I\u2019d first like to just say that I think Yamashita\u2019s use of music in her novel is beautiful. The book is written sort of like a song \u2013 with different characters working their way in and out of the text like instruments. I know it sounds really cheesy, but that\u2019s the first thing that struck me. Small themes brought up in the beginning of the novel lead to great catastrophes or large events later on. Then, of course, there is the conductor who directs traffic. This, in and of itself, is a lovely image that lends itself to the text\u2019s lyricism.<\/p>\n
The movement of traffic is one thing that I think Adams explained nicely in her article. I like how she compared the freeway vein and impossible circuit of Pynchon\u2019s California to Yamashita\u2019s more musical and, in strange ways, hopeful freeway. I also like how she emphasized that Yamashita\u2019s novel suggests the freeway is less crucial to the vital functions of a city. One infrastructure stalling doesn\u2019t guarantee apocalypse. In the same way, the characters that survive are historically connected rather than flailing, and if they fail, that failure won\u2019t necessarily destroy them. Adams makes some great points comparing the texts. I don\u2019t think she\u2019s disparaging Pynchon either \u2013 she\u2019s more just calling attention to thematic and stylistic differences. In some ways I think the differences are just that (thematic and stylistic), and not necessarily bookends for an entire literary period. I feel like there\u2019s a point where constantly arguing back and forth about whether something is postmodern just bogs it down and detracts from what we can get from the writing.<\/p>\n
One thing I find strange was the emphasis placed on California, as if it\u2019s this entirely different world and the center of everything. Maybe it is. At one point Yamashita mentions Joan Didion, and I kept thinking of her California freeway essay (and other CA essays) as I read the Adams article \u2013 how she made a game of the freeway, how she studied the freeway system, and felt completely connected to it. If California is this big a deal in the grand scheme of whatever postmodernism is, I sort of feel less connected to it than to Pynchon\u2019s random red herrings and Cold War references. <\/p>\n
There were a few other things I was wondering about. One was dialect \u2013 how did this strike other people? Adams mentions it in her article. At first I was wary of it because there are so many different conversational things happening, and for some reason I kept getting pulled from the story and thinking about screenplay dialogue. I\u2019m not really sure why. But I see Adams\u2019 point \u2013 that the use of dialect emphasizes a convergence of \u201cunderrepresented\u201d people \u2013 I just wonder how accurate a representation it is.<\/p>\n
The magical realism is also pretty stunning. In a weird way, it reminds me of Beloved \u2013 I guess just because it\u2019s there, in this otherwise realistic piece. Perhaps the unreal elements sweeping into daily life emphasize the unreality or strangeness of real daily life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019d first like to just say that I think Yamashita\u2019s use of music in her novel is beautiful. The book is written sort of like a song \u2013 with different characters working their way in and out of the text like instruments. I know it sounds really cheesy, but that\u2019s the first thing that struck … Continue reading Movements<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[78,56,79,14,57,120,35,72],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-13-tropic-of-orange","tag-adams","tag-beloved","tag-cold-war","tag-music","tag-postmodernism","tag-pynchon","tag-reality","tag-yamashita"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}