Prompt 1: Heinrich

Pick one of the following four prompts about White Noise: “Heinrich,” “Ontology, Epistemology, and Jack (J.A.K.)?,” “The Most Photographed Barn in America,” or “The Society of Kids,” and write a well thought out, analytical response.  200-400 words, due by 11:59pm on Sunday 4/15.

Analyze the following quotes/scenes from Ch. 4 in the context of the novel at large thus far:

 
In Ch. 6, Jack and his son from another marriage, Heinrich, have a conversation about the weather. Well, Jack attempts to have a simple conversation about the weather, and Heinrich turns it into a phenomenological debate. Here’s an excerpt:

“Just give me an answer, okay, Heinrich?”

“The best I could do is make a guess.”

“Either it’s raining or it isn’t,” I said.

“Exactly. That’s my whole point. You’d be guessing. Six of one, half dozen of the other.”

[…]                                                                    

“It’s the stuff that falls from the sky and gets you what is called wet.”

“I’m not wet. Are you wet?”

“All right,” I said. “Very good.”

“No, seriously, are you wet?”

“First rate,” I told him. “A victory for uncertainty, randomness, and chaos. Science’s finest hour” (24).

There’s no need to frame this prompt further.

Prompt 2: Ontology, Epistemology, and Jack (J.A.K.)?

End of Ch. 4: “I am the false character that follows the name around” (17).

At the end of chapter 6, we have this scene of Jack lecturing about Hitler:

“When the showing ended, someone asked about the plot to kill Hitler. The discussion moved to plots in general. I found myself saying to the assembled heads, ‘All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.’

“Is this true? Why did I say it? What does it mean?” (26).

Prompt 3: The Most Photographed Barn in America

In Ch. 3, Murray (the pop culture professor who wants to establish Elvis Studies in the same way Jack’s formed Hitler Studies) takes Jack to THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. He explains:

“We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies” (12).

And:

“They are taking pictures of taking pictures” (13).

How does this scene shape the novel at large, and what is DeLillo saying about postmodern life through this scene?

Prompt 4: The Society of Kids

In Ch. 11, Pop Culture Professor Murray makes the following statement:

I’m sorry you didn’t bring the kids.  I want to get to know small kids.  I tell my students they’re already too old to figure importantly in the making of society.  Minute by minute, they’re beginning to diverge from each other.  “Even as we sit here,” I tell them, “you are spinning out from the core, becoming less recognizable as a group, less targetable by advertisers and mass-producers of culture.  Kids are a true universal.  But you’re well beyond that, already beginning to drift, to feel estranged from the products you consume.  Who are they designed for?  What is your place in the marketing scheme?  Once you’re out of school, it is only a matter of time before you experience the vast loneliness and dissatisfaction of consumers who have lost their group identity.”  Then I tap my pencil on the table to indicate time passing ominously.  (49-50)

Straight Man and the Contemporary Campus Novel

Answer one of the following two prompts on Straight Man.

200-400 words.  Due: Tuesday March 13th by 11:59pm.

In Robert F. Scott’s “It’s a Small World After All: Assessing the Contemporary Campus Novel” (MMLA Vol. 37, no. 1, Spring 2004), the following assessment of the subgenre of “Campus Novel” is made:

In terms of their prevailing formal qualities and stylistic tendencies, campus novels are essentially comedies of manners. And, because these works tend to dwell upon the frustrations that accompany academic existence, they often call attention to the antagonistic relationships that exist between mind and flesh, private and public needs, and duty and desire. As a result, despite their comic tone, most campus novels simmer with barely concealed feelings of anger and even despair as protagonists frequently find themselves caught between administrative indifference on one side and student hostility on the other. Thus, even when campus novels are lightly satirical in tone, they nonetheless exhibit a seemingly irresistible tendency to trivialize academic life and to depict academia as a world that is both highly ritualized and deeply fragmented. (83)

Further:

At the heart of most campus novels stands the much-maligned figure of the college professor. Indeed, although there are notable (though few) exceptions, the professorial protagonists in recent campus novels are more often than not depicted as buffoons or intellectual charlatans. Among the well-established stereotypes, for example, are the absent-minded instructor, the wise simpleton, the lucky bumbler, the old goat, and the fuddy-duddy. Far removed from the inspiring figures of the kindly Mr. Chips or the dedicated seeker of knowledge, fictional academics—males in particular—are more likely to emerge as burnt out lechers with a penchant for preying on their students or their colleagues’ spouses. In his analysis of the images of higher education in academic novels of the 1980s, John Hedeman convincingly contrasts the generally positive images of professors prevalent in academic novels of the 1960s, those figures “who wanted to make a difference in the world beyond their cloistered campus,” with the protagonists in the 1980s who “have given up caring even about their own disciplines.” Maintaining that “[s]elf-doubt, self-absorption, and self-hate” characterize most recent fictional depictions of professors, Hedeman soberingly describes these protagonists as “average men and women with average abilities who live empty, unhappy lives” (152). (qtd. in Scott 83)

Do you agree with this assessment? Why the shift from the “positive” depictions of professors of the 60s to the more contemporary campus novels? Are these depictions realistic fiction, satiric send-ups, or is there something else at work here? Further, what of the depictions of students in campus novels (no winners there...)?

The “Picaresque” character of William Henry Devereaux, Jr.

Due Tuesday March 13th by 11:59pm

200-400 words.

In Jamie McCulloch’s “Creating the Rogue Hero: Literary Devices in the Picaresque Novels of Martin Amis, Richard Russo, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Steve Tesich” (International Fiction Review, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2007), McCulloch writes:

It's not just because picaresque heroes are more fun than other characters that I love them. It's not just the dissolute behavior that I find so appealing. And it's not just the dubious company they keep or the adventures they embark upon that I find so satisfying. All of these things make for a pretty good story. But what makes them really worthwhile is the romantic sense of sadness and futility that haunts them all—their honest recognition of their own shortcomings that gives them emotional weight and makes them resonate. Disappointingly, like young Hal in Henry IV, Part I, who eventually deserts Falstaff, all rogue heroes must grow up and assume a certain amount of responsibility. Often they settle down, give up their aimless wandering, and find a home. Unfortunately, settling down can mean letting go of "the impossible dream." We wish their peregrinations would never end, and so by nature the picaresque novel, whose trappings are ribald excess, is also fraught with a deep sense of loss and sorrow. We must not forget, however, that what makes the picaresque so much fun are the comic possibilities of an errant hero in pursuit of something impossible. He is at once noble and pathetic, a delight to spend time with and to laugh at, and heroic in his blindness to the humbling reality that confronts him wherever he goes.

[…]

A more scholarly approach to balancing the serious and the humorous in the picaresque is to mock the early romances just as Cervantes set out to do. The romance tradition is ripe for parody as are those who pursue "the impossible dream." In Russo's Straight Man, Hank has a not-so-subtle Cervantes-esque dream: "In my dream I am the star of the donkey basketball game. I have never been more light and graceful, never less encumbered by gravity or age. My shots, every one of them, leave my fingertips with perfect backspin and arc toward the hoop with a precision that is pure poetry, its refrain the sweet ripping of twine. And remember: I'm doing all this on a donkey" (364). Metaphorically shooting from his ass, Devereaux is weightless, ageless. The image is steeped in the mock heroic, an English professor as warrior is comic enough in itself—a man like the man of La Mancha riding a donkey while competing in a sports event is wonderfully absurd. At the same time, the dream is sadly romantic in the same sense that Don Quixote is a sadly romantic man—a man who sees the world as he chooses, not as it is.

Analyze Hank as a Picaresque (lovable rogue) character. Does Russo present Hank as a man in quest, a man whose quest is stalled, or is something else at work here? Could the mid-life crisis Hank and many of his colleagues are undergoing be a postmodern quest in and of itself? Is Hank Quixotic, and if so, what are the windmills he’s chasing? If there’s no quest, is it Picaresque (side note: I really did not intend for that to sound like a Johnny Cochrane courtroom rhyme, but here we are…)? Have I asked too many questions? Why are you still reading? Out of a morbid curiosity to see how this prompt ends? Something else?

First Impression/Setting the Tone

Answer one of the following four prompts on I am Not Sidney Poitier.

Due Feb. 26^th by 11:59pm.  200-400 words.

The novel begins with the following:

“I am the ill-starred fruit of a hysterical pregnancy, and surprisingly, odd though I might be, I am not hysterical myself.  I’m rather calm, in fact; some might say waveless.  I am tall and dark and look for the world like Mr. Sidney Poitier, something my poor disturbed and now deceased mother could not have known when I was born, when she named me Not Sidney Poitier.  I was born after two years of hysterical generation, and who knows what happens in a mind when expectant, anticipative for so long.  Two years.  At least this was the story told to me” (3).

Having read the first few chapters of the novel, what role does this opener serve to situate/anchor the book, or does its unmooring qualities remove the possibility of any such anchoring?  What genre/type of story does such an opening promise?  Where else in media (books, tv, film, etc) have you seen such a move?  Is this indicative of the possibility for magical realism or just the ramblings of an unreliable narrator?  Discuss.

The Role of Mentors

Due Feb. 26^th by 11:59pm.  200-400 words.

Not Sidney has a series of would-be-mentors in Betty (the raving socialist addicted to fast food), Ted Turner, Raymond (karate instructor), Percival Everett (college professor who teaches a course in nothing/meaninglessness), the ghost of his mother, and perhaps even the teachings of Mesmer.  How does the mentor/mentee relationship work in this novel, and what might Everett be saying about such relationships?

Ted’s “Jingles”

Due Feb. 26^th by 11:59pm.  200-400 words.

On pages 11-13, Ted discusses his plan to air the same “old crappy shows […] again and again until they sit in people’s heads like jingles” (12).  He then goes on to make a pretty profound statement about the political impact of television (of course he ends it with nonsense, but there is profundity in the middle).  What is Ted trying to do to the political power dynamic of network television, and what would rendering this media into nothing more than jingles do to the brains of those that consumed them?  In other words, what is Everett saying about television in the postmodern age?

Not Sidney’s Imprisonment in a Rural Georgia Work Gang/Thanksgiving With his Girlfriend’s Family

Due Feb. 26^th by 11:59pm.  200-400 words.

Everett’s never been one to shy away from issues of race in America.  About 20 years ago, Everett was supposed to speak at the South Carolina state house, but refused due to the presence of the Confederate Flag.  He’s also written satirical books such as “A History of the African American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond” and “Erasure” which lampoons what he terms “ghetto pop fiction” such as Push by Sapphire.  In this novel, as well, issues of race are at the front and center, especially in Chapters 2 and 4 (where he’s imprisoned and forced to work in a labor camp for “driving while black,” has a 19^th century slave narrative dream toward the end of ch. 2, and then experiences the more subtle racism of his girlfriend’s parents—who find his skin too dark, but change their reaction when they find out he’s rich).  Analyze these scenes and what Everett might be saying about race in America through them.

Candide Option 1

Due Thurs Feb 2 by 11:59pm.

**Assignment note** Pick one of the following three options to respond to.  I'd like a relatively even split, but I won't force it this time.  As always, make sure your name's evident, 200-400 words.

I was going to simply quote William F. Bottiglia, but I like the summary of Bottiglia's contention made by Roy S. Wolper (both awesome names, by the way) in a 1969 article, "Candide, Gull in the Garden?" in Eighteenth Century Studies.

P. 265:

"Too much of the recent criticism of Candide has a magisterial certainty about it.  William F. Bottiglia, whose long analysis is now considered 'fundamental and convincing,' believes that Voltaire 'ends by affirming that social productivity of any kind at any level constitutes the good life, that there are limits within which man must be satisfied to lead the good life, but that within these he has a very real chance of achieving both private contentment and public progress.'  Bottiglia insists there is 'something wrong' with those whose conclusions differ from his own."

What say you?  Agree, or is there "something wrong" with you?  (Note: That's a joke... I really don't want a bunch of responses that simply say, "Bottiglia's right!" or accuse those of differing opinion to have some mental shortcoming.  Disagree away... but convincingly!)

Candide Option 2: Electric Boogaloo

Due Thurs Feb 2 by 11:59pm.

In Chapter 17, Candide travels to Eldorado, a Utopian place literally overflowing with gemstones.  However, Candide voluntarily leaves "this earthly paradise" not long after arriving.

Analyze the role of utopia (and/or dystopia) in Candide and analyze the work with respect to other utopian novels, such as Sir Thomas More's Utopia.

No more guidance is necessary here.

Candide Option 3: Tokyo Drift

Due Thurs Feb 2 by 11:59pm.

From Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, p.102:

"The Menippean satire deals less with people as such than with mental attitudes.  Pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds, are handled in terms of their occupational approach to life as distinct from their social behavior.  The Menippean satire thus resembles the confession in its ability to handle abstract ideas and theories, and differs from the novel in its characterization, which is stylized rather than naturalistic, and presents people as mouthpieces of the ideas they represent."
[...]
"A constant theme in the tradition is the ridicule of philosophus gloriosus."
[...]
"[It] relies on the free play of intellectual fancy and the kind of humorous observation that produces caricature."
[...]
"At its most concentrated, Menippean satire presents us with a vision of the world in terms of a single intellectual pattern."

Analyze the novella from this standpoint (the powerpoint on Menippean Satire I put up on Moodle should be helpful, as well).

Compare and Contrast: Woody Allen and Candide

Due Sunday 1/29 by 11:59pm.  200-400 words.  (For the stragglers who joined the class after the first pop quiz.)

1) After having read six Woody Allen pieces (5 humorous essays and a short story) and seen the bulk of his 1969 mockumentary "Take the Money and Run," you should be pretty familiar with Allen's trademark "schlemiel" character--the man who can't do anything right--as well as Allen's particular brand of wit.  Compare and contrast the Allen "schlemiel" with Voltaire's protagonist, Candide.  Is Candide a "schlemiel," or is something else at work here?

2) Compare and contrast how Allen and Voltaire (respectively) deal with death and tragedy.  Candide, the novella you're reading, was famously penned after the great earthquake in Lisbon, and, more specifically, it was a reaction to the sentiment echoed by followers (specifically religious leaders) of Liebniz's "optimistic" philosophy of logical positivism.  (You don't need to know those things to answer the question, but it might help to look into it...)

Woody Allen and the Non-Sequitur

Due Jan. 24th by 11:59pm

Pick one of the two options listed in this prompt, and post a well thought out, contemplative 200-400 word response.  For those who answered last week's blog post, this is worth up to 5 points extra credit.  For those yet to answer, this is a time machine that will wipe that zero from existence.  (This will be the last such time machine.)

“Humor is crafted ambiguity, and ambiguities do not easily yield certainties.”

-Elliott Oring

 “The perils of analyzing Allen should be obvious: academics who play around with him risk being played around with themselves.”

-David Galef

“Here is but a small sample of the main body of intellectual treasure that I leave for posterity, or until the cleaning woman comes.”

-Woody Allen

According to 18^th century poet and essayist James Beattie, “Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage” (qtd. in Oring 2).  Elliott Oring, in his 1992 work, Jokes and Their Relations, furthers this claim: “The perception of humor depends on the perception of an appropriate incongruity—that is, the perception of an appropriate interrelationship of elements from domains that are generally regarded as incongruous” (2).  This view, often attributed to Sigmund Freud (there is a slight difference, though, as Freud claimed this to be a “forced” juxtaposition) has appeared to reach a critical consensus in one form or other amongst humor theorists.  I shall not disagree with this thesis.  However, when it comes to the forced juxtaposition employed by Woody Allen, the depths of his particular brand of humor need to be plumbed rigorously, as he’s often working on multiple levels.

In his comic essay, “Remembering Needleman,” and short story, "The Shallowest Man," from the 1981 collection Side Effects, Allen employs the conflation of seriousness and silliness/absurdity to deal with the darkest of subject matter—death.  What’s at work here is not just the forced conflation of disparate ideas, but a third element—an element of humor that hints that the structure of the joke is as important as the conflation of disparate ideas.  In effect, Freud (and Beattie) hints at the main driving force behind the line by line witticisms evident in Allen, but neglects the structure.  As Elliott Oring reminds us, “To neglect […] structural elements in conceptualizing the messages of humorous expression is to risk reading into them messages that may not be there, thus increasing rather than reducing levels of ambiguity” (15).  I shall heed this warning, and further, claim that the particular structure that makes Allen’s jokes both wildly hilarious, and perhaps the main element in why we may consider Allen’s jokes as literary, is the comic non sequitur.

           

Maurice Charney, in his 1995 article, “Woody Allen’s Non Sequiturs” identifies this particular logical fallacy as the basis upon which Allen constructs his witticisms.  Charney defines the non sequitur as joke thusly: "In the study of humor, a non sequitur usually refers to a kind of joke in which the punch line seems to have nothing to do with the narrative content of the joke proper.  In other words, a non sequitur joke seems like a shaggy dog story.  I use ‘seems’ advisedly because the hearer always makes some effort to connect the premises and the conclusion, although there is usually an unbridgeable gap between the two" (339).

Option 1) Analyze the structure of Allen’s humor in these two works.  What’s at work here?  What role do comic non sequiturs play? Also, what's the difference between Allen's non-sequitur jokes and the Family Guy-style cut-away?

 

Option 2) In both "Remembering Needleman" and "The Shallowest Man," Allen treats death as absurd, however, while Needleman the philosopher is presented as a Reductio ad Absurdum satire on the academy, "The Shallowest Man" seems to poke more effectively at philosophical dillemas.  Analyze the philosophical dilemmas broached in this short story, as well as what Allen concludes by the ending.

The Role of Tragedy in Kafka

Pick one of the following three prompts (Tragedy, The Uncanny, and Comedy in Kafka).  Post a 200-400 word contemplative and well reasoned response in the comments section.  Make sure your first and last name is evident, as this will count as a homework grade.

Due Thursday Jan 19th by 11:59pm

For literary critics such as Cathy Caruth, literature negotiates "the complex relation between knowing and not knowing." Perhaps it is this knowing/not knowing dichotomy which is compressed so eerily in Kafka, producing the profound uncanny effect seen in his short fiction. Combine this with the elegiac yearning for the past evident in both the Penal Colony’s Lieutenant and the talking ape in “A Report From an Academy,” and both are decidedly tragic tales, though perhaps not in the traditional sense. 

Analyze the elegaic, traumatic, and/or tragic elements of Kafka's tales.  How does Kafka present trauma and tragedy? 

The Uncanny

Due Thursday Jan 19, by 11:59pm

Freud—The Uncanny

An instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange. Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time.

Etymologically: Un-home-ly.

Kafka's stories have often been described as "uncanny."  In what ways do "In the Penal Colony" and/or "A Report From an Academy" evoke feelings of the "familiar, yet strangely foreign?"

The Role of Humor in Kafka

Due Thursday Jan. 19, by 11:59pm

In David Foster Wallace’s 1999 essay “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness From Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed,” Wallace asserts:

[…]great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communications theorists sometimes call exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient. This is probably why the effect of both short stories and jokes often feels sudden and percussive, like the venting of a long-stuck valve. It’s not for nothing that Kafka spoke of literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.” Nor is it an accident that the technical achievement of great short stories is often called compression—for both the pressure and the release are already inside the reader. What Kafka seems able to do better than just about anyone else is orchestrate the pressure’s increase in such a way that it becomes intolerable at the precise instant it is released (61).

With this in mind, analyze the role humor plays in “In the Penal Colony” and “A Report From an Academy.” Granted, this is a difficult task I’ve set in front of you, but it should be rewarding. As Wallace reminds us further, the difficulty of understanding comedy and Kafka might just be that:

[…] the particular kind of funniness Kafka deploys is deeply alien to students whose neural resonances are American. The fact is that Kafka’s humor has almost none of the particular forms and codes of contemporary US amusement. There’s no recursive wordplay or verbal stunt-pilotry, little in the way of wisecracks or mordant lampoon. There is no body-function humor in Kafka, nor sexual entendre, nor stylized attempts to rebel by offending convention […] There are none of the ba-bing-ba-bang reversals of modern sitcoms; nor are there precocious children or profane grandparents or cynically insurgent coworkers. Perhaps most alien of all, Kafka’s authority figures are never just hollow buffoons to be ridiculed, but are always absurd and scary and sad all at once (62-3).

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to comment quite intelligently on the relation between jokes and short stories on a larger scale, but let’s keep these posts to Kafka. Oh, and for those of you thinking, “These stories were funny?!” humor is but one aspect of Kafka’s writing, and one that doesn’t get enough attention if you ask me. We’ll discuss many other aspects of these stories in class.