Lathe of Heaven – American Postmodernism

Postmodernism and Place

Sarah briefly mentioned place in her blog post and that got me thinkin’. Since many folks out there have already weighed in on the Adams article, I decided I would go elsewhere with this post and try to make sense of place in some of the novels we have read.

The notion of place seems to be pretty flexible in postmodern texts. In gothic literature, for example, place is often easily described as antiquated. In genres like fantasy and sci-fi, place also fluctuates but tends to follow some basic rules (outer space, past feudal realms). Many people have posted about how difficult it is to place postmodernism within any strict walls or interpretive confines. I agree that this is tricky and as I’ve read books from The Crying of Lot 49 to House of Leaves to Tropic of Orange, I’ve noticed that there don’t seem to be any conventions that strictly define place in postmodernist writing.

As I looked closer I found that there is little overlap in location: Beloved occupies a small space in the rural South; The Crying of Lot 49 takes place in bustling, crowded cities across California. The size of the places also changes: there are the small confines of a house that can also grow to enormous proportions in House of Leaves; the small (but ever-changing) office where much of Lathe of Heaven occurs; Tropic of Orange sprawls all over LA and in Mexico too, across landscapes both vast (the urban ghetto, the highway systems) and localized (the house near Mazatlan). Places can occupy just about any form in postmodern texts, from rural to urban, small to large.

It’s how place feels to the reader and how it is handled by the characters in the stories that I think give many of the places we’ve read about a common characteristic: they are unreliable, sometimes to the point of becoming untrustworthy. Why do I see some of the places in this semesters novels as unreliable? How does this relate to postmodernism?

I don’t think anyone will disagree that the space in House of Leaves is unreliable. The house shifts, it changes, at times it attempts to trap people inside. However, the novel also takes place in the world of Johnny Truant. Johnny begins the novel with some forays into the city, but by the end, he is as shut-in as Zampano, with drapes over the windows and cardboard blocking the vents. Not only does he not trust his own space, he doesn’t trust the space outside.

In Crying of Lot 49, everything seems to be untrustworthy. Oedipa travels around to different cities, and as she does this, I never feel a strong sense of the location. Each city seems the same. What makes them important is that they conceal the hidden clues she so desperately seeks. Each place sends her to a new location, all another stopping point on a journey that leads pretty much nowhere. Those are some unreliable locales.

In Tropic of Orange place seems to be more reliable than these other two, but is it? Crabs in Mazatlan, located hours’ walk from the sea, signify that something isn’t right. Gun shots on the east side may be an every day part of life, but for Buzzworm, it can all be avoided, the space can be reclaimed–from the beuracrats, from the gangsters who do their best to claim it, from the vicious cycles that occupy that space and keep revolving and threatining to never let anyone out. Gabriel’s unreliable space takes the form of a two-headed monster: the quiet Mexico or the bustling LA where he can continue working as a journalist. These spaces all bring with them a strong sense of unreliability. This is not the house you grew up in or the bustling city that represents opportunity. No, these spaces, even when they’re at their best, are ever-changing, sometimes alien landscapes.

Manzanar seems to be one character who finds the space he occupies–highway corridors–to be reliable. However, upon closer expection, we see that they are only reliable as far as his music goes, but not reliable as a whole. Crashes occupy this wide-lane space and Manzanar also summons images of maps. Maps can be reliable, but for anyone who has used one knows they are subject to change. Unexpected, sudden change that leaves you at the end of a dead-end road, just miles from your ultimate destination in the middle of the night, wondering, “what do I do now?” The maps in this book also have layers–“for Manzanar they began with the very geology of the land…” (57). These multi-layered maps become so thick in their complexity and construction as to render them too numerous and too specific to serve much use at all. In chapter 13 Buzzworm thinks about maps and how little they really do to help. He sums this up with the early line, “if someone could put down all the layers of the real map, maybe he could get the real picture” (81). Only if all the layers are assembled can the maps provide a clear picture–and as the tone suggests, this will never happen. So even maps become unreliable in Tropic of Orange.

Some of the other novels we’ve covered also deal with unreliable places, but I felt that these were some of the shining examples. Places change, but their unreliability in postmodern texts seems to be relatively constant.

In postmodernism many aspects of life (language, morals, truth, etc.) are shown as constructs of society that we all end up buying into. In a postmodern novel, the author may investigate these constructs, and in so doing, help shed some light on their existence (the constructs’), which is usually enough to get people thinking. I can’t help but want to channel Saussure when thinking of place, who wrote about the signifier and signified in linguistics. I believe that while he mainly focuses on words, the same can be said for place. The signifier “home” or “city” will mean many different things to any number of different people (the signified). New York is the symbol of American freedom, LA of opportunity and fame, DC of power. However, to the people who visit and occupy these spaces year round, the cities become many different things. This may be part of the reason spaces seem so hard to trust in the works we’ve read. After all, when a space means something different to everyone occupying it, and seems ever-changing, there isn’t a lot to rely on. Just below the surface the labels we apply to certain locales (the peaceful setting of the South, the emblematic American cities) suddenly vanish. Each person takes something different away from their place. Each one views their place differently as well. I believe this root of unreliability is essentially postmodern becauyse it’s not only the observed that’s important, but who’s doing the observing, how they observe, and what that says about the unique spaces we all occupy and how they shape our unique perspectives.

Family Life in Postmodern Literature

I think it’s interesting how the chapters in Tropic of Orange correspond with the characters. I’m not really sure what to make of it. It’s clearly another expression of fragmentation, but it’s odd that she outlines it for us in the beginning. It almost seems like a key, in the way that some of the information in House of Leaves seemed like a key. Yamashita is, in a way, telling us how to read the book. She organizes the information, it seems, to help us make sense of the novel. Doesn’t this sentiment seem slightly anti-postmodern? However, I’ve never seen it done in another text, so it is an innovative technique. I wonder if anyone read the chapters out of order. I’d like to go back and reread this in a year, but instead of reading straight through, I’d read the chapters the way they appear in the outline. I wonder how that would change the meaning of the text.

I liked this book, in particular, because it gave me some ways to continue thinking about my research topic. Most of the books we’ve read don’t deal closely with family life. In fact, their seems to be a lack of families, or a tearing apart of families, in most of the books we’ve read. Pynchon doesn’t depict a family and gives very little weight to the one marriage in the text. In House of Leaves, the Navidson family is figuratively (and literally in the case of Tom) torn apart. There is one marriage in the Lathe of Heaven, but it is also made to be a background issue.

We do see marriage and family life in The Female Man, but it is completely different from the traditional idea of the nuclear family. In Belovedthere are families, but they are often separated by death and slavery. In this text, family members never seem to work as a cohesive unit, but instead stay isolated from one another. In Mao II, Bill, Scott, and Karen make up a sort of untraditional family unit. However, this family is also torn apart by the end of the novel. In The Tropic of Orange, Rafaela, Sol, and Bobby are at the center of the story. Although family members, such as Rafaela and Sol, seem to operate in normal ways, their are various abnormalities surrounding them. In this case, the family life is altered, not internally, but externally as the geography around them twists and turns from its natural state.

Sometimes the aspects that interest me most in a book are not what it says, but what it doesn’t say. There is an obvious absence of family life in the books we’ve read. This lead me to wonder – where do families (especially nuclear families), marriage, and love fit into postmodernism?

Reconfiguring the Past

Well, it is very late, and I am wondering why it has taken me so long to come up with something to write about concerning Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Perhaps, it has something to do with not actually liking the novel that much. Don’t get me wrong, it is a fine literary achievement, but for some reason it doesn’t “strike a chord” with me (but I will leave my personal taste out of this discussion).

More importantly, I am struggling with the postmodern-ness of the novel (and of Toni Morrison in general). So it is a relief to see that as a class, we seem to be struggling together. I keep trying to find a postmodern entry into this novel but have found little success, and so my last resort is to attempt to situate Beloved with the other postmodern texts we have read up to this point. Obviously, this is no walk in the park either…but I did find one thing that could prove useful, but could also prove worthless.

In Kimberly Chabot Davis’ essay “Postmodern Blackness,” she discusses the interaction between past and present in Morrison’s Beloved:

One way to free oneself from the horrors of the past is to reenact and reconfigure the past in the present, as Sethe does with an icepick at the end of the novel, attacking not her own children this time but the white man Bodwin, whom she perceives as a reincarnation of her slave master Schoolteacher. (251)

Could we not consider this idea (reconfiguring the past in the present) in terms of Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven? I believe a comparison with Le Guin’s novel depends on how one reads the ending of Beloved. As Davis explains, some critics see the ending as a positive resolution; however, Davis “find[s] that the last chapter denies such a simplistic closure. Morrison ends the novel with the word “Beloved,” suggesting that the past is a lasting presence, waiting to be resurrected. […] Although the ending suggests partial healing, the spectre of the past reamins, waiting to resurface” (251).

To reinforce her claims, Davis turns to Hutcheon who I think can be used also to consider The Lathe of Heaven:

the past is not something to be escaped, avoided, or controlled. . . the past is something with which we must come to terms and such a confrontation involves an acknowledgment of limitation as well as power. (251)

So to try to pull this shaky argument together: Sethe’s icepick maneuver is comparable to the chaotic ending of Dr. Haber’s effective dream in The Lathe of Heaven. These resolutions are not perfect. Instead, the endings demonstrate an “acknowledgment of limitation”: Sethe cannot erase the past by stabbing someone with an icepick, and Dr. Haber cannot alter the wrongs of the past by changing the world’s present condition (Note: his attempt to do so results in chaos. Had it not been for George reaching the “off” switch, the world would have been staring into the eye of an apocalyptic disaster.)

Alternatively, both novels demonstrate the failing attempts to reconfigure the past through the present: Beloved in terms of a personal, familial past and The Lathe Heaven in terms of a broader world history.

Well what exactly does all of this tell me? By placing Beloved alongside a postmodern text, can a claim of postmodernism be made for Morrison’s novel? I’m not sure. As was stated in Davis’s essay, Beloved‘s ending can be read several different ways. If we read the ending as a positive resolution, then I can see the case being made against a postmodernist reading. Either way, a comparison between the two novels certainly raises questions about the reconfiguration of the past through the present, and whether or not this can be achieved.

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.

Against Meta-narratives

I think Todd brings up some valid points about The Lathe of Heaven presenting a view that contradicts modernism and goes against meta-narratives. I hadn’t even considered Haber’s incredulity toward Freud and Jung. Certainly, looking at the institution of psychiatry as a whole, the work portrays the field as misguided. Haber may not believe in the theories of Freud and Jung, but he creates his own belief system that has its own flaws. In The Crying of Lot 49, we say psychiatry represented in the absurd, cartoonish, unreliable, untrustworthy, and immoral figure of Dr. Hilarius. In Le Guin’s work, Dr. Haber appears more realistic, but also more controlling, manipulative, and negative (I feel there is a certain irony in my saying that Haber is a negative force because it means that I’m comparing my meta-narrative against his and if all meta-narratives aren’t to be trusted, then…oh never mind).

I tend to think of Dr. Haber as a modernist character, someone who has certain beliefs that cohere with a particular meta-narrative who seeks to bring about a world the resembles/better coheres with his own system of beliefs. I’ll admit that his intentions are noble; the elimination of war, overpopulation, hunger, disease, racism, and the invention of nine-foot tall turtles are all worthwhile endeavors. However, in bringing about his vision of the world, he condenses and contains life into a small package to fit his equally small view.

For me, the most horrible byproduct of his plans for his meta-narrative’s domination is the elimination of races with the elimination of racism. Le Guin makes it very clear that this lack of diversity is a terrible thing: “But now, never to have known a woman with brown skin, brown skin and wiry black hair cut very short so that the elegant line of the skull shoed like the curve of a bronze vase- no, that was wrong. That was intolerable. That every soul on earth should have a body the color of a battleship: no!” (130). The very symbolism of the color gray, already a hue of somber connotation, now becomes a color of sterility and violence by associating it with a battleship. Dr. Haber essentially achieves Hitler’s dream of a master race, but instead of killing a few billion people he has Orr disevent them. I think that Le Guin is very aware of the connotation of Dr. Haber’s actions and how they relate to evil predecessors; she makes a point of writing near the end that after the Break there are still gray people and many of them reside in Germany.

I tend to think that had Orr not met Heather, then he might not have worked up the nerve to stand up to Dr. Haber and step away from the downward spiral toward one meta-narrative. Orr’s actions and feelings and the novel as a whole, I think, respect and revel in the many varieties of reality, the spectrum of meta-narratives, and the diversity of humanity, even in the midst of its chaos. The final scene of the novel shows a nine-foot tall alien armor turtle watching a black woman and a white man meet and reunite at once over a cup of coffee. What could be more uplifting, absurd, and positive toward the vast array of meta-narratives in existence and yet to be thought of?

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

Whats in a name? Im not really sure.

Coming off reading the Crying of Lot 49, I’m of course, obsessed with names in the Lathe of Heaven, but I’m having some serious trouble cracking the name of the protagonist. George Orr (which I actually heard as JOR-JOR before the alien said it, because I was listening to an e-book the other day and it sounded like a robot) has a complicated situation regarding his name – Orr, or Haber refers to him “Mr. Either Or” is a median.

Haber goes so far as to say something to the effect as “you cancel yourself out to the point that nothing remains” – this would seem that he is completely neutralized. If we are to understand that Orr is in fact, neutralized, then it would seem the plot of the Lathe of Heaven revolves around the fact that technology/science(or pseudoscience)/associations/un-or-subconciousness (or perhaps just the misuse of such) only serves to muddle and complicate our understanding of the reality and the world, yet we, or Orr have/has little effect…being neutral and all. The other possibility is not that Orr is totally neutral, just that he is neutralized by Haber.

Either way, my difficulty in accepting Orr as “both, neither, either, or,” lies in his full name, or as it sounds Jor Jor – a doubling. How can he be neutralized when at the same time he is double? Though, to complicate things further, I suppose to double zero is still zero..? Also, as some people have posted already, there is the idea that the Orr refers to the multiple realities created by his dreams.

Haber is just as interesting. There are two main (and not necessarily intentional, just intriguing) connections I made with Haber. One – Fritz haber, inventor (I think) of synthesized ammonia pre-WWI and “father of chemical warfare.” It is in part due to Fritz Haber’s work (nobel prize winning actually) that the death tolls of WWI were unlike what anyone had ever seen (think population loss). Two haber in Spanish is an auxiliary or helping verb meaning “to have”…ironically it is not used to indicate that one has or owns/possesses something, (that is tener, as in yo tengo) but rather haber is used in conjuction (unable to operate alone) with another verb in the perfect tenses (ie I have gone to the movies). So yes, that’s a huge stretch, but I thought it was at least coincidentally funny, as that kind of fits how Dr Haber is unable to do his work without George, and that his name means “to have” but not in a to possess connotation.

Finally there are some really interesting points made about the sub/unconscious and it’s neutrality by way of its irrationality. Not irrational in an insane way, just literally without rationale. The subconscious or unconscious mind (whichever we are really dealing with here…that might be up for debate) simply flows, like George’s “shortcuts” taking the mind from peace to aliens in one easy step. There is little logic involved in dreams, which makes Haber’s scientific method all the more interesting. Dreams, at their most basic functioning level, are to help us understand reality; REM sleep is a time to recharge and put all the library cards of our day in order, in an easily recallable and logical filing system -yet the dreams themselves, the picture of the process is often as chaotic and disorderly as the imagination can imagine. Reality molds our dreams, and to think that dreams mold our reality, is subversive and wonderful.

The Color of Battleships

The Color of Battleships: Racial Identity in The Lathe of Heaven

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven confronts the “problem” of racial identity and the implications of, what Toni Morrison terms, the “deliberateness of the construction, the conscious necessity for establishing difference” (Morrison 39). Le Guin uses two methods of exploration. First she intentionally racializes her characters, calling into question the role of racial appearance on perceived identity. Le Guin offers focused descriptions of George Orr from the perspective of both Dr. Haber and Heather Lelache. Haber describes George Orr as having “Light hair and eyes, a short, slight, fair man, slightly undernourished, good health, twenty-eight to thirty-two. Unaggressive, placid, milquetoast, repressed, conventional” (Le Guin 7). Heather Lelache, the “Black Widow” (42), finds him “A born victim. Hair like a little girl’s, brown and fine, little blond beard soft white skin like a fish’s belly; meek, mild, stuttering” (42). In both instances, Le Guin marries the physical/racial with the psychological/emotional. This marriage leaves the reader to ask: how much does race have to do with who we are and how we are perceived? How much does race have to do with identity?

To answer this question, Le Guin proposes a universe that “undoes” this racial construction. Dr. Haber suggests that there should be “no more color problems. No more questions of race” (129). Consequently, human beings become gray, “the color of battleships” (130). With memories of both worlds, Orr struggles to integrate his ideas of a racial identity with a non-racial world. He notes, “That’s why she [Heather]’s not there… She could not have been born gray. Her color, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness, all were elements of her mixed being, her mixed nature, dark and clear right through, like Baltic amber. She could not exist in the gray people’s world. She had not been born” (130). Orr feels that race is essential to Heather’s identity or his perception of her identity. Resigned to this new world without Heather, George encounters the arrest of a short man for the crime of cancer. Instead of racial persecution, disease is “other.” By doing so, Le Guin emphasizes the metaphorical implications of race as a “way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes, and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to the body politic then biological ‘race’ ever was” (Morrison 63). To demonstrate this point, disease and race become interchangeable. Just as one can produce a racial identity, so can one produce one based on a particular illness or good health. These identities are not inherently evil; rather, suffering comes from the appropriation and misuse of these identities to create difference.

Le Guin depicts racial identity as something that gives human beings shade and dimension. To further emphasize this point, Orr compares the racialized Heather to the gray one: “His wife had been a gray person, a far gentler person than this one… This Heather carried a big black handbag with a brass snap, and probably a half pint of brandy inside; she came on hard. He wife had been unaggressive and, though courageous, timid in manner. This was not his wife, but a fiercer woman, vivid and difficult” (182). Like Morrison, Le Guin finds race as an asset rather than a detriment. Racial diversity allows for a “deeper, richer, more complex life than the sanitized one commonly presented to us” (Morrison 66).

Works Cited

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Lathe of Heaven. New York: Scribner, 1971.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark. New York: Random House, 1992.

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.

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.

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.