space – Page 2 – American Postmodernism

Layering Signifiers, Space, and “Reality” in House of Leaves

Before I get into my fragmented points about signifiers, space, and “reality” (vs. simulation) in House of Leaves, I wanted to add to Sara’s point about absence in the book. I noticed that the “narrator,” if we can call him that, is named “Truant” which can be used (in the noun form) to mean “one who is absent without permission” or “one who shirks off responsibility” (www.dictionary.com). Obviously, both definitions incite conversation (given Truant’s sometimes less-than-responsible behavior), but in terms of a conversation on absence, Truant serves as both the signifier and the signified: he conveys the message, and he himself is the message. Truant tells Zampano’s story (which has Zampano telling Navidson’s story), so he serves as one signifer for another signifier. Then, his name reflects the absence in the story he is telling; the message of absence is, ironically, present in the narrator’s name.

Along with several other posts, I was fascinated by the layering of this story; not only is the narrator telling Zampano’s story who’s telling Navidson’s story, but also, the story is a fragmented novel about a fragmented story about a fragmented film. The layering of media, or signifiers, really strikes me as Postmodern. Foucault explains in “Of Other Spaces” that a train “is something through which one goes,.. something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also something that goes by” (24). In the same sense, House of Leaves presents, what Foucault calls “the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (24). The multi-layered signifiers demonstrate the relationship between each story, but interweave to create a fragmentary and, at the same time, mirrored experience. Truant becomes so engrossed in Zampano’s story (at least by p. 79, we know something of this) that he, too, becomes somewhat agoraphobic and paranoid; Zampano’s reality becomes Truant’s reality. (We can speak of “reality” next, in relation to Baudrillard’s article.) Even before the transference between the living Truant and the dead Zampano, we have reason to believe that Zampano has experienced some of the same obsession with space and reality that Navidson had. As far as I am in the book, I feel ill-equipped to go further with the analysis of transference and multi-layered signifiers, but let me try to assess Baudrillard’s argument on “simulation” and “reality.”

Baudrillard writes, “Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible” and this: “Simulation is infinitely more dangerous [than transgression and violence] since it always suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing than a simulation” (177). When I read that, I immediately considered what we know of the suddenly-appearing hallway in Navidson’s film. (I say “film” because I think we must always consider that “reality” is mediated by a signifier, and thus may not be reality at all.) I wondered whether, at page 79, whether we are right to question the reality of the story. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve already been terrified a few times by Danielewski’s story (let’s do give him a little credit since, really, it is his story, and not Navidson’s or Zampano’s or Truant’s), but it could be that we are really reading a “simulation” of reality. This is, after all, someone’s film; dare we remember the “true” story that was The Blair Witch Project. In any case, I think Baudrillard is relevant in reminding us, at this early stage of our reading, that there is no clear demarcation between what is real and what is imagined; in fact, there may be nothing that is “real” anymore. Law and order have been lost in 1/4 of an inch, or whatever the measurement turns out to be.

And yet, the imagined space is terrifying. We do not believe the “always” as little Daisy calls them could possibly open up and envelop Navidson as they do, and the “growl,” what is that? A monster? Come on now, Danielewski. And yet, and yet, I am shakin’ in my boots. The imagined has taken the place of the real, it has effectively inhabited multiple spaces through multiple signifiers, and it has done so in a positively disturbing way.

ISO Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Pin

When approaching a text as markedly enigmatic as House of Leaves, I am reminded of a climatic moment from “A Christmas Story.” To set scene, we find Ralphie racing into his parents home, package in hand. After weeks of fastidiously checking the mail, it (finally!) arrives. The Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Pin. Ralphie, rapt with anticipation at the prospect of decoding his first Orphan Annie secret message, scurries up the stairs of his parents’ home to lock himself away in the bathroom. He will need complete solace to complete the serious task at hand.

It could be said that reading House of Leaves requires a similar form of dedicated concentration and blind enthusiasm. 79 pages into the book there’s no telling what the message will be or if the efforts will be worthwhile. The dual texts intersect at (seemingly) random times, interrupting each other with hiccups, rants, and footnotes. The two narratives differ in tone, the former a confessional, the latter a journalistic/scholarly voice. In conjunction with the introduction, the layering of the two voices manages to both undermine and augment the authenticity of the story. The fact and fiction are used interchangeably, ad nauseum. Danielewski invents various citations, placing them alongside of actual documents. At one point in the text he quotes from Borges’ “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote.” To this he appends another citation, citing Menard as if he were an actual person [he is not]. He then compares the real quotation with the faux one in an effort to support Zampanò’s echo theory. How are we to read this occurrence?[1] Is the reader to suspend belief throughout, marry fact and fiction and trust that the author will provide the tools necessary to digest the text? Or is the reader to look to points such as these and use them as evidence to dismiss/ignore the echo theory? Or does the author assume that the reader won’t recognize the inconsistency or, if he does, won’t place any importance on it? At this point in the text, there’s no way to know what the right answer is, instead we must pick a path and move forward. If we are wrong, we can only hope that the desire to understand the text fully will compel us to revisit it. As Borges notes, “Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.”[2]

But will we reread? Given where we are at page 79, we must admit the potential necessity. Are the narratives compelling enough to revisit concomitantly or will we find ourselves skimming through passages looking for breadcrumbs? Will we end up scouring the internet in attempt to circumnavigate a tiresome task? Or will we find the drive to master the text, embracing it fully, perhaps even creating our own footnotes and appendices? Or, like Ralphie, will all our efforts be repaid by a simple: “Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine”?

[1] Must we send away for a Secret Society Decoder Pin?

[2] Borges, Jorge. “A Weary Man’s Utopia.” The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory. Trans. Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin, 2007

The Absence of…

Maybe it’s a copout to focus on absence, because what novel has everything? House of Leaves, however, seems to delight in its own absences, and furthermore build upon them. The absence of ¼”, for example, sets the obsession with space rolling. The whole phenomenon described is that of impossibility, that of the house being bigger than itself, or at least not easily contained.

And one of the biggest absences is that of a complete story. While the supposed narrators supposedly make every attempt possible to leave in everything and cite all sources, we can’t help but notice the absence of, say, the movie itself. Truant says plainly that many of the footnotes aren’t even accurate and that one of them is covered by an ink stain and others unintelligible. You get both the detailed analysis of a movie you’ll never see by an unreliable dead blind man, and the reactions of a slowly maddening Truant by way of disjointed footnotes. There’s this whole question of authenticity, noted upfront on page 3, which brings in the idea of artifice vs. reality. Even the introduction is written by a fictional person. The book seems to pretty much be a self-proclaimed fraud drenched in painstaking details to deny its fraudulence.

Here we have a photographer/moviemaker, a person skilled at manipulating light and space in order to “capture reality.” Someone in the book mentions Escher at some point, and I’m reminded of anamorphosis, that weird process of playing with perspective to create space that isn’t there. Take, for example, the St. Ignatius church in Italy, where the dome is painted so as to appear, when you’re standing at a certain point on the floor, to exist. Really the church ceiling is flat on the outside:

There is also the famous Ames room, an optical illusion where part of a room extends further than it appears, so when two people stand on either side of it, one looks tiny and the other like a giant. This is an illusion. Observe the creepy children:

Anamorphosis is a centuries-old technique (if I remember right, it started as a way to obscure political cartoons from kings), and has practical purposes (arrows and directions drawn on streets are distorted so as to look normal from a driver approaching in a car). It shows up in film, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Jim Carrey as a disproportional child under a table). It’s also used in sidewalk art:

Product placement!

Getting back to absence, I’d just like to point out there seems to be absence of feeling, especially with Karen (“she has no room for him” p. 12), and Navidson’s and Truant’s absent childhood families which supposedly lead to an absence of love and conflicted emotions later on.

There is also an absence of grammar. I realize that’s a bad segue. But seriously. Errors occur most often in Truant’s footnotes. For example, he keeps saying “I should of..” or “I could of”. While these seem to imply he’s just not a grammarian or that the “editors” hesitate to lose the contrived authenticity of the thing, there are also those which seem more intentional.

On page 31, Zampanó gets flowery about coffee spilling over until there is “nothing more than a brown blot on the morning paper” and then Truant footnotes it, saying the passage is unnecessary but left in so as to avoid absences, keep it authentic. However, Truant misspells morning, saying instead: “Easily that whole bit from ‘coffee arcing tragically’ down to ‘the mourning paper’ could have been cut.” Not only does the substitution of mourning for morning seem intentional, but it also serves to target Truant as unreliable (not that his drug-infused rants and ramblings don’t already do so).

There are at least two places where the word “pieces” is represented with “pisces.” What is this about? On page 41, Zampano’s talking about Echo and says Pan “tears her to pisces.” In the appendix of Johnny’s mother’s crazy letters, she says “such terrible news tore me to pisces.” (599)

There is also some discussion on page 45 of the substitution of “care” for “caves”. I wonder if these misspellings are meant to have the effect of echoes. Aloud, mourning sounds the same as morning. Later Daisy says “Always” is a game, which the narrator notes might echo “Hallways”. He also says: “An echo, while implying an enormity of a space, at the same time also defines it, limits it, and even temporarily inhabits it” (46). Maybe this has something to do with the hallways which constantly redefine and shift outside and inside of the house, carrying the person within them along.

The Inside-Your-Outside Machine

House of Leaves has given me a lot to think about. Firstly, I see a kinship between the monstrous house and the book. The book is in a sense bigger inside than its outside, most obviously in the reams and reams of footnotes and the constant references to sources and people and art that exist outside of the book. It shares a lot of the aesthetic conceits we’ve seen in other postmodern works, namely, the cobbling together of difference voices and pieces of writing, the use of an interrupted format, the presentation of itself as a puzzle, and the voice of Truant that constantly jerks us out of the other narratives and brings us to Truant’s present, forcing us to share it with him, along with his difficulties regarding Zampano’s text. It reminds me of a hypertext article on the Internet, where every highlighted word brings you to another work, and theoretically that can proceed infinitely, from link to link to link without end.

The critical texts both deal with space, and as such remind us that we are dealing with a space that is breaking all of the rules. Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces” argues that we are living in a particular age with a particular relationship to space that is not the same as the ages that proceeded it and hypothically will not be the same as the ages that come after. Foucault writes: “These are opposition that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public spave, between the space of leisure and that of work. All these are still nurtured by the hidden space of the sacred” (Foucault 23). Yet Navidson’s placement of the Hi-8 cameras throughout the house collapses these distinctions. We can take this a step further with the Internet and the idea of simultaneously living “private” lives while also living the same life simultaneously in the most public and anonymous way possible. (In fact I think that cyberspace might be the metaphor in examining these works).

I found Jean Baudrillard’s piece much harder to understand (in contrast I’ve always thought that Foucault has a singularly clear way of writing) but I was also fascinated by his description of religious and religious iconography as one way of looking at the idea of simulacra. Having attended a Baptist church for a number of years, I heard many sermons on why the Baptist cross is an empty cross as opposed to the occupied Catholic crucifix-the argument being that Jesus was not in fact on the cross anymore, and portraying him thus in a sense “weakened” him. Really a ridiculous argument after a fashion but it aligns perfectly with Baudrillard’s argument about the substitution of the simulacrum for the real. The argument about Disneyland didn’t resonate quite so much as I’ve never been there and therefore have to imagine it, but his point that it is “meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the “real” world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere” (Baudrillard 172). In a sense then, are the adults pretending to be adults pretending to indulge their childishness when in fact they are pretending to be what they are already? And how does the idea of the simulacra relate to House of Leaves?

While this article leaves me with more questions than answers, it’s particularly helpful to use this paradigm to look at economic and political systems. I think it has a particular relevance today, when we are learning exactly how ephemeral, even imaginary, our concept of wealth has become-the vanishing of imaginary dollars that may never have existed in the first place, or the concept of “value” that fluctuates wildly and is completely divorced from any tangible value in the first place.

Fragmentation, Ends vs. Means, and the Unexplainable

Before beginning my “official” post, I must apologize if I repeat what has already been said in previous posts. I’m still getting used to the idea of a blog and I feel the need to write and post my individual, uninfluenced response to the text before reading what others have written. Obviously, this method sort of defeats the purpose of the blog, and if I could do a better job of posting earlier in the week it would be fine, so I obviously need to work on posting earlier…or developing a new approach to the blog. J

Now to the real post…

I absolutely loved Le Guin’s novel! I found The Lathe of Heaven to be quite moving and incredibly beautiful, and it has earned a spot on my list of top favorite works. However, I do have many questions about the book, and I am struggling with the fact that it seems so very different from what we have read thus far in the course. (I also found Lethem’s “Super Goat Man” to be uncharacteristic of what I was thinking was characteristic of Postmodernism, so, as Professor Sample said, it seems that defining Postmodernism will be a continual puzzle.)

The fragmentation quality seen in other Postmodern works thus far is not as clear in the novel. Le Guin has a beautiful, poetic-like style. The novel does not have a fragmented style like Pynchon’s work. George’s dreams and their effect on the changing realities could be considered fragmentation, though. Through the dreams and the interchanging realities, there is also an element of surrealism. George is in the center of the variations of reality and true reality becomes confused. Heather even refers to him as “Either Orr” since he is stuck in the middle (90). (This nickname also represents Heather’s shifting views of George; at times she views him as weak and at others she views him as her rock.)

As in John Cage’s ”Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)”, references to a deteriorating environment appear throughout Le Guin’s novel. (Le Guin also seems to criticize the hypocrisy of war in her work, another motif in Cage’s piece.) I found it interesting that Le Guin repeatedly refers to the 1980’s as a turning point in the decline of society and the environment. Also, George’s dream of the end of the world was in 1998, and the “true present” of the text is 2002. It seems that Le Guin’s work could be interpreted as foreboding danger, destruction, and decline to come, and, since it was written in the 1970’s, it seems she holds, or at least portrays, the belief that the destruction was fast approaching. While this message carries through the novel, there are also some conflicting views, such as the idea that “great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear” (121). Although it does not necessarily seem consistent with the novel as a whole or with the time, it seems that Le Guin’s work could be interpreted as presenting the fears of destruction as unfounded since she often shows the destruction as self-imposed. Also, she seems to oppose irrational fears of space by presenting the reader with kind Aliens.

Along these lines, Le Guin raises the question of whether the ends are more significant than the means. Haber seems to hold the view that the end justifies whatever means necessary to evoke the change (the end), whereas George believes that the means (costs) must be taken into account and individuals should not act as God to bring about change. However, the Alien seems to share Haber’s view in regards to work/production. Rather than provide the reader with a definite opinion or message on the debate, Le Guin seems to present us with the debate itself—the reader, and society, must weigh the cost of their actions.

It’s clear that Le Guin presents that idea that some things simply are unexplainable. George reaches this “high attainment” (26), this ability to leave things as unexplainable. However, Dr. Haber can’t let things be (as George repeatedly argues that they must) and he believes that things must not only be changed, but also explained. George warns him, that he is “handling something outside reason” (page 86). He may have good goals (ends), but he is approaching them the wrong way. George tells Haber he is “trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn’t suited to the job.” Dr. Haber is ultimately destroyed in the end whereas George, who is able to let things be, “survives” (105) So maybe Le Guin’s view of the ends vs. means debate is more clear than it originally appears…

I’d like to have a better understanding of how this idea of the ends vs. the means ties in with the commentary on environmental destruction. I also want to have a better understanding of the ending of the novel. I feel a bit unclear about Haber’s dream. Haber obviously placed his own self-interests first, but he did seem to have good intentions. What was that final dream? Why would he dream for such destruction…or did he? I guess I’m trying to match up where the dreams intersect and make sense of what would have changed when. But then I’m trying to give reason to what may be intended to be out of the grasp of reason.

The Signifier and Signified in The Lathe of Heaven

Let me start off by saying that I genuinely enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven. I was trying to verbalize to a friend just what it was that attracted me about this particular book, and I found myself describing my fascination with Le Guin’s complex layering of new worlds, especially since these worlds are both purposefully and accidentally created. This calls to mind the following excerpt in Harvey’s article: “Whereas modernists had presupposed that there was a tight and identifiable relation between what was being said (the signified or ‘message’) and how it was being said (the signifier or ‘medium’), poststructuralist thinking sees these as ‘continually breaking apart and re-attaching in new combinations” (49). Just as Haber attempts to control George Orr’s dreams and manipulate the present, he constantly fails (despite his confidence that he has succeeded) in creating a better world. In “reality” (which sounds so out of place when a describing a book like this), Haber is attempting to exert power through his own message (or “signified”) which he mediates through Orr’s dreams (which act as the “signifier”), and yet, the outcome is never what Haber intends. Postmodernism focuses on the continual “breaking apart” of what is intended and what is understood, and so does Le Guin’s story. Haber believes he can make the world a better place, but it is his medium, Orr’s dreams, which no one can control.

Orr himself realizes his own role in this complex re-working of past, present, and future. After killing off billions of people in an attempt to rid the world of “overpopulation” (60) and stopping the war on Earth only to start another between humans and aliens, Orr says, “Out of the frying pan into the fire… Don’t you see, Dr. Haber, that’s all you’ll get from me? Look, it’s not that I want to block you, to frustrate your plans… Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you’re trying to use, not my rational mind. Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it’s easier to conceive of than the motives of war. But you’re handling something outside of reason. You’re trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn’t suited to the job” (86).

The disconnect between the signified and the signifier is not the only important factor in this story; the fact is that the “new combinations” of what is meant to change about the world (the “problem”) and what actually changes (the “cure”) just creates another problem in its place. Orr understands that his dreams serve as the medium for Haber’s ideas, and he is able to see that the repercussions are far too vast to continue on this downward slope. In the end, Orr is able to settle happily into a much-adjusted world. Heather Lalache says, “I thought you could change the world. Is this the best that you could do—this mess?” (175), and though she is fairly unaware of how much worse it had been and how much worse it could get, the reader should sense that this is the best he could do. Neither he nor Haber really could control the medium, as it is an irrational unconscious which has created these multiple worlds, and so this end to the nonsense, the aftermath of all the horror Haber has done, is actually a gift. When postmodernism began to recognize a creator’s inability to control the received message, they also invited a whole slew of science fiction that toys with the more metaphorical meaning of a creator, its creation, and its reception in the world. This is especially true in The Lathe of Heaven.

As a sidenote, I wanted to point out that after reading Harvey’s section on technology, in particular the “the proliferation of television use”(61) after having also read about postmodern art, I could not stop thinking about a piece I saw last year at the Smithsonian American Art Museum which combines television and art in a way I have never seen otherwise. Nam June Paik’s “Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii” depicts each of the fifty state proportionally with various sized televisions which continuously roll representative footage of each state. For example, “The Wizard of Oz” plays on the televisions that constitute Kansas and “Oklahoma” plays, obviously, on the Oklahoma screens. This piece really forced me to question how television can serve as an art medium in a more abstract and meaningful way than just as the way we watch “Lost” or “American Idol.” Check it out, either with this link or in person if you get the chance!

For a more interactive site & information on the exhibit itself, look here: http://americanart.si.edu/collections/interact/zoom/paik.cfm

For digital images, look here: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM4438

Either dream of world peace OR turtles from outer space

I also thought that Le Guin was nudging the concept of either/or with George’s personality and obviously his name. The first thing I thought of with the logical concept of either/ or is the Elliott Smith record (note a very postmodern pop culture reference), the other is Kierkegaard’s philosophical doctrine; the latter I think has a little more weight in this discussion so I’ll think I’ll pursue it. I don’t know too much about Kierkegaard but I know he typically wrote about concepts like fear and dread and doubt of religion. I searched Wikipedia for Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and found that the “Either” side of his argument is a worldview that adopts a purely aesthetic lifestyle such as drinking, casual sex, vanity, and any other indulgencies that satisfy the self. The “Or” side of the argument, which is given by a judge, purposes that in the later stages of life one adopts an ethical lifestyle, one that acts responsibly and morally. The doctrine attempts to answer Aristotle’s question “How should we live?” which I thought to be the question Le Guin purposes to the characters of The Lathe of Heaven.

Dr. Haber is an aggressive man but not evil; it is repeated several times, even by George, that he is benevolent: one page 83 “Haber wanted to make the world better for humanity.” However, Haber’s idea of “How should we live?” is presumptuous. He thinks that his idea of a world will be good for the people, but George knows that no one can possibly be responsible enough to make a decision that will affect everyone. George disproves Haber’s snake bit analogy by arguing that no man can make a decision for all of mankind: on page 156 George says, “Just believing you’re right and your motives are good isn’t enough. You have to be…in touch. Haber isn’t in touch…means are all we’ve got…he can’t let be.” And on page 140 George says to Haber, “We’re in the world, not against it. It doesn’t work to try to stand outside things and run them that way…the world is, no matter how we think it ought to be. You have to be with it. You have to let it be (one of several Beatles references).” In reference to Kierkegaard’s book, George Orr represents the ethical side in his decision to try and stop dreaming and stop Haber’s dream suggestions, hence the name – Orr.

I don’t think George is merely average and timid. I think that his discourse with Haber in chapters 6 and especially chapters 9 and 10 shows that George is really contemplating this power and showing the flaws in Haber’s dream suggestions. He is living in a world that is pulling him one way or the other, either with Haber’s ideology or Heather’s assertiveness. His passivity is certainly there, but it is marked by intelligence (most likely an average person with this ability would make his life not average).

I also had trouble seeing this text as postmodern when it had prevailing science fiction themes. But I think that the altercation of reality by George’s dreams is consistent with Postmodernism’s critique of reality. Portland is constantly morphing yet no one seems to question this bizarre reality, except George. The question of what is reality is brought into question which Postmodern text attempts to ask. Also, Harvey brings up the connection between postmodernism and science fiction in his essay, “The boundary between fiction and science fiction has dissolved, while postmodernist characters often seem confused as to which they are in, and how they should act with respect to it.” If anyone is confused in what world they live in it is George Orr.

Free Will vs. Control, and the “Problem of Perspective”

The quote Jennifer mentioned from Harvey’s article describes Orr’s experience perfectly. Harvey discusses the coexistence of fragmentary “possible worlds” in an “impossible Space” superimposed upon one another (48), and says that rather than unraveling a mystery (the old detective story theme again), characters must simply ask which world they are in and what they’re supposed to do there. It’s interesting that the novel is told from multiple perspectives. If it were only told from only Orr’s point of view, we might start to doubt his reliability as a narrator.

Orr’s situation is unusual for a lot of reasons, one being that only he and others present at the time of his hypnosis register the shifting of reality. Not only does he realize it, but he also remembers all other realities as well. This forces him to feel at odds with the world and overwhelmed by his circumstances (like Oedipa and her many counterproductive clues): “He took it as it came. He was living almost like a young child, among actualities only. He was surprised by nothing, and by everything” (126). I think this confusion plays off of the fragility of memory itself. Memory is already unreliable–no two people remember the same story exactly the same way with all the same details.

Despite memory inconsistency, there is still this idea that linear history and memory continuity provides some frame of reference for our daily lives. But Harvey says: “Postmodernism abandons all sense of historical continuity and memory, while simultaneously developing an incredible ability to plunder history and absorb whatever it finds there as some aspect of the present” (54). Orr’s dreams completely disrupt his sense of the past, which makes for a disturbing, turbulent reality.

Throughout the book there’s this ethical struggle between Orr and Haber. At one point Orr wonders if other people have the same gift he has, and if so, whether everyone’s reality is constantly being replaced and renewed, to the awareness of only the dreamer. If so, he says it’s probably better that the rest of the world is ignorant to these constant changes. This hypothesis would basically wipe out free will, even by the dreamer controlling the world (as dreams are typically uncontrollable). Their reality becomes like a dream itself, in which there is no free will anyway. The mind does what it wants, creates its own reality, and subjects that reality upon others’ histories.

Does this novel imply the absence of some sort of God or higher power, then, too? The whole premise is that of “playing God,” naturally and technologically, at the same time as hesitating to do so. Orr is a draftsman. He understands the logical design of elements, but believes that “it’s wrong to force the pattern of things” (82). Haber, who seems to believe he is truly doing humanity a service, overlooks the wiping out of thousands of people as well as all historical significance. (History, by the way, threw me off at the part when Orr enters the Antique shop. For example, why was Eisenhower still there in photograph form, and was he gray too?)

One last thing I wanted to bring up is about human complexity. Orr, whose name is pretty overtly used as symbolism (he’s Either, Orr, the perfectly average human, not a superman despite his immense power), is pretty wishy-washy almost always. Yet he is the one experiencing the most humanlike questioning of ethics (at the same time as being used as an object, a tool). Heather is supposedly nonexistent in the gray world solely because her skin had once been brown. And Haber is often seen as the most complex and powerful of all of them, although he becomes quite vegetable-like at the end. Actually, he’s compared to an onion, too: “slip off layer after layer of personality, belief, response, infinite layers, no end to them, no center to him. Nowhere that he ever stopped, had to stop…No being, only layers” (81). There is no person under the onion, just like Oedipa and her millions of clothes. How is it that these two contrasting people can exist in world after world, but Heather disappears?

Science Fiction/Postmodernism and Harvey

After reading The Lathe of Heaven, I felt more confused about what postmodernism is because I would have easily classified this as science-fiction. Let me point out a few things first: I understand that a lot of different texts from a variety of genres can be postmodern (fiction, nonfiction, etc.) just like you can draw upon different schools of analysis (like postmodernism) in relation to one text. And I also understand, since we’ve been talking about it nearly every class, how technology is a huge part of postmodernism—it interfering with or transforming our lives, it being seen as an extension of our bodies, etc. So, I’m not saying that I don’t understand how this book can be called postmodern.

What I’m confused by is this: A great deal of science-fiction deals with technology in some way, some in very similar ways to The Lathe of Heaven, so where does science fiction stop and postmodernism begin? Like, take The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This book is very similar to The Lathe of Heaven. In The Lathe of Heaven, a man’s mind can change reality, and with the aid of a machine (the Augmenter), this reality can be changed more often. In The Time Machine, a man invents a machine to change reality and subsequently does just that in the world he eventually finds himself in. So, is The Time Machine postmodern? Surely, one can argue that The Time Machine contains the same technological interference and perhaps even technological extensions of the body as does The Lathe of Heaven, not to mention a similar notion of rethinking/retelling history. But this book is widely considered classic science fiction. I mean, science fiction really is, by definition, a genre that has to do with envisioned futures and envisioned sciences and envisioned technology. So, wouldn’t most science fiction be postmodern?

David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity cleared up some of my confusion. He writes: “The postmodern novel… [is] a shift from the kind of perspectivism that allowed the modernist to get a better bearing on the meaning of a complex but nevertheless singular reality, to the foregrounding of questions as to how radically different realities may coexist, collide, and interpenetrate. The boundary between fiction and science fiction has, as a consequence, effectively dissolved, while postmodernist characters often seem confused as to which world they are in, and how they should act with respect to it.”

So, it’s been a while since I read The Time Machine, but if I’m remembering it correctly, the main character doesn’t grapple with the same questions and complexity that George Orr struggles with. I don’t remember enough of the exposition in The Time Machine to really comment on the main character’s mindset, but I do remember it being a straight travel through time to a future that he eventually saved. This is, of course, not the same in The Lathe of Heaven, where all of these potential realities, to use Harvey’s words, coexisted, collided, and interpenetrated. Later, Harvey reinforces this thought by saying that postmodernists can’t “aspire to any unified representation of the world” but rather, that the world is, for a postmodernist, full of “perpetually shifting fragments.” This, combined with his earlier notes on science fiction, seems to line up well when distinguishing between modernism and postmodernism and thus The Time Machine and The Lathe of Heaven.

Harvey also cleared up the genre aspect, insofar as modernists seeing works “as examples of genre” and postmodernists seeing “a work as a text.” In other words, then, echoing my thoughts in the first paragraph, lots of texts, despite affiliated “genre,” can be postmodern. Oh! And that list on the schematic differences between modernism and postmodernism was awesome. I think that was exactly what I needed—something visual or straight-up about the differences between the two. By contrasting the differences, I’m able to understand both what postmodernism is and is not much better than I had understood it previously.

Calisthenics of Perception

In The Crying of Lot 49, toward the end Oedipa lays out four choices to try to make sense what is going on around her. She has stumbled upon real Tristero, a vast underground network; she has hallucinated “it”; she is the victim of a plot to deceive her; or she is insane. When she considers the first option, she equates with the reality of Tristero “a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie”. It’s interesting that she does not equate hallucinations with insanity here, and jkathrynfulton’s point about Oedipa’s perception divided into perhaps real or perhaps dreamed events highlights the inability or unwillingness on the parts of both Oedipa and the narrator to clearly differentiate between the two for the reader.

But of course, just at the climax of a traditional detective story when the “crime” and “criminal” are about to be revealed and explained, the novel ends. We never do get an answer from the story about which of the four options it was. In Holquist’s exploration of The Voyeur, he points out that the detective story cliché of the power of the rational mind to conquer all is reversed, and that the reader becomes a detective only to discover the cipher zero of the poster title, which parallels the crying of lot 49 – something unheard, unfinished, which the reader must perform. The solution lies not in the book, but “in the experience of the reader himself” (151). “It is not a story – it is a process,” Holquist asserts (153), and this process of “strangeness” (155) is a “kind of calisthenics of perception” (153). This wording recalls Jameson’s exhortation for the experience of art to alter our outdated “perceptual habits” so that we are able to comprehend the global capitalist reality (80).

However I am still unclear on exactly the crime or mystery that is to be solved here. Holquist references “cosmic detectives, who wish to solve the crime of their own existence” (154) and says that in metaphysical detective stories it is life rather than death that is to be solved. Jameson cites a “breakdown of temporality” and breakdown in relationships between signifiers creating an overwhelming sensation of the signifier in isolation (73). This description of the signifier in isolation echoes the Word that Oedipa can never quite get a grasp on, as well as her hallucinatory states. Failure of communication is a recurring theme in The Crying of Lot 49, but I was never sure what exactly is trying to be communicated.

When I was talking to my friend about Jameson, my friend retorted that he personally had no void to be dramatized, no gap in perception. I reflected that I didn’t either – that I knew of. And how could people living in the postmodern age ever know anything else to compare our lived experience to? Even the seemingly idyllic past can supposedly never be accessed in the postmodern age as anything but simalcra, so is this comparison just a straw man? Or is Jameson outdated and my friend now fully evolved into a perceiving being, plugged into his internet feed? To what extent does the “violence to our flabby habits of perception” (156) exacted by the experience of postmodern art depend on the subject having perceptions formed in the modernist age?

If the problem is the overwhelming sensation of the isolated signifier, the description of that experience is reminiscent of medieval religious experiences, so does that sensation qualify as the new violence without that the violence within of the new art is supposed to protect us from? Jameson implies that this evolution of perception is part of a long historical process of humanity evolving to comprehend the changing world. So why is this a problem now? Why do we have to do something about it?

Oedipa “More”- A Postmodern Protagonist

I would like to address Pynchon’s choice of Oedipa Maas. Interestingly, Pynchon chose to center his story on the experiences and investigations of a housewife before the Feminist movement. Indicative of the time in which the story was written, Oedipa is a housewife; however, Oedipa does much more than the average housewife usually would. Yes, the story begins with her return home from a Tupperware party, but her role as protagonist serves as that of a detective, even an amateur scholar. Then again, she is the product of her experiences, in some ways, and so are others in the story, particularly women.

For example, Oedipa does not ask nor does she expect to be the executor of Pierce’s estate, nor does she choose many of her experiences in the book. Even the Remedios Varo painting in Mexico which makes Oedipa cry under “her dark green bubble shades” depicts “a number of girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void” (21). The women in the painting are stuck, prisoners, trying to “fill the void” that, one could argue, is their lives. This calls to mind the Jameson article and his assessment of Postmodern art, particularly Munch’s The Scream which Jameson says “deconstructs its own aesthetic of expression, all the while remaining imprisoned within it “(62). The same mediation occurs with the art within art in the Varo painting and in Oedipa’s interpretation of their hopeless attempt to “fill the void.” Both Oedipa and the women in the painting are, in part if not completely, helpless and powerless, but at the same time, they are working to fill some void or in Oedipa’s case, to deduce a potentially arbitrary and nonexistent mystery.

Todd Kelly and Professor Sample both commented on Oedipa’s name, and Professor Sample suggested we consider the implications of the last name “Maas” in terms of the Spanish term for “more” (“mas”). As Oedipa tries to make sense of the postal service, the stamps, and the horns, among other things, she is demonstrating her almost insatiable curiosity about life. As opposed to the passivity I discussed above, in most of the book, Oedipa exercises control and power over herself (and sometimes her surroundings) as she resourcefully attempts to make sense of the seeming senseless “mystery.” She is going out into the world, away from her husband in particular (and after her own mystery, her own role as the executor of the estate) and discovering a complicated set of connections that to others have often overlooked.

On the other hand, Oedipa’s encounters are often mediated by other associations, often seemingly random associations, a fact which indicates some passivity in her experiences. Furthermore, both we, the readers, and Oedipa are left waiting for the anonymous bidder of Lot 49. The story ends with Oedipa waiting, which can be interpreted as both passive and active, but also leaves a void, a mystery unsolved, for the reader which makes the experience itself almost seem fruitless.

I do not, despite what I have written, find the novel or Oedipa’s role in the novel to be depressing or desperate. On the contrary, I see Oedipa as revolutionary as a character; her curiosity and deftness in uncovering the traces of a mystery (though not the entire mystery) reveal a new kind of Postmodern female. I would argue that Postmodernism, as Jameson explains, has more to do with fragmentation than the alienation so important to Modernism, and thus, it is not Oedipa’s alienation as a character (though she is depicted as very lonely at times) or her inability to solve this mystery which holds her back, but rather, the fragmented story she is trying to piece together. It is almost necessary to Postmodernism that the story remain fragmented rather than whole or complete or even solved; thus, Oedipa is left perpetually waiting for “more” or “Maas”, and her story is never quite finished.

I have much more I want to discuss concerning Oedipa, in particular, but I will save some of that for class.

The Experience of Postmodernism

Many of the previous posts have discussed this feeling that it is unsettling and seemingly impossible to try to deduce Postmodernism, and I wanted to say that while I feel the same way, I also think it is comforting to consider that the experience itself may be the point. I get the impression that these writings intend to unsettle us and that unsettling feeling can also apply to understanding the point of the pieces themselves and the point of the movement in general.

I, too, felt the inclination to look at the stories as an aggregate group. I concur with Alana that the first thing I noticed was “the element of something unsettling or something that doesn’t ‘fit’-that forces you to stop and think or retrace your step as it jars you out of the rhythm of reading.” I, too, was more than uncomfortable with the content in DeLillo’s story, and though we had no warning of the content, I think that is, again, part of the experience. While I had to tell myself multiple times to look past my own offense at the content, I can admit that the story effectively shocks, disturbs, and unsettles.

In fact, the dehumanization Sara discussed in her post as applied to Foer’s piece also pertains to DeLillo’s story; both the characters in the story and the readers themselves may be viewed as dehumanized. I went back, after reading “The Uniforms,” to find how many times gratuitous sexual violence occurs in the tale, and I found at least eleven examples. I am curious, having never read DeLillo before, whether he usually includes this kind of sexual violence and why. As I said, I think feeling unsettled is important in Postmodernism, or at least a little confused, but when I read this story in particular, the excessive mentions of rape and castration distract and offend so much that I feel more disgust than appreciation. Then again, I feel as if that may be the point.

Another common element in some of this week’s reading is the questioning. I have already mentioned the reader’s experience of confusion, but perhaps the same is true for many of the characters in the stories, as well as in Cage’s piece. For example, in “Super Goat Man,” after the superhero fails to save one of the frat boys from his six-story fall, the narrator asks, “Had the hero failed the crisis? Caused it, by some innate provocation? Or was the bogus crisis unworthy, and the outcome its own reward?” (73). The narrator questions, and probes those questions in the (confused) reader, what it all means when the bizarre hero does save the drunk college student. Likewise, in Foer’s piece, the misunderstandings which are carefully delineated for the reader almost all result from questions that the narrator’s family members pose to him, to which he cannot or does not verbally respond. For example, the narrator’s mother asks, “Are you dating at all?… But you’re seeing people, I’m sure. Right?… Are you ashamed of the girl? Are you ashamed of me?” (82). In this case, the mother cannot understand the son, but he tries, perhaps successfully, to understand them both.

And in Cage’s piece, almost every statement incites questions, though few are actually phrased in the form of questions. The questions that do appear tend to ask the reader to think through society’s logic, like this one: “Why is it that children, taught the names of the months and the fact that there are twelve of them, don’t ask why the ninth is called the seventh (September), the tenth called the eighth (October), the twelfth called the tenth (December)?”( 204). This question reveals a logical fallacy and effectively pokes fun at what society would call “logic” at all.

The questioning in these pieces does not necessarily lead to answers, as is the case in much of Postmodernism, but it sure does make you think. What I am wondering, and I am guessing we will address much of this in class, is what it was in our American society which affected our literature so much? I can name a few triggers on my own, but I am very interested in the historical events and trends which triggered, in particular, the tendency to disturb and to question which is evident in this literary era.

I was struck by the part in Hassan’s piece “POSTmodernISM” about “Periods.” I am trying to wrap my head around periods as well. This short post sorted out some of my confusion with Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism, but considering that those three movements came over the span of only 60 years, it stands to reason that individuals were alive and writing over multiple literary periods, and perhaps in multiple literary styles. Hassan asks, “Does modernism stretch merely to stretch out our lives?” (7) I would be interested in knowing the reactions of authors historically to shifts in literary trends. Do they welcome the change, or try to “stretch out” the old period? Hassan says that the avant-garde should “serve as the agent of change, which is recognizable when still newer change is in progress” (10). Can we really not recognize change as its happening enough to name it? Will post-modernism acquire a new name after something else takes its place? It’s strange that although Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism all reacted to each other and were more or less chronologically progressing, we don’t call Naturalism “Post-Realism,” etc. (What did they call Naturalism while it was happening?) So why is postmodernism called postmodernism? The name is almost a negative space – a sign: “Reserved for the name of the period after Modernism.” Does postmodernism have no defining characteristic of its own other than that it defies categorization? And seeing as many authors neither knew nor cared what literary period or style they were writing in, how useful are these literary categorizations – and to whom are they useful?

In a related development chronicled in the article “Modern Book Publishing and Book Culture – TIME, the publishing industry seems to be shifting into a more postmodern form. So not only literary movements are shifting, but literary media are shifting as well. As we discussed in class, postmodernism is a product of new technology. I liked the lip service to fandom, but it was a little vexing that the author implied that fandom’s postmodern activities only started recently with the Internet. The article’s vision of the future of publishing – amateur writers blazing new trails while professional writers lay back and watch – reminded me of Hassan’s view of critics “Taking few risks, the best known among them wait[ing] for men of lesser reputation to clear the way” (9).

The DeLillo piece I found extremely offputting at first, but as the narrative became faster and more ridiculous it caused a sort of Brechtian-alienation shift within me to not only become aware of the component parts of narratives but also to become aware of the component parts of our visual experience of society. By starting in a more conventional, slow-moving narrative style and then moving toward the more extreme style, it also exposed my own assumptions that stories are supposed to “make sense,” characters are supposed to be developed, and actions are supposed to be motivated. At the end, I found myself wondering if the soldiers that they killed would be soldiers if they had been out of uniform, and if the women that they raped would be women if they weren’t wearing skirts and dresses.

Link’s “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” was one that I loved at first – I found Soap’s internal narrative hilarious. That’s why I was so taken off guard by the kidnapping at the end. I felt like I had missed some sign earlier – a clue that this was going to happen. A big clue, of course, is the painting. It is at the center of what caused Soap’s life to change so dramatically by going to prison, and Soap shows a strange attachment to it that even he does not understand. Its shifting identity parallels Soap’s and Carly’s own shifting identities. It changes depending on how the viewer looks at it. So too do Carly and Soap’s identities shift depending on how another person perceives them. Soap’s name was given to him by others, and the reader only realizes Carly’s “friend of the family” identity is false when Soap points it out. Given the extent to which the reader sees the inside of Soap’s head, it’s amazing that I just didn’t see the kidnapping coming. This lack of real internal access, coupled with the emphasis on outer identity implies that there IS no real internal identity, that we are all shifting constantly like the painting, made up of “stuff that isn’t the same every time you look at it.”

Form and function

I agree with the post’s that have commented on this week’s readings in regards to seeing the authors experimenting with how their content is being delivered. Although Cage’s “Diary” at first seems to be a fractured mess, you can see strands of text looping back on themselves throughout the work. One of the strands that I picked up on and most interested me concerned how content is delivered and digested by reader and author. Although haphazard in appearance at first, Cage put great thought into how this piece was put together, the snippets of text he chose, the fonts, sizes, etc. He also alludes to the importance of form several times throughout diary. He references Joyce and Finnegan’s Wake (as does Hassan) repeatedly, which I have not read, but is known for its difficult syntax and structure. Cage writes on 208 “TO RAISE LANGUAGE’S TEMPERATURE WE NOT ONLY REMOVE SYNTAX: WE GIVE EACH LETTER UNDIVIDED ATTENTION, SETTING IT IN UNIQUE FACE AND SIZE; to read BECOMES THE VERB to sing”. Cage’s use of different fonts, sizes and grammatical structure is meant to keep the reader on their toes, so that they give each letter undivided attention, which gives the words themselves and their structure as much meaning as any overarching idea that the work is presenting. Cage also writes about how reading should be enjoyable, and that enjoyment can come out of the artifact itself as much as its content: “Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazine’s or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one’s mail and in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests”. I also think that Cage is trying to replicate what he admired in the ancient chinese language, that it was free of syntax and”floated in no-mind space.” Cage is rebelling against modern ways of delivering language that he feels have become “arthritic.” I personally enjoyed the Cage piece and thought it was similar to the mash-ups we were listening to in class when exploring postmodernism, many disparate parts being brought together to add up to something that is more than the sum of its parts, while at the same time making you appreciate each of those parts that you are experiencing in a new context.

The Jonathan Safran Foer piece also explores new ways of delivering language, although in a much more personal way. I thought his piece was about how the traditional forms of communication, or writing about communication fail to really capture the essence of what is being said/felt. Foer sees gaps in languages that cannot be filled by the traditional methods of writing and seeks to fill in those gaps with his new symbols. However, in the end it is futile as those new symbols will leave new, smaller gaps, and any attempts to fill those gaps will create newer, smaller gaps, and so on. I think Foer just wants the reader to step back and re-examine language and communication. We take language for granted and assume that words have a fixed meaning, but really they are just signifiers and each of us have our own perception, based on what we have learned/experienced, on just what those signifiers mean.