Harvey – American Postmodernism

Harvey on Genre vs. Characterization in Postmodernism

In “The Condition of Postmodernity,” David Harvey attempts to define postmodernism in relation to modernism, and in myriad cultural contexts, including literature, architecture, psychology, and art. In his definition, Harvey discusses the blurring of genres, and specifically mentions the postmodern tendency to dissolve the “boundary between fiction and science fiction” (41). This is definitely true of The Lathe of Heaven, a novel that cannot fit into either/or category of science fiction/postmodern literature. LeGuin’s novel is most striking in its ability to use science fiction to cause disorder and confusion in reality as we know it. However, as opposed to the reality featured in Crying of Lot 49, which defies any sense of reason and is completely fragmented, the reality in The Lathe of Heaven is more believable, and also more ordered. Though George’s prophetic dreams do influence reality, this pattern is more noticeable, and therefore, expected in the novel.

Jennifer asks in the first post on this topic whether all science fiction novels can be considered postmodern. While it is definitely a valid and interesting question, Harvey posits in his article on “Postmodernity” that while “modernist literary critics do tend to look at works as examples of a ‘genre’ and do judge them by a ‘master code’ that prevails within the boundary of the genre, [the] ‘postmodern’ style is simply to view a work as a ‘text’ with its own particular ‘rhetoric’ and ‘idolect,’ but which can in principle be compared with any other text of no matter what sort” (44). If I understand this correctly, I think Harvey is specifically drawing attention to postmodernists’ attempts to eschew “genre” as we know it; therefore, we cannot really classify any postmodernist work as “science fiction” or any other genre. Though this seems easy enough to digest in theory, it becomes problematic in practice to shy away from categorizing literary works for the purposes of comparison and analysis. On one hand, postmodernism is fragmentation and chaos, as Harvey defines it; and on the other hand, in order to legitimize its impact, we need to understand postmodernism logically, and in terms that we can easily decipher and comprehend.

Leaving the genre debate aside, it becomes easier to think of postmodernism as a way to propagate equal representation: “The idea that all groups have a right to speak for themselves, in their own voice, and have that voice accepted as authentic and legitimate is essential to the pluralistic stance of postmodernism” (Harvey 48). Hence, when discussing postmodern literary works, such as The Lathe of Heaven, it becomes apparent that issues of racial construction, for example, are called to be eradicated. Dr. Haber states that we should have “no more color problems. No question of race […] Nobody in the entire history of the human race has suffered for the color of his skin” (LeGin 129). Additionally, “characters no longer contemplate how they can unravel or unmask a central mystery, but are forced to ask, ‘Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of the mysteries is to do it? Instead” (Harvey 48). This shift in focus from genre to characterization, and their influence on/perception of reality is a defining feature of postmodernism. The effect of this shift in focus is striking: “to break (deconstruct) the power of the author to impose meanings or offer a continuous narrative” (Harvey 51). Therefore, instead of the focus being on how LeGuin weaves the plot to create a work of science fiction, the focus shifts to how the characters—George Orr, Dr. Haber, and Heather—develop throughout the novel, and whether or not their respective dreams/ realities materialize and coincide.

Multiple Identities in The Lathe of Heaven

Everyone is mentioning the “Either Orr” symbolism of George’s name, but when I first read it, I thought of George Orwell. After that, I began to think of the novel as a dystopian/utopian text. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but the author also makes a reference to a dystopian/utopian book by Aldous Huxley. On page 87, she calls the altered reality a “brave new world,” which also happens to be the title of Huxley’s book about a dystopian/utopian society. I think this a reasonable connection to make considering that a large portion of the text is preoccupied with creating a better world and failing. However, the farther into the book I got, the more I felt that my attempt to make sensible connections were a waste of energy.

I think that Le Guin intentionally makes references and symbols that don’t add up. This seems to show some deconstructionist sentiment. She uses a collage of different images, identities, and realities to create a very complex text, totally breaking down the notion of a “fixed sense of representation” (Harvey 51). Someone mentioned the various different animals that Orr is compared with. These animal comparisons are the types of symbols that don’t add up as the text progresses. In fact, she seems to take great efforts to portray each character as having multiple identities, rather than giving them a consistent identity with consistent symbols.

Her portrayal of the different characters as having multiple identities answers one of Harvey’s questions about postmodernism: “But if, as the postmodernists insist, we cannot aspire to any unified representation of the world…then how can we possibly aspire to act coherently with respect to the world?” (Harvey 52). Her answer is, we can’t. We develop fragmented identities just like the world around us. Heather is both a wife and not-a-wife. She is both black and white. She is strong, yet vulnerable. Haber describes George as “feminine or even childish” (18). Whereas Heather describes him as “the strongest person she has ever known” (96). Haber is also a contradictory character, who is often described as “benevolent,” but is also called “power hungry.” The fragmented world produces fragmented identities.

One last connection that I’d like to explore is the idea of the “center.” Le Guin’s use of “the center” confused me a little, because I remembered reading something about the center in one of Derrida’s essays. From what I remember, he said that the center was something that does not exist. We can keep deconstructing all day, but we will just come up with more double readings and never get any closer to a center or an inherent truth. Le Guin talks about a “center” for both George and Haber, but I’m not sure if it relates to Derrida in any way. She describes Haber “like an onion, slip off layer after layer of personality…no center to him” (81). George is described as “he could not be moved away from the center” (96). I’m not really sure what to make of this, or if I should even be trying to make anything of it.

Order vs. Chaos…A Draw?

Early in his book entitled “The Condition of Postmodernity,” David Harvey addresses a key identifier of the movement from modernism to postmodernism. Paraphrasing from McHale, Harvey explains that the postmodern novel “is characterized by a shift from an ‘epistemological’ to an ‘ontological’ dominant. By this [McHale] means 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” (Harvey 41). While reading this section of Harvey’s argument (and a number of other parts), I was continually brought back to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. Indeed, her novel deals with the very basic concept of reality, and its subsequent manipulation. George Orr, the appropriately named protagonist, has dreams, and these dreams tend to alter his and the world’s reality (or perhaps the world is stuck in a cycle of Orr’s dreams). Whichever the case, Le Guin is reasserting the common question of dream vs. reality. What is reality, and what is dream? If these dreams alter reality, then is the new reality merely a dream? etc…until confusion ensues for both the reader and the characters in the novel.

The juxtaposition between George and his psychiatrist, William Haber, further illuminates the postmodern qualities in Lathe of Heaven. If George Orr’s mind represents a sort of fragmentation and chaos, Dr. Haber serves as the overarching orderattempting to ‘right’ the ship. According to David Harvey, however, “postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is” (Harvey 44). Quoting Foucault, Harvey’s argument suggests that postmodernism “prefer[s] what is positive, and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic” (44). And indeed, it is with a representative image of this ‘nomadic flow’ that Ursula K. Le Guin chooses to begin the novel: “Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. […] in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways;” (Le Guin 1). When re-reading this opening passage, I am reminded of George (or perhaps more specifically, his world-altering dreams). Throughout the novel, George and his ‘power’ are continuously at the mercy of Dr. Haber, whom strives to use Orr’s dreams as a tool (or lathe) for sculpting a sort of Utopian society. George opposes Haber’s manipulation of his dreams, and also opposses Haber’s desire for perfection. Perhaps this opposition is better understood through George’s role as a postmodern character. George (chaos) rejects Haber’s plans (order) because his Utopianism is a kind of meta-theory, and this “broad interpretative schema” like all meta-based ‘pratice’ is rejected by postmodernism.

Thus, in the end, does Le Guin suggest chaos over order? I don’t believe so. Consider George’s life pre-Haber; he was unable to function. The chaotic dreams had consumed his life and affected the lives of those around him. Instead, George settles for (or is given) a compromise through synthesis. As Harvey might suggest, this synthesis comes in the form of collage, or a jumbled patchwork of the varying realities created by Haber through George’s dreams, and at the end of the novel, both George and Heather are left to live life in this synthesized reality.

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On Harvey

“The Condition of Postmodernity” was not the easiest read, but there were several elements of postmodernism that harvey addressed in his article. Since Harvey writes about art, architecture, literature, etc. it is hard to make any one statement about the condition of postmodernism. However, after reading this article I can’t help but feel that at least as far as fiction goes, one underlying element to almost everything is the element of distrust. Harvey writes that “characters no longer contemplate how they can unravel or unmask a central mystery, but are forced to ask, ‘Which world is this? What is to be done it it? Which of myselves is to do it?’ instead” (48).

An element of Marxism, which Harvey evokes often in his article, is the need to ask a continuous string of questions to find what is hidden underneath. One question is asked, and the opposite question must be tackled before you can move on to the next question. This is what shows us the hidden elements that define culture like religion, politics, laws, etc. There is also the concept of alienation, brought up as well by Harvey. This also cuts to the heart of distrust. Rather than continue asking questions until they reach definitive answers, it seems postmodern writers ask questions and very early on become distracted when they ask “why am I asking so many questions?” This sense of distrust for the past, and for dominant social norms permiates much of the fiction we’ve read so far.

In The Crying of Lot 49, there are numerous examples. One example that comes to my mind is when Fallopian is describing the Peter Pinguid society. In the description of the society, it becomes clear that there is little in the way of an underlying message or truth. First Fallopian get lost in the details of the very naval battle that the Peter Pinguid society is based upon, only to say “Who cares…we don’t try to make scripture out of it” (36). This, to me, signifies a deep mistrust of religion. Especially its reliance upon translated scripture as a moral guiding post. The Peter Pinguid’s foundation myth is incomplete. The Peter Pinguid society also shows a distrust for economic systems when Fallopian later says, “good guys and bad guys. You never get to any of the underlying truth. Sure he was against industrial capitalism. So are we. Didn’t it lead, inevitably, to Marxism? Underneath, both are part of the same creeping horror” (37). While modernists tended to take sides in this debate, we see a very postmodern stance in Fallopian’s approach: who cares, they’re both effed anyway. Rather than investigate the deeper implications of each system, Fallopian stays on the surface and takes the stance that both are corrupt. He offers no new, better method, but leaves it at that. I believe this to be a clear sign of distrust: nothing can be fixed, so why bother. It’s more fun to observe how messed up things are after all, it seems Fallopian is saying.

In The Lathe of Heaven a more subtle distrust takes place in the character of Orr. His distrust lies in a fear that he will literally change the past. In the Harvey article, he describes the postmodern relationship with the past as one “eschewing the idea of progress, postmodernism abandons all sense of historical continuity and memory, while simaltaneously developing an incredible ability to plunder history and absorb whatever he finds there as some aspect of the present” (54). This is exactly what Orr does. Not only does he created a fractured version of the present, because to him, two versions of the past exist each time he alters it, but he literally abandons any hope for historical continuity. His dreams change the past–continuity is not possible.

While Harvey never mentions distrust, I believe that many of his points lead to this feeling. Youth in the 60s rebelling against forced consumerism as a result of tv, ideas of “the self without God,” and alienation all point to a generation–or generations– of writers whose distrust causes them to focus on the surface and avoid making any statements of grand meaning–after all, if they can’t trust, can they be trusted themselves?

Not to step on my own toes, as I present next week, but when I think back on House of Leaves, I see a novel littered with distrust. The setting can’t be trusted, as it has a tendency to mess with the occupants. The first historical record, Navidson’s, is also untrustworthy. At times, so is Johnny Truant’s account. In this way, the novel questions its own trustworthiness and at times hints at the fact that it could all be a fabrication. It does all of this in many different forms, but one is the oft-footnoted style of academic writing–a medium which may feature opinions we aren’t inclined to agree with, but that many of us probably trust as legitimate.

These are just some final thoughts on how this ties into our future reading, but at this point, I don’t know who to belive–and I’m inclined to just stop trying, because what good is truth without trust, anyhow?

-Jared C.

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.

Notes on Heather’s Character- Orr’s Name

Karin brings up an interesting idea when she mentions that Heather may be seen as Orr’s antithesis. While I was reading I thought Heather’s character was unexplainably inconsistent, but then I thought this whole book is based on inconsistencies. While the spider metaphor that first introduces her accentuates strength in her and shows her as aggressive and fierce as she’s described as predator and Orr as her prey, the portrayal of her character as Orr’s grey-skinned wife is more domesticated and she appears more vulnerable. The role reversal is certainly apparent when she becomes the needy one who seeks reassurance from Orr. As Orr explains it in his thoughts about his wife, her “brown” color was what made her who she was. Her history as one of mixed race and her struggle with issues of belonging seemed to have created that complexity in her character that had fed her strength. In the final version we get of Heather towards the end of the book, she’s even fiercer than Orr remembers her to be and is “vivid” and “difficult.” In a continuum where they never married but only knew each other briefly in a far past she grows more into the aggressive person she was when Orr first met her at her office. This may be an indication that her relationship with Orr seemed to have had an effect on her assertiveness as her color did or does. In the cabin scene we sense her weakness for the first time as she begins to have warm feelings towards Orr. This shows how her relationship had an effect on her character as it toned her down a bit and penetrated the façade of fierceness that she had maintained before she met him. I think this point really exemplifies Le Guin’s thoroughness in her depiction of character without dwelling on the minor details as a modernist writer would.

As to Orr’s name and its signification that’s been brought up by Sara Flood and Karin, I agree that his name suggests that his mundane character is the polar opposite of the typical science fiction hero. Further, I think it cleverly represents the nature of his super power: the ability to alter reality and create multiple options and realities. In his brief meditation of the Alien in front of him Orr explains, “It was not standing there… not in the same way that he would stand, or sit, or lie, or be. It was standing there in the way that he, in a dream, might be standing. It was there in a sense that in a dream one is somewhere” (178). While the repeated “or” is what made me realize the mentioned connection, this line, I believe, is crucial in examining Orr’s understanding of the realities that he creates. He’s beginning to realize that it is not actual reality that he alters but a reality that is existent only in dreams, and now he’s in another person’s dream and hence in a different reality. There is no actual reality but only coexisting, colliding and interpenetrating realities, which is a prominent characteristic of postmodern fiction, as Harvey explains.

Rejection of modernism

One of the possible ways of defining or categorizing postmodernism is by its rejection of modernism ideals. The Lathe of Heaven does this in several ways.

One is by its rejection of Freudian and Jungian ideas. Freud’s ideas of psychoanalysis and Jung’s archetypes figured heavily into modernist ways of thinking. Both obviously were also interested in dreaming and what it said about the human psyche.

Haber’s therapy sessions seem to reject basic Freudian ideas and techniques. At one point he says the only holdover modern psychology still has is the couch, but he uses it for patients to sleep on, which Freud very much opposed. For Haber, modern psychology is all about technology, not about the analysis that Freud and Jung practiced.

Haber also rejects the ideas of Freud and Jung that the unconscious was a dark and scary place:

Your unconscious mind is not a sink of horror and depravity. That’s a Victorian notion, and a terrifically destructive one. It crippled most of the best minds of the nineteenth century, and hamstrung psychology all through the first half of the twentieth. Don’t be afraid of your unconscious mind! It’s not a black pit of nightmares. Nothing of the kind! It is the wellspring of health, imagination, creativity….. there is nothing to fear. -88.

For Freud and Jung and their patients, there was very much something to fear. They told us that our subconscious was full of dirty thoughts and secret motives and monsters that we were not even aware we had. The idea that there was a whole other layer of the brain that we could not tap into, yet was controlling our behavior to some point was a scary notion indeed.

Haber also is rejecting the Jungian ideas of archetypes, which was found throughout modernist literature. When he is trying to make George feel better, he rejects the idea that the aliens are some universal archetype that represent the fear of the unknown, and says that they were probably just influenced by sci-fi movies from the 70’s. George wants to stop before he brings out more monsters from his unconcscious, but Haber tells him he is being silly and that they must proceed.

Another way that this postmodernism rejects modernism is the “incredulity towards meta-narratives” that we discussed in class and that Harvey discusses in his article. The Lathe of Heaven definitely rejects meta-narratives in the fact that there is no consistent reality. How can there be one meta-narrative when reality is fundamentally altered every time that George Orr has an effective dream? A world with 7 billion people can not have the same narrative as a world with 1 billion. A world with racism can not have the same narrative as a world with no race. A world with aliens living among us can not have the same narrative as one that doesn’t. By rejecting the idea that the world has any singular, continuing reality the idea of any narrative to go along with reality is rejected as well.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve always imagined. -Henry David Thoreau

I randomly grabbed a bookmark from my desk for The Lathe of Heaven, and this Thoreau quote was on it, it made me laugh.

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.