in addition to these fine comments below, let me add that what struck me about whitehead’s novel was, like pynchon’s, the critique of american capitalism around the year 1960. besides hooks, i felt like the works of the frankfurt school, especially adorno and benjamin, would be beneficial. later, jameson, too, seems pertinent. the difference is, of course, that the author is writing today looking back in history. i got the feeling at the end of the novel that lila mae had an omniscient view of the inner workings of society, and i felt the reader was always looking at new york aerially, as if we had already acheived this new portentous elevator technology. arbo, a corporation that seemingly had everything within their monopolistic grasp, in reality operated on the whims of an obscure, bath-robed, inventor. it doesn’t seem that whitehead offers a ‘blueprint’ for radical change coming from a collective underclass as hooks envisions, rather, change will proceed from a single person endowed with special knowledge. whitehead’s text then, is homologous to w.e.b dubois ‘souls of black folk’ rather than a postmodern pluralist tract like hooks’.
the other aspect (which were so many and i don’t know how we’re going to cover them all in class) that interested me was the author’s treatment of the white nyc population, specifically the irish. im not sure iv’e read anything so stereotypical of irish men on my life, and im sure whiteheads motives are satirical, im just not sure how, and its a topic i hope to get to in class. certainly, the black and irish population of nyc has had a ‘colored’ history; they represent the bottom rungs of the economic and social ladder. the irish famous for their fierce xenophobia and rascist attitudes towards blacks. bell hooks, in her other writings, comments on how surprised white people are when they hear blacks’ negative descriptions of whites’ appearances and manners. as if blacks were not capable, in their perceived status as object, ‘the watched’, as having judgements of their own. it is interesting how whitehead works with this unique perspective, but i would like to maybe or maybe not discuss further how this counter-stereotyping operates in the novel.
i was struck, generally, how this novel seemed to occupy, like hooks’ criticism, a place between modernist and postmodernist categories. i did catch much postmodern elements, such as chancre’s simulacra of otis’s first elevator, which served to bolster the appearance of empiricist power, but other moments, especially the ending, evoked moderninst tendencies.