Bell hooks talks about the sense of identity in postmodern criticism, calling for it to be revised so that marginalized voices may be heard, and that the “narrow constricting notion of blackness” may be removed. She knows that there is a gap in the literature as well as the criticism, and motivates her readers to fill that niche by critiquing the standard so that “new possibilities for the construction of the self and the assertion of agency” can be realized. Her article brings up the point that we may think that we have progressed as a literary society beyond the standard works by dead white men, but it is not enough. There are different points of view that need to be expressed, but they need to be able to have an audience willing to read what is written. On this note, I wonder if any niche press has published anything along these lines? Since the article was written fifteen years ago, I am interested to know if there have been any gains along this end.
Moving on to The Intuitionist, I thought the novel’s structure and scattered choice sentences were highly effective ways to keep the reader turning the pages and also uncovering what was behind the incident with the elevator crash. The first line of the book tells the reader what the inciting incident is: “It’s a new elevator, freshly pressed to the rails, and it’s not built to fall this fast” (1). The narrator becomes almost protective of Lila Mae and says “She doesn’t know yet” on page nine, and again on page 15. Whitehead builds up suspense to suggest the magnitude of the elevator accident.
I thought the ending of the novel seemed a bit optimistic, compared to the no-resolution postmodernism style of Crying of Lot 49. Fulton randomly writes Lila Mae’s name down in his notebook, yet this chance action to a series of events that will result in his notebooks being uncovered, and she will be able to reveal Fulton’s true dream when the time is right. I did like that the novel ended with the promise of change, and I thought that having the elevator compared to Lila Mae, giving her permission to be human.