I too found the reflexivity to be the most interesting aspect of this week\u2019s text. However, it was the existence of the Aldebaranians that troubled me the most. While it could be argued that they were created by Orr to fulfill his need of help and resolution (much like Josh argues that Dr. Haber is a necessary component of the psyche), it\u2019s problematic that they actually had a solution. If we are to read this meta-SF text in this manner, Orr had the solution to his problem all along (like Dorothy and her gaudy slippers). <\/p>\n
For some reason, this doesn\u2019t sit well with me\u2026 Orr was the jellyfish in the water, the helpless tool. <\/p>\n
I would argue that this text is not about the wants and needs of Orr, Dr. Haber, or the dreaming rocks, but rather the wants and needs of Ursula K. Le Guin. Dr. Haber exists because novels need an antagonist, and aliens with solutions exist because novels need resolution. Orr reflects the horror of a self-aware character (if we take this a lot further than I would care to, Orr represents the horror of a character being worked through multiple drafts of a SF novel.) I had to come to this conclusion, otherwise I would be stuck in the horror of a \u201cchicken or the egg\u201d quandary involving Orr and Er\u2019 perrehnne. <\/p>\n
At the risk of drastically changing the subject with an insufficient transitional sentence, I would like to address Michael Berube\u2019s article. I really don\u2019t understand his particular beef. In terms of postmodern philosophy, architecture, art (as demonstrated in the Harvey chapter we were assigned), etc., I understand that we are mired in a nebulous world that is uncomfortably described as \u201cpostmodern.\u201d However, in terms of literature\u2019s use of this term, it seems relatively straightforward. Teachers break time periods into movements, and call those movements names. Why should the simple fact that elements of pomo\u2019s distinctive characteristics exist in previous novels trouble the label more than any other movement? True, Don Quixote, The Odyssey and even the Bible are reflexive; does this mean we should scrap the whole project? For that matter, doesn\u2019t every literary movement have predecessors that shared similar traits? Isn\u2019t the entire modernist movement predicated on a neo-classical sensibility? <\/p>\n
There is something starkly different between the writings of Faulkner, Eliot and cummings and the texts produced by Vonnegut, Vollmann and Pynchon. That difference needs a name. My teachers called it postmodernism. While it may be useful to trouble this distinction, I find it no more useful than troubling any categories in all of literature. However, to do so would be very postmodern (not to mention quixotic).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I too found the reflexivity to be the most interesting aspect of this week\u2019s text. However, it was the existence of the Aldebaranians that troubled me the most. While it could be argued that they were created by Orr to fulfill his need of help and resolution (much like Josh argues that Dr. Haber is … Continue reading The Novel\u2019s Unnamed Character and More Unintellig(able)ent Ramblings as to the Meaning of Postmodernism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}