Josh, you have written an incredibly insightful blog posting, one that shall be a worthy result of a Google search for the word \u201cwhat-me-worryism.\u201d Unfortunately, owing to the fact that you so thoroughly covered the topic and didn\u2019t present a follow-up question, I shall, from this point on, abandon it altogether.<\/p>\n
I have a general question about the class, one that has been troubling me (in one form or another) for a number of years now. Dr. Sample has gone through great pains to credit his sources (even the images in his PowerPoint), to ensure that living authors receive royalties for the works we read, and to reiterate the conventions of MLA. However, in light of Roland Barthes\u2019s essay \u201cThe Death of the Author,\u201d Jorge Luis Borges\u2019s \u201cPierre Minard, Author of Don Quixote,\u201d The photographs of Sherrie Levine, and Raymond Federman\u2019s experiments in \u201cplay-gerism,\u201d isn\u2019t this decidedly un-postmodern? Isn\u2019t the very concept of pastiche, mashing or the simulacral Vegas landscape predicated upon the appropriation of texts? I, of course, realize that for the sake of academic ethics, not to mention survival, we should be credited for our work, but my question still remains. Why is it acceptable to \u201csample\u201d but not to plagiarize? It\u2019s alright for the Coen Brothers to steal whole personas from Howard Hawks\u2019s \u201cHis Girl Friday\u201d in order to make \u201cThe Hudsucker Proxy,\u201d for Lucas and Spielberg to borrow from Kurosawa. When is it postmodernism, and when is it stealing?<\/p>\n
With that being said, I would like to present a second question, one about CoL49. As Dr. Sample pointed out, challenging the \u201cpostmoderness\u201d of a text is futile, yet, I wonder what about this text warrants its inclusion in a class entitled \u201cAmerican Postmodernism.\u201d Though we have only had a brief discussion as to the definition of the term, I will proffer my opinions and anxiously await your responses. <\/p>\n
1.\tThis book, as Dr. Sample articulated, \u201crevels in pop-culture.\u201d Whether it is a rock band, 1960\u2019s drug culture, or the appropriation of the detective novel, Pynchon makes use of these tropes to trouble the high\/low distinction.
\n2.\tThis text is a critique of modern reason. Unlike the traditional detective story, Oedipa finds no resolution. In fact, each clue only further complicates the mystery at hand. Moreover, the little mysteries in the book (i.e. the significance of the ridiculous names, symbols, radio station call letters (which spell obscene words when reversed) or acronyms) remain a mystery by the end. This would speak to our fellow student\u2019s complaint (I am terrible with names) about the lack of \u201ctruth.\u201d
\n3.\tWhile I didn\u2019t notice an obscene amount of intertextuality, the book makes reference to Nabokov\u2019s Lolita. This is significant as Lolita, in some sense, is another postmodern anti-detective story. Is Pynchon referencing an author who is known for his own intertextual references?<\/p>\n
I never know how to end these things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Josh, you have written an incredibly insightful blog posting, one that shall be a worthy result of a Google search for the word \u201cwhat-me-worryism.\u201d Unfortunately, owing to the fact that you so thoroughly covered the topic and didn\u2019t present a follow-up question, I shall, from this point on, abandon it altogether. I have a general … Continue reading “Play-gerism,” Postmodernism, and why Josh is only slightly smarter than me<\/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-7","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\/7","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=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}