Novel Experience & Expression » threshold

Simple Solution, Impossible Problem

Gary Hink — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:11:17 +0000

“Truth depends on an encounter with something
that forces us to think and to seek the truth.” (14)

“if the resonance has both objective and subjective conditions,
what it produces is of an altogether different nature:
the Essence, the spiritual Equivalent….that breaks with the subjective chain.” (154)

— Deleuze, Proust and Signs (1972)

M 30-Nov     Foer: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (through p. 173)
                       (Laura Hampson & Tahara Franklin)

W 02-Dec     Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (pp. 174-259)
                       (Krystal Sardinas & Paige Miller)

Due: Project Proposal Update (revised/finalized; 7pm, on blog)
(counts as blog entry; add Foer to your “poetics inventory”)

→ Notes from class discussion (plus reminders and clarifications)

F 04-Dec Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (pp. 267-326) (Sarah Zimmerman)

plus: (required): “Mystory” excerpts by Ulmer (PDF)

M 07-Dec Due: Final Project — “Resonance Assemblage” (checkpoint / partial)

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).

Beautiful Shadow

Gary Hink — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:09:26 +0000

“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)