Category: Reflections

Admittedly, I am a subject of and subject to the gross scheme of capitalism Hollywood signifies, since I love movies: Hollywood, foreign, old, new, Noir, mainstream, low- budget, obese- budget, etc. I agree with Benjamin in the sense that the capitalist propagated mass culture entails mass production and mechanical reproduction that does annhilate "authenticity" in that "the presence of the original" is no longer feasible or desired. I disagree with him, however, insofar as certain film and photography are "authentic" modern and postmodern texts that are equally artistic and "auristic" in contemporary culture as was painting prior to "the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production."

Benjamin insists, as do I, that "the authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced." By extension, Benjamin suggests that anything that is duplicated no longer bears the authenticity of "the unique" work of art. Just as copies of the original paintings of Monet are worth a piddling fraction of the original, any tangible art that is ‘reproduced’ is authentically reductive. Benjamin, and Duhamel, critic and extremist in his hatred of all that is cinematic, cite that film, and its precurser, photography, are ‘illusion-promoting spectacles of distraction’ born out of an age of mechanical reproduction and mass commodification. Every tool to make a film is mechanized, ‘reproducible,’ and therefore, lacking "aura." While film utilized the latest technology, which is mass produced, ‘the creators’ or the people responsible for writing, production, and creation, still exist. To say that technology and the reproducibility of the means and ends of film production render ‘the creators’ or artists obsolete, is perhaps a reflection of the critic’s ignorance of ‘the art’ of film rather than his understanding.

As was earlier mentioned in a previous blog, I realize that holding on to tradition and conventional understandings of art in ‘a time of uncertainty’, World War Numero Uno, is a common and possibly necessary reaction to the dissolusionment of cultural collapse amid the mass death of the future generation. "The Lost Generation," to which I’m not sure Benjamin is necessarily a card carrying member, had few if any hopes for the future return of substance in the form of culturally codified traditions. The emergence of film might have been one more alarming mutation that morphed out of the onset of the 20th Century, according to those to whom ‘the old ways,’ of painting included, represented tride and true age-old conventions that made sense. The advent of technology, whether under the gigantor, souless machine of industrial capitalism or some other evil, has produced new art and has made it accessible to the masses, such as myself, rather than preserved it for the elite ‘cult’ of yore. While the phenomenon of exhibited art for the public is unconscienable to those that could afford to view it as an elite member of socity, I revel in it.

I concede that most Hollywood films are grossly formulaic, mushy, and hyper-unrealistic fantasy narratives that serve little purpose beyond perpetuating the dominant cultural and social normative order, but there are those miraculously occuring films, photography exhibits, graphic arts, and other hypertexts that transcend the means and ends of production for the lowest common denominator. Sometimes, its possible that even Hollywood is infected by such creativity, in which case, creativity and mass culture combine in yet another type of artistic mutation: Star Wars- not the new ones, Donnie Darko, Ghandi, Taxi Driver, anything Alfred Hitchcock, and so on and so forth.

Even if paintings cultivate concentration, which is, of course magic, and film promotes ‘collective distraction’ and criticism (not that I agree with this narrow assessment of film), why isn’t there room for both? Why does Benjamin insist that "art," in its broadest sense, should not evolve and continually ‘become?’ Why must art be constricted to narrow definitions proposed by critics such as Benjamin that are no longer applicable in the 21rst century? Paintings are fine, meticulous, beautiful, an excorcism of exceptiional talent (given that they’re good), but then again, so are a lot of art forms, ancient and contemporary.

When I was your age, I walked twelve miles wearing no shoes through six feet of snow.  And so follows the older generation’s disappointment in and fear of youth and new ways of doing things.  While reading Walter Benjamin, I kept in mind the context of his article—written in 1936—and the times’ apprehension about new media and the changes it would usher in.  In his discussion of how an appropriate distance is lost between art and viewer when media becomes transportable (or statically containing movement), I was reminded of current debates about media use on the Internet; for example, the music industry’s suing a twelve year old girl for downloading music, and a writer’s association is accusing Google of massive copyright infringement.  For Benjamin and I’d say for the organizations of our time who believe they are threatened by technological advance, it seems as though there’s a lot of oversight and jumping to conclusions; in his discussion of how the camera changed the viewers’ position, Benjamin says that the viewer will no longer identify with the stage actor and instead connects only with a machine, the camera.   What Benjamin ignores is the artist behind the camera; yes, the audience may only see the actor on a screen, but the audience takes part in a holistic piece of art put together by the filmmaker—the director.  As a portrayal of reality, film is admittedly fragmented, with cuts taken here, effects created out of order and inserted back into film, and yes, the camera has many angles to choose from, which is why a camera offers more dimension than say static art. 

            Elsewhere, Benjamin notes the quality of culture in which film is a dominant art form.  He says that the film audience is in the position of critic, but is an “absent-minded” one due to film’s rapid movement of images.  We who watch become immersed by the illusions and cannot stop to think about what we’re watching, and oh no, the powers that be will control our minds with it.  Well, okay, commercials and pop-up ads are behind huge sales in our distracted society, but it is rather ridiculous to blame violence and inhumanity on a means of expression, whether it be film, text, or sound—there’s as much negativity that one can find when viewing or listening to today’s web page as one can find in a literal reading of the Bible.  My last thought on the Benjamin article is that he never thought of all the good drugs we’d develop for our adult onset ADHD.  The oversight of it, heh!        

I thought perhaps I could jump-start this week’s cyber-discussion with an unanswered question I have had with Benjamin’s "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” The lynch point of his entire discussion seems to center on the presence and subsequent loss of an “aura” in works of art. To begin, I have a hard time comprehending what Benjamin means by the word “art,” as news reels and letters to the editor are argued on the same plane as plays and sculpture (I think this moves beyond the collapse of a high/low distinction, as he seems to be more concerned with political ramifications and the replacement of the “artist” by the propagandist.) It seems to me that any form of mass communication fits comfortably in his definition. Isn’t this problematic? If he wishes to analyze the loss of an “aura,” shouldn’t he also look to “high art” and how its reproduction affects the modern viewer? What if, instead of a long diatribe on film, he had analyzed the contemporary reaction to “The Mona Lisa,” (a piece that he recognizes as being highly reproduced) would his conclusion still be the same?

However, my greatest trouble in understanding this essay lies in Benjamin’s connotative use of the word “aura.” I have never been clear whether he is celebrating, lamenting or simply reporting its death. I think Benjamin provides his clearest definition of the word in his 5th footnote as he critiques its meaning. He writes, “The definition of the aura as a ‘unique phenomenon of a distance however close it may be’ represents nothing but a formulation of the cult value of the work of art in categories of space and time perception. Distance is the opposite of closeness. The essentially distant object is the unapproachable one” (243). At times, it seems that he is troubled by the loss of uniqueness, the creation of a Hollywood star system, and the creation of a “distracted audience.” Indeed, in his 4th footnote, he writes, “the poorest provincial staging of Faust is superior to a Faust film in that, it competes with the first performance at Weimar” (243). However, he also seems to be calling for the politicization of art in response to the Fascist’s use of art in politics (again, a clear definition of art would be useful in this discussion). In this sense, it would seem that he would be excited to demystify a cult, especially that of Hitler’s. To further my confusion, Benjamin doesn’t seem very troubled with his own ambiguity. Is this a sign that he has given a clear opinion on the matter and I have just missed it?

So, what do y’all think?

Well, it seems that everyone has covered a large variety of topics, which, as Ada pointed out, is part of Song of Solomon – the vast array of possibilities.  So much is going on that it is difficult to just choose one area on which to focus.  I also agree with “skjeldaa” about the uncertainty of this text’s place within the course organization.  I, too, found this novel one of the most accessible in terms of understanding, and I appreciate Morrison’s poetic use of language; yet, for those reasons and for the ones “skjeldaa” mentions (chronological unfolding of storyline – which Morrison tells us she found necessary-, firm placement in and search for historical place and time), this text does not seem to fit into “postmodernism” as we have been discussing (though I know that labeling or not labeling postmodern texts is not our goal here).  One thing I have considered before, which may be one factor is the intense use of symbolism.  Song of Solomon is saturated with symbolism, which, unlike some of the other texts we’ve studied so far, I find to be more natural in the unfolding of the story.  Morrison’s inclusion of symbolism and metaphor seem to be a fluid part of her storytelling, not as harsh or blatant as, say,  Pynchon’s in The Crying of Lot 49.  All of that being said, I am going to focus on Morrison’s writing style, which not many have yet addressed.

Toni Morrison is often known for her poetic use of language, and as I mentioned, I found her writing style refreshing.  I don’t need a standard shape or sound to a story (and through the selections for this class, I have learned to appreciate the variety of styles available to authors); yet, I enjoyed being able to appreciate the words Morrison chose and the sounds and images they evoked because I was not so preoccupied untangling the storyline (or that one is lacking, as in some of the texts we’ve read!)  Not saying that Song of Solomon was easy to completely understand or resolve – I am sure there are many nuances I missed in my first reading – but I was not so confused about the events taking place that I couldn’t also appreciate the language.  I got to thinking about Morrison’s specific choice of words throughout the story primarily because of her remarks in the Foreword.  The detail to which she describes the intention and unfolding of the first sentence of the text (from its mockery of journalistic style to its containment of “important signs and crucial information” (xiii) – the significance of “life,” “mutual,” “fly,” “mercy,” and even the geographic locations chosen for their representations of various journeys) got me thinking about just how much thought she put into the 337 pages she created for us.  If that much thought went into one line, how much effort and time went into the rest?  As I came across scenes that I felt seemed unnecessary, I tried searching for a greater purpose they might serve in the grand scheme of the entire novel.  Many have already addressed her use of names (symbolic or alluding in design, though we collectively do not seem to have uncovered all of their meanings), so I will instead point out some of her artistically crafted metaphors.  One that especially grabbed my attention toward the beginning involves Macon’s desire for ownership.  Once Milkman has started working for him (during which scene Macon is delighted over his son’s “belonging” to him), Macon sees opportunities to expand his business:  “He knew as a Negro he wasn’t going to get a big slice of the pie.  But there were properties nobody wanted yet, or little edges of property somebody didn’t want Jew to have, or Catholics to have, or properties nobody knew were of any value yet.  There was quite a bit of pie filling oozing around the edge of the crust in 1945.  Filling that could be his” (63).  The “piece of the pie” metaphor certainly is not original; however, Morrison takes it a step further by embellishing Macon’s desires – he may not get the pie (which whites only have access to), but the filling and edges of the pie are still up for grabs.  Morrison paints an image of the messy, unconventional way for Macon to acquire or get closer to acquiring what the white businessmen have/own.  I also loved the allusion to (and disillusionment of) the building of the pyramids (representing the disillusionment of his father as patriarch and awe-inspiring power figure?) in Milkman’s view once he initiates the search for his own control and his own place in his life by hitting his father:  “There was the pain and shame of seeing his father crumple before a man – even himself.  Sorrow in discovering that the pyramid was not a five-thousand-year wonder of the civilized world, mysteriously and permanently constructed by generation after generation of hardy men who had died in order to perfect it, but that it in fact had been made in the back room at Sears, by a clever window-dresser, of papier-mache, guaranteed to last for a mere lifetime” (68).  The symbolic possibilities of this comparison are almost overwhelming.  To what, exactly, is Morrison comparing the pyramids?  Is it Macon as a power figure in the family and in Milkman’s life?  Is it more?  And how does that comparison hold up as the rest of the story develops and we find out the other events that unfold between these two men whose roles continue to shift in each others’ lives after this point?  There are, of course, countless more, but I have long overrun my word limit by now.  I look forward to our discussions in class today!

I, too, found myself looking for undercurrents of direct similarity between Song of Solomon and the selections we read previous to this one. With each book up to this point, there seemed to be in common with all of them some sort of stylistic choice being made by the authors that I didn’t see in SOS, and it’s been something I’ve been struggling to put my finger on. Many posts have already mentioned identity and naming issues regarding the books’ characters, and it may be an interesting excercise in class to hold these characters’ names (and maybe their relationship to what they "signify"?) up to some of the theoretical approaches we’ve applied to the previous books. But Morrisson deals with these naming issues early and often in the text (I think of the early conversation about the naming of Pilate, which was such an apparent exercise in erasing the meaning behind it that it was impossible not to suspend traditional associations with not only this but nearly every other character), so much so that I could only think of the characters’ names as inverse, role-playing tags in what is a long, involved allegory.

It may also be that this novel, more than the ones that we read preceding it, dealt with social conditions over pinpointed decades of "real" time (as opposed to the time-shifting trajectories of The Lathe of Heaven or The Female Man) that causes the rift between the narrative aesthetic between this and the previous books. I’d be interested to discuss issues of chronology and social evolution in relation to character development.

I’ve also been looking at some crtitical approaches to this text to try and find a linking element between this and the books we’ve read leading up to it, and have been hard-pressed there as well. I’ve found some interesting mythological comparisons (Milkman=Icarus), but unlike critical approaches Pynchon, Whitehead, etc., excercises in which the themes and aspects are pulled through an explicit postmodern-theorist’s filter are thin if nonexistent. Interested to see what the class discussion will focus on.

I am a little at loss as to why this book is on the reading list in a course about postmodernism. Or even, why this book was chosen from among all those written by Tony Morrison. Clearly, as many of the blogs have pointed out, Song of Solomon is a text in which names and naming are important. Names have societal as well as personal value, and due to a communal tendency to name people according to defining characteristics, several of the characters have two names. But apart from Milkman’s unfortunate and somewhat embarrassing nickname, and even a general indignation over the fact that white people had the power to (utterly carelessly!) inscribe the very symbol of what was both a new identity and a new existence for the freed slave, the names of the characters do not seem to signify any radical (postmodern) fragmentation of identity. When thinking about the story of how his grandfather first got the solemn name that is passed down through the generations, what Milkman seems to ponder most is why his grandmother encouraged him to keep it.

In portraying black experience, the text takes an ex-centric perspective. Yet in comparison with the ex-centricity of Joann Russ’s (ultra-)feminist text, Song of Salomon reads like a male Bildungsroman. Its attacks on white society (its mention of unprovoked, random violence) seem to me more of a historical back-drop than an important force in the narrative. Similar to the way Frantz Fanon’s account of the white-male-colored-female relationship focused on criticizing the colored woman for wanting the white man, Song of Solomon seems to launch heavier attacks on the coloreds struggling to pass for white, than the position of the whites themselves. Likewise, Milkman (because he is his friend) reacts more strongly to Guitar’s involvement in the Seven Days than to the white killings of black Americans that trigger these acts of vengeance. (Of course, as the plot develops, he has every reason to…). But perhaps this is the point. Why should black narratives center on whites? Would that be subversion?

Time, which postmodernism is generally so eager to twist, thwart, and fragment, does in Song of Solomon align itself in neat chronology: we follow Malcom Dead from birth to what is either death or some kind of symbolical re-birth. Although history is an important theme, the book distinguishes itself from most postmodernist texts in that history can be recovered. The past can be understood and connected to the present and the future, and a sense of belonging and rootedness can grow. So albeit feeling a little bit like the white snobbish critic bell hooks criticized for barring black Americans access into the ‘intellectual high sphere’ of postmodernism, I remain questioning as to what in this particular text (which the author herself claims to be “very saga-like”) is postmodernist. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been working on Pyncheon the last week, but I must say I’m very curious as to how this text aligns with the others we have worked on so far.

When that is said, I must admit that as homage to the figure of the father, the description of Jake, the first Macon Dead, is one of the most beautiful I have read.

One theme that ran through the novel was the importance of identity, and the factors that create it. Milkman inherits his father’s name, as his father inherited his father’s name, but it does not have meaning to him. To Milkman, Macon Dead is the name for a man focused on wealth and property, even if he acquires these things at the cost of his friendship with other people within the community. Just being Macon Dead’s son makes Milkman an outcast, with Guitar as his only friend. Once Milkman rebels against his father by going to see Pilate, he learns more about the other Macon Dead, his grandfather, but does he does not feel a strong connection to him until he learns his true name, Jake, and the story of his father. History is important, both generations of history and the background given in the novel when Morrison reveals how Milkman wanted to fly like Robert Smith. Discovering that his great-grandfather had that ability and tried to bring the next generation with him fills the void in Milkman’s identity that he had been trying to eradicate with money and women. Freed from being “Dead,” Milkman feels that he belongs in this community with so many members of his family and without the sins of his father to pay for. Learning more about the men in his family gives Milkman opportunity to find a male in his family other than his father to look up to.

For Milkman and other characters in the novel, being part of the community is important, because they decide your name no matter what your parents called you at birth, hence Guitar and Empire State. Perhaps Ruth and Macon Dead keep their names because of the respect the community has for her father and their money. I also thought it was interesting that about half the time in the book Lena is referred to as “Magdalene called Lena.” This shows that she has not fully assimilated into the community, as she remains sheltered in her parents’ house and goes by two names. She seems like a flat character until she stands up to Milkman and serves as the catalyst to get him to leave Michigan. Milkman does not have a strong sense of identity at this point but even worse, he does not realize how poorly he treats his family. I liked how the female characters in the Dead family gained depth as the book progressed—the reader learned more about Ruth’s past, a different story from what Macon said about her, Corinthians lead a double life because the standards her father created could not be met, and Lena lashed out at Milkman and spoke for all of them.

To respond to Kira’s question, I was also wondering the significance of the novel to the book of the Bible of the same name and I think one parallelism is that its story is not often discussed. The Bible’s Song of Solomon is sensual, a dialogue between lovers, a natural part of life but not something that goes over so well with some Christians so it is ignored. We know it’s out there, we know it happens, but we don’t acknowledge it. The same can be said of African American’s stories. We know there is a rich past and so many stories to tell, ones not found in the traditional history books, or even the Western canon, but these stories are not discussed. Morrison creates a world and brings it to a large audience so that it can be acknowledged.

Here’s a link to Biblical Song of Solomon:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/Song_of_Solomon.html

Morrison’s Song of Solomon runs the highway of postmodern conditions, which include blackness, black womanhood versus black manhood, history or its absence, naming that connects the individual from his/her heredity or obliterates filial ties, storytelling and perspective, and the absense of objective truth. Pilate’s story, her life, however, seems to suggest a supernatural purity and truth that supercedes all others in the novel. Even Milkman, the central character, is without conscience throughout most of the novel in regards to the women in his life, a fact that Lena makes clear to him. Is Pilate Morrison’s version of the ideal, African American woman or is she distopian woman in her isolation? According to Macon Dead the Second, she is.

Morrison however, seems to suggest that Pilate’s greatest earthly flaw, her unseemly stomach which lacks the natural mark of life, the navel, is precisely that which makes her magically angelic to those who know and love her, but diabolical to those who cannot accept such an anomoly. Pilate is "expelled" from ‘normal’ life because she is percieved as ‘unnatural.’ She is a dichotemy, a "snake" to her brother Macon and ultimately a savior to Milkman, her immediate family, Reba and Hagar, and the severed family line that Milkman seeks to rediscover. Pilate’s an outcast to her black people, and yet she is self-sacrificial for her daughter, Reba, and, especially, her granddaughter, Hagar, and as Milkman comes to appreciate, her house was open and accepting to both Guitar (her murderer) and Milkman.

Pilate’s character exudes a dual condition of both witchery and divine spirituality in her isolated existence. Her nonexistent navel "isolated her." "Already without family, she was further isolated from her people, for, except for the relative bliss on the island, every other resource denied her: partnership in marriage, confessional friendship, and communal religion," and yet she is the most generous and accepting character in the novel. She attempts to reconnect with her people, specifically her estranged and distrusting property mongering brother, Macon Dead, she accepts, loves, and spoils his son, Milkman, and she continually goes without to give more to her ‘daughters.’ She is an impoverished, ostricized bootlegger ‘with a heart of gold’ and she is even a confidant to Ruth when she is pregnant with Milkman. Furthermore, Pilate seems to function as ‘a life preserver’ whereas her brother, is depicted as ruthless capitalist who is devoid of any connection to his people since his father’s death and who is even capable of murdering his unborn son. Pilate, regardless of her lifetime’s expulsion from black society at large, is more connected to her family and history than any of the other characters in the novel, as illustrated by her encounters with her father’s ghost.

Milkman is self-destructive, as illustrated when he allows Hagar to kill him (and doesn’t), and he is without a filial history or individual purpose until he discovers Shalimar and the ghosts of his ancestors buried under desserted family names. He is guided by the bones he steals from Pilate’s house and the story of her pilgrimage to Virginia after her father’s death and her confrontation with her brother years earlier. Her spirit is connected to her father’s ghost and simultaneously connects to Milkman’s quest for identity in his search for his heritage. She bridge between ‘the lost generations’ of her family and a spiritual informant of past and present to her brother’s son. At her death Milkman whitnesses the wonderful spirit that his aunt Pilate is. "There must be another like you…There’s got to be at least one more woman like you." Perhaps, she is the only woman of her kind; one that recognizes and accepts her alienation, but that loves life and family anyway.

Morrison seems to portray Pilate as a Christ figure, one that gives up her life to better her family’s life and connections. She is never accepted due to her ‘deformity,’ but she is the messenger that carries her family history- "sing."

Another question I have concerns the 7 Days. Does Mr. Smith’s organization mirror Pyncheon’s Tristero? Both operate on a silent, virtually invisible plane in society. How alike and different are the two? Did Morrison get her idea from Pyncheon since her novel was published after The Crying of Lot 49?

As I read Toni Morrison’s Song of Soloman, I searched for the novel’s relationship to postmodernism and what I noticed immediately was Morrison’s selection of names for her characters.  For example, when Macon Jr. is nicknamed Milkman by Freddie after he catches Ruth nursing her boy well beyond the time she should, Freddie coins the name “Milkman.”  Everyone in town but Macon Sr. knows why the boy is called Milkman, though Macon has his suspicions given the significance of the name.  Of course, the irony is that we know the existing meaning of being the milkman’s kid has nothing to do with why Macon Jr. becomes Milkman, and this reminded me of the postmodern idea that all signifiers circulate and recirculate existing images (and yet bear different significance depending on the observer).

Pilate is another character whose name is significant but probably not for the existing image or meaning that it is taken from.  Yes, she’s a fierce black woman disfigured by a missing belly button, but it’s not like she killed Christ or anything.  What stands out about the naming of this character is the pride her illiterate father took when choosing her name, blindly, from the Bible.  And, what could have been a one-time, arbitrary method for choosing one’s child’s name, the procedure is adapted by Macon Dead in the naming of his own children First Corinthians and Magdalene called Lena.

Last thoughts on Song of Soloman and its connection to postmodernism are that the setting, characters, and the plot didn’t really ring postmodernity for me.  What did stand out was the constant shifting of realities for the characters over time and the disappearance of stability and something solid to stand upon as each made a rite of passage into adulthood; however, these moments in the novel only led me to consider how life is and has been this way in times that we wouldn’t necessarily label postmodern.

With all the different elements running through the narrative in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, it is difficult to find a place to start.  This text, which is so imbued with history, language, place and folklore, is almost too overwhelming to dissect, and yet, I found it to be the most approachable story that we have read/watched thus far.  Perhaps this is due to the numerous and evocative descriptions of place.  I am looking back at the recently posted blog by “zpeterse.”  Here, one reader of the text identifies with the sights and smells of a certain place, the south side of Chicago.  I grew up in neighborhood called Marquette Park in Southside Chicago, and am familiar with the amalgamation of smells that waft through the air (our house was blocks away from a Nabisco factory, and no they didn’t give free cookie samples, believe me, I tried). My ties to this place help to define who I am.  What is also interesting about this text is what a full spectrum of experience helps to define place and time.  Milkman, when he is in Shalimar, becomes homesick, not just for the familiarity of place, but also misses his family and friends.  The elements of folklore also present in this story – the myth of flying, the story of Icarus – also work to create the story of a family that is now named Dead.  Though at first Milkman is driven by the greed for gold to travel the country and find his roots, on his journey his sentiments change, and he is more interested and driven by the want to know about his family, his “people.”  The struggle of this journey is echoed in the complexity of finding African American family histories, which are not always readily available.  As an aside-I work in the Alexandria Library at the Local History/Special Collections Division.  We are working now to compile a database of Slave Births, for the years 1850-1864.  This index asked slave owners to register all slave births, with names, dates, and counties in Virginia.  As I am going through and entering the information, the lists are full of mistakes, misspellings, blank spaces.  This is but a small part of the issue, but it does show the precarious nature of tracing African American family histories through slavery and beyond.  Morrison, in Song of Solomon, creates a family epic, spanning generations, which seeks to explore both the history of the family and the future of their histories

Thought this might interest you all…two of the books on our syllabus are listed here.

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/?cnn=yes

I think that what struck me most while reading Song of Solomon was how many different kinds of slavery there are in the novel. There is, of course, the slavery from which Milkman’s ancestors are freed. But his father, Macon, who was not a slave himself, enslaves other black people. Guitar’s grandmother observes this in the beginning of the book, when Macon demands money from her, even in her impoverished state: "A nigger in business is a terrible thing to see. A terrible, terrible thing to see" (22). In a way, Milkman enslaves his sisters and his mother, or "pees" on them, as Lena points out. "Our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you. When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when you wanted to play, we entertained you; and when you got grown enough to know the difference between a women and a two-toned Ford, everything in this house stopped for you" (215).

It seems that the enslaver is always enslaved. Macon becomes a slave to his own greed, as he feels the need to own. He tells Milkman: "Let me tell you right now the one important thing you’ll ever need to know: Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people too" (55). Milkman becomes a slave to greed as well, or hunger, as he calls it, for money (at least in the beginning). When he goes looking for the gold in Shalimar, he thinks: "The fact was he wanted the gold because it was gold and he wanted to own it. Free" (257).

I also saw, in the novel, how many prisons can exist for people. There is the obvious one, the Butlers’ house, where the killers of Jake/Macon Dead Sr. lived and where Macon and Pilate hid after their father’s death (and which just might look like the witch’s house – another prison – in Hansel and Gretel): "They couldn’t bear the stillness, the walls, the boredom of having nothing to do but wait for the day’s excitement of eating and going to the toilet. Anything was better than walking all day on carpeting, than eating the soft bland food that white people ate…" (166). There is also Milkman’s parents’ house on Not Doctor Street, from which Milkman could not seem to pry himself. But the characters imprison themselves. They allude to freedom, but they shackle themselves – Milkman with sex and liquor, Guitar with hate (although he calls it love), and Hagar with her obsession.

There is also an obvious connection between freedom and flying. All through his travels, Milkman’s old skin is peeling away, gradually freeing him from his former life – he loses his possessions, his suit is torn away, his shoes come apart, and his fine watch is splintered. It is in Shalimar, where Milkman finally has nothing, that he gains freedom: "So the thoughts came, unobstructed by other people, by things, even by the sight of himself. There was nothing here to help him – not his money, his car, his father’s reputation, his suit, or his shoes. In fact they hampered him" (277).  When he is finally free, he truly gains the ability to fly, which is what he longed for, even as a little boy looking out the window: "For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it" (337). I struggled a little bit with the freedom/flying/Byrd connection – perhaps it is that true freedom is always available, but that one must take it to have it? Like taking flight?

I looked up the Song of Solomon verses in the King James bible, but I made little headway in relating them to this novel (if there is even a connection). I wonder if anyone else saw anything in them?

Morrison in Song of Soloman takes up with the problem of identity.  Milkman Dead’s body is a tabula rasa that becomes littered with everyone else’s history, culture, and desire.  In fact, through much of the story there’s a question of whether Milkman exists at all (is it I’m Milkman already Dead or Milkman Dead still alive).  The first time Milkman feels real at all was when he knocked his father into the radiator.  The Oedipal maneuver by Morrison is one of many that seems to me overtly Freudian that she is actually mocking him and distancing herself from that kind of psychological reading.  The second time, or the first time something real had "filled his mouth with salt" (183), was when Guitar gave a "crisp concreteness" to the lost gold story told to him by his father (184).  Of course, the first time an event had formed "a clean-line definite self" of Milkman, turned out to be a hoax.  The gold that promised a life of freedom and comfort turned out to be the bones of a white man, which later turned out to be the remains of his grandfather.  The gold that symbolized a "flight" from Milkman’s stalemate life turned out the be the bones of a man who had actually taken "flight".  This knowledge in the end sets Milkman, from his perspective, free.  The road to self knowledge for Milkman is, in the very least resemblance, the same as the one for Oedipa Maas. 

There is so much in this novel, it makes me dizzy thinking about what to write.  Let me say, since it looks like I’m the first to blog on the book, some generalities: this story takes place in a specific time, in specific places, within real historical realities.  Milkman Dead shares his birthday with the author, which she gives on the first page.  Most of the novel is set in what seems like Southside Chicago, even though Dead repeatedly says he’s from Michigan.  And it deals with issues related to the "Great Migration," most importantly, race riots.  Guitar takes on this overtly political role as the black radical.  While she represents Guitar’s duty (an eye for an eye) in what I took for a positive light, Morrison by the end is distancing herself from this character.  It’s unclear what Morrison thinks of Milkman by the end. Did he finally realize his true self, as a part of the Song of Soloman, as a true member of this great diasporic family, or did he, like his grandfather before him, up and leave his family and problems behind.

If cherry jam is the enemy, the unlived "other" life, then raspbery twigs represent home, the whole being, the chosen way. Ginger represents the unreal, the supernatural, the place of longing and desire. The other shore. The other world. Ginger, not grown in the United States, is not a natural smell. The brain plays tricks on the senses and ginger is not actually smelled but felt. If you’ve ever drove through south Chicago, like I have many times, the range of smells is confounding. You know that there’s the Wrigley gum plant, the soap plants, the automobile plants of Gary, In., but these smells, all mingled together, never match up in the mind to the exact source. 

As complex and problematic as the novel was in its subtle shifts in time and narratives, I found the novel to be the most dynamic and interesting yet. While all of the naratives in Russ’s novel are rife with feminist rhetoric (even Jeaninne ultimately rejects the patriarchal assumptions of her self-worth, i.e. marriage and children), each woman is unique; none fold to the male ontological notion that all women are "essentially" feminine. They don’t possess the same characteristics, preferences, interests, and capabilites and none of the women want what the men in the novel think they want: child-rearing and a husband.

As Haraway articulates, as does Russ in multiple scenes throughout The Female Man, women (feminist cyborgs and the like) do not live cookie-cutter lives according to essentialist theories that prescribe to women what they should be because it is ‘their nature.’ This point is reminiscent of The Intuitionist/ Bell Hooks discussion in which I asserted that while Whitehead’s protagonist is a black woman who encounters other black ‘folk’ in the novel, Whitehead’s black characters are tremendously varied, none of whom lend to an essentialist ontology. Whether these characters conform to traditional archetypes of black experience (cliche’s according to some) or not, none are "essentially" the same. Similarly, Russ’s ‘female men,’ though they are all genetic analogues, are all very different people. Each is a product of her (what Bourdieu calls) habitus. We are told that their respective universes are alternatives to one another, and by extension parallels since each produces the four ‘analoguos’ women, but each world is a radically different environment from the next, which yields strikingly different subjects. According to John Fiske, "Culture is not concieved of as the asthetic ideals of form and beauty found in great art, or in more humanist terms as the voice of "the human spirit" that transcends boundaries of time and nation to speak of "a hypothetical universal man (the gender is deliberate- women play little or no role in this conception of culture)." Russ implies through her variant women that there is no universal experience of women. All lead unique, individuated lives within her respective ideological constructs (male in Joanna’s and Jeaninne’s realities). ‘Essentially,’ typical female experience is one of subordination according Haraway, but the plethora of possible female identites are limitless. Women must unite with other women consciously (Haraway) since women are so diverse. Women’s groups are not ‘natural,’ but they are conscious constructs. Russ’s female protagonists, such as Jael, the assassin, "The Reasoner," lives by her own constructed, conscious "hatred" of anything male. Janet, ‘the savior,’ is another utopian possibility of female identity not yet known in the world of the reader since we still live in a gendered society. 

Russ also implies that Janet’s world is the utopian reality in which women become the historians (Janet explicitly revels in her telling of Whileawayan history since the plague), the scientists, the dominant keepers of civilization, but this female uplift is only possible if gender is no longer a fissure in the human race. Haraway suggests that "imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis" may also create "a world without end." I don’t agree. Men and women are men and women. Whether gender is a social construct or a ‘natural’ phenomenon or combination of socialization and biology, I like being a woman and understood as being such. Thanks.

"The cyborg incarnation" of Janet is not bound to the history of men, which according to the anti-feminist characters in Russ’s novel, such as the men, is "a very bad mistake." As ‘the sharp glasses man’ at the party on page 43 tells Janet, "You can’t challenge men in their own fields." This of course signifies all fields in Joanna’s world, a world in which she has literally become ‘a female man’ because she has pursued a line of work in a ‘man’s field’ as a writer and, God forbid, a thinker. "If we are all Mankind, it follows to my interested and righteous and rightnow very bright and beady eyes, that I too am a Man and not at all a Woman."

I found the end of the novel to be problematic at the point at which Jael claims responsibility for Janet’s world, the genderless utopian future that neither Joanna nor Jeaninne will ever be a part of. How is it that Jael’s war and its objective, the ultimate demolition of the male species, can yield Janet’s world if the two women of different realities from two different times, Jael of the relative past and Janet of the ‘undetectable’ future, have crossed paths? According to an earlier passage in the novel on page seven, the narrative voice (perhaps Joanna, perhaps the author, perhaps a muddling of the two) informs the reader "the paradox of time travel ceases to exist, for the Past one visits is never one’s own Past but always somebody else’s; or rather, one’s visit to the Past instantly creates another Present…and what you visit is the Past belonging to that Present- an entirely different matter from your own Past." So, since Janet visited Joanna’s world, one alternative past, but a past that isn’t hers, and Jael’s world, another version of the past that also isn’t Janet’s, then neither Past is Janet’s. Jael tells Janet that the plague is a false record of history generated by the women in power after the war in Jael’s universe in which all men on earth were wiped out. However, though perhaps what Jael tells Janet was true prior to Janet’s time travel, Janet has existed or entered Jael’s reality, and therefore, everything from that point on changes retroactively. So, either the plague really did happen in Janet’s past prior to time travelling/ universe hopping or it was a lie. Either Janet’s entry into Jael’s universe instantly created another present in Janet’s world (one that is not Janet’s), in which the plague was a socially generated fabrication, or it wiped out Whileaway altogether, for if Jael’s war is the cause of a genderless reality, not the historical the plague of Janet’s actual present, then Janet’s Whileaway and its history no longer exist. Perhaps Janet can never return to Whileaway because it no longer exists. By visiting the Pasts that are not the pasts of her present, or visiting pasts that could have been her Past before the plague and therefore, retroactively changed everything, her former present reality might not exist in exactly the way it was before she started universe hopping, in which case, Whileaway is not Whileaway and never really was.

I’m still very confused about this, as evident in my rambling. I’m sure there are numerous combinations of realities and mutant worlds, and other possible impossibilities that Russ attempts to unfurl. I’d like to know more about them.

Here’s how you cite an online posting (according to Gibaldi’s MLA Handbook, p 233):

Author’s Name.  “Title of the Document.”  Online posting.  The date when the material was posted (day month year).  The name of the forum.  The date it was accessed <website address in brackets>.

For example:

Lavagnino, John.  “OCR and Handwriting.”  Online posting.  7 May 2002.  Humanist Discussion Group.  24 May 2002 <http://list.village.virginia.edu/
lists_archive/Humanist/v16/0001.html>.