points.
Due: F 25-Sept. Post to your blog, by class time midnight.

 
 
Given that this is not an autobiography, and yet highly “experiential,”
what can we learn from The Bell Jar about experience, from Plath’s literary expression?

 
Start by considering and/or (re-)defining “Experience”
(as a noun or verb? as a narrative or event? a combination?).

Another point of departure (contrast) is the “referential function” (153) that Abbott discusses, in that we are not evaluating this in terms of “factual, false, and fictional” (157). Rather, this novel illustrates the uncertain or undecidable status between literature and life (cf. Derrida and Miller, Cambridge 210).

 
In this view, consider experience as narrative: Plath presents multiple narratives throughout, concerning the past, present, and future within the time of the plot-events, specifically in the
memories (past) and aspirations (future) that she notes in parallel. This non-linear sequence gives us a thematic starting point, both in the overall structure and in the vivid image of the fig tree.

 
Use two to four specific descriptions from the novel as support examples for your definition, being careful not to summarize; remember to work from (and “with”) the textual instances toward an overall conclusion for your response.

 
 
Notes / suggestions:

Likewise, be careful not to generalize (e.g. “society’s view of women…”); rather, discuss the unique circumstances and ordeals that Esther undergoes or that Plath describes, as your examples.
 
You might find it easier and/or more effective to narrow your scope to a particular aspect or element (”sub-category”) of experience, using one of the contexts or circumstances from the plot (e.g. gender relations/roles, institutions, mental illness). This is a fine approach, but still try to pose an overall conclusion about experience from your specific example.
 
Finally, the references from Abbott in the prompt come from Chapters 11 and 14, which might be helpful to review (especially pp. 153-7 & pp.209-10; as well as autobio. and performance on pp. 138-43).
 
Sidenote: like the fig tree vision, another of Plath’s percepts to consider in your definition is the shadow that she mentions, beautiful or otherwise, there or not…

 
Sylvia Plath: all poems (Stanford)

 Suggested

“Ariel” (1962)
“Daddy” (1962)
“Lady Lazarus” (1962)


“The Hanging Man” (1960)
“Love Letter” (1960)
“The Moon and Yew Tree” (1961)
“Berck-Plage“(1962)
* “Death & Co.” (1962)
* “Elm” (1962)
* “Event” (1962)
“Fever 103″ (1962)
“Little Fugue” (1962)
“Poppies in July” (1962)
“Poppies in October” (1962)
* “Stings” (1962)
* “The Bee Meeting” (1962)