For Monday, please bring Trainspotting to class. I have a few more comments. Bring in a plan for your final. Also, remember that your rewrites of the midterm are due on the last day. I'm leaving town soon after the last day of class and will be out of internet range, so you've got to get it to me by the 14th. Some more notes about the final (see the lists to the left for ideas):

• this is question-based; you are using materials to answer a question; again, a real question, one to which we don't know the answer and which you must try to think through; one, hopefully, that is worth asking
• what kind of question? the subject is - what does this trend in literature and its popularity and growing prominence say about our culture? what purpose does it serve or what need does it fulfill? (the task, then, is not to analyze what the books "mean," as in the midterm, but to explain them as a cultural phenomenon. It is similar to asking: what do people get from horror movies?)
• you will actually focus on a sub-topic, some aspect of provocative media (literature, film, music, etc.). For instance, the treatment of the body etc. 
• although the style is informal, your argument should be coherent. Avoid free-floating speculation. Instead, use the materials as evidence and dig into them for clues. It's more important that you genuinely think about a question than that you come up with a killer theory. 
• so, for Monday: bring all your materials and your question. Let's say you'll write about male friendship... Are these books mistrustful of the influence of male friendship? Is it a catalyst that leads people to eccentric, self-destructive behavior? (That would be a question. And you could use 2 UK books, one American, and other materials...)
• God knows I've posted enough about this paper, so I'll stop!

For WEDNESDAY (named for Odin or Wodin): watch Trainspotting, the motion picture, on Netflix. Also watch Fellini's "Satyricon" on Netflix. Make notes about adaptations of edgy, satiric stuff in the film format. The focus here is the difference between the two media. The audiences are different. James will lead the discussion on Wednesday on this subject. Other links: trainspotting, $1.99 rental; satyricon.

Welsh delivers dialect

Interviewed by a very weird person in Prague, I.W. reads from "Cock Problems."

for April 30th, 2012: read "Blowing It" and "Exile" - or just finish the book. Also read this article. Write a post discussing this part of the book with reference to the article.

Please print out a copy of the article from "Resources" and bring it to class.

for May 2, 2012: finish Trainspotting. Write and post an extra chapter that could have been in the book. It could be a Junk Dilemma. Better yet, a short vignette featuring the main characters. Use a Welshian style, if you can. Create another character and have an unrelated chapter. Or bring back Nina for another episode. It can be short or long. Whatever you want. I will comment as before: on my blog.

Scotland's 2nd biggest import

Everyone knows the best Scotch is from Scotland. Each region has a distinctive distillerie.

But Scotland never had the modernist prominence of politically-tortured Ireland in the field of literature. There was no one to compare with Beckett, Joyce, or Yeats, arguably the greatest modernist playwright, poet, and novelist. But most people would think of Robert Burns, who's poetry was often written in Scottish Brogue. Scottish-born authors, like Arthur Conan-Doyle or Robert Louis Stevenson, are often thought of as English.

But music. It may be a clue to the Scottish character. Scottish music is traditional, of course, in the "Mull of Kintyre" mode, but also produced some internationally famous bands. And they tend to be jangly, upbeat, and playful. Spinal Tap made fun of the traditional stylings of Jethro Tull. Also, cringe-worthy were the '80s band Big Country. Their guitars sounded like bagpipes.  "Aztec Camera," produced by Declan McManus, were among the first jangle-rockers. "Cocteau Twins" had a dreamy sound like nothing before or since. "Primal Scream," big stars in the UK in the '90s, had a Stones-y sound. Simple Minds, famous for "Don't You Forget about Me," and "The Proclaimers" are mentioned in Trainspotting. Scotland was big in '90s Britpop, with Teenage Fanclub and - biggest of all - the Beatlesque Travis, a strong influence on Coldplay. Lastly, quirky, literate and twee Belle and Sebastian, a cult band that recorded their first album as an assignment for a class.

Still, these groups are usually grouped as British. Is there anything uniquely Scottish about them?

Notable new posts

Amy Winehouse video posted by Maura.
Pop culture / drug addition (Tancrede).
Amis / Self wankathon (Aaron).
Welsh: writer, drinker, binger (Zeba).
Self: idler (Becca).

READ: "Kicking" and "Relapsing" (Monday) and "Kicking Again" (Wednesday). Ideas for posts:

1.] Comment on Irvine Welsh’s opening chapters.  How does Renton's point of view form our experience? How does it establish the reality in which his story takes place?  What is appealing or off-putting about the social group? Is he likable? Give examples. 2.] Does Welsh’s style suggest a critique of the state, the class system and power structure…?  Where, if anywhere, do you detect the presence of Welsh, the author?  How is drug use a metaphor here? Examples.

Self-education: my comments on your imitations

Aaron borrowed Self's use of interesting, semi-technical words:
Everyone in New York City seemed to have a brownstone fetish, but to Leroy they looked like petrified turds.  Maybe it was a clue to some pervading scatology Leroy had yet to become privy to; maybe they were all coprophiliacs, or coprophiles, or whatever neologism they went by these days.  Legend had it that Hitler was a coprophiliac.  Maybe everyone in New York was Hitler.Leroy was lost, but he knew better than to ask for directions. No one in New York actually wanted to help anyone else. It was the kind of place where cigarettes were $14 a pack, drivers ran red lights as if eager to maybe someday get the chance to run a pedestrian over and cops didn't enforce law and order so much as try to find any way whatsoever to reach their quotas for the month. You were just another rat in the rat race, another cockroach in the dungheap. There were a lot of cockroaches at Leroy's local bodega, but he'd stopped noticing, instead choosing the path of least resistance, grabbing his coffee, paying and leaving, sometimes with his eyes closed the whole while.
Notice the self-interrupting character of this passage. Remember Burroughs' thing about using a cut-up style to evoke the way we think as we walk down the street - not in a linear fashion, but affected by everything we see. Self and Aaron have reworked this style, giving it a tongue-in-cheek, educated gloss. You must check out the music videos in Doug's latest post. And his Self-imitation.
They had successfully reached the five day mark. Five days, no heroin. I would never have imagined that I'd see Cynthia's pupils at an average size. Today also marks the fifteen year anniversary of both my friendship with her, and Ben. Out of the fifteen, they suffered five painful years of harrowing addiction. Five cycles of adversity. In their eyes, Earth looked like a massive Syringe. A syringe revolving around a colossal spoon, passing by a vial, and then rotating 180 degrees to face a brick wall. A brick wall that indented patterns on their foreheads when their score was dry. This is how I can remember Ben and Cynthia. Today, for the first time in years, I saw Cynthia's beautiful face restored back to default. She told me about her painful week.
One way this is not like Self is its emotive quality; it has feelings. It also has good details and creative phraseology: "her face restored to default." Computer lingo. The pupils; indented patterns; cycles: surreal details (colossal spoon). Unlike in Self, we care about the characters, there appears to be a relationship, problems, things getting worse. Tancrede's piece begins with this long sentence:
Christine was an ordinary housewife; up at seven in the morning to cook a scrumptious breakfast for her brute of a husband, a work out session wearing her favorite tangerine neoprene leotard in front of her beloved Richard Simmons at eight, cleaning up the muck, caused by her husband’s belligerent tendency of spilling his food at dinner and then playing soccer with it when the food was not up to his standard of deep-fried crispiness, around the house between nine and two in the afternoon, and spending the remainder of the afternoon gossiping with the local housewives till her husband returned home for another spell of tender beatings.
This is a crazy, hilarious scenario that captures Self's exaggeration and unrestrained use of adjectives to create a sense of intensity. The adjectives are playful - don't always fit: "her beloved Richard Simmons" - "another spell of tender beatings." Sharp and funny. Tyler's piece captures the conspiratorial sound of Self, as if the author is tapping us on the shoulder for a bit of juicy gossip.
Judy did not worry that she did not have the financial means or the time to care for a child; since her divorce 2 and a half years ago, she had been collecting alimony checks and was well taken care of. No, what Judy was concerned with was the fact that since her divorce 2 and a half years ago, she had not had sex. Not that Judy had not tried to have a fling, because she had. She spent every Saturday night for the last year and nine months putting on her tightest dress and highest heels, painting her face with so many powders, creams, and shadows that it even concealed her personality (conversation was not one of Judy's priorities).
This has a great tone, like the first page of Cock and Bull. It is snide and insinuating and pulls the reader somewhat uncomfortably in. Lexi's piece captures the beyond-omniscient narrator in Self:
The distraction of the blaring TV keeps her from realizing that I’m still watching. It always seems its the thing you knew was there, but weren’t expecting, that brings the end to the story. Sue thought herself a master and maker of her fate, and she was ready to end it every day. Though her tomorrow was no longer written on the sky, she couldn't stop looking out of the window of the diner, the page in front of her soon-to-be "sue-icide" still empty.
This has this great know-everything quality that would attract some readers and annoy others. The speaker knows what Sue feels, what's going to happen to her, what she thinks, what's coming in the story. Most "omniscient" narrators maintain the artificiality of the story by limiting what they appear to know and letting the reader fill in the rest. Wolfgang Iser wrote that that literary text were created by the reader, not the author. The reader fills in the gaps. Lexi and Self don't allow us any - and that's radical. Marcos' piece captures the clipped, tough-guy rhythms of Self's writing - which led critics to dismiss him as "art lad lit."
The sucker punch James dealt Jovin left him on his back still trying to piece together how he got there. With no time to recover from the unethical blow, Jovin remained immobile and vulnerable, left there on the floor like a flipped turtle. His helplessness made Jovin look more appetizing, more elementary, and more delightful to James. James, unable to resist, walked over to Jovin and hovered over him like a hornet teasing his target before piercing him with his stinger.
Despite Self's sometimes-fancy language - "micturate," he writes in short, clipped sentences. And anyone who can come up with his well-chosen similes can probably start a career. Marcos juxtaposes words that come from different kinds of talk - "unethical blow," and uses two great similes; the last one is the best, visceral with a sensory element. You can feel and hear the hornet. I didn't know what part to pick from Zeba's:
Robert, who in that moment lay in a bed wearing a black bathrobe and stained underwear, was a man that had done much in doing very little. He had tried his hand at poetry in college, but struggled terribly in thinking up a rhyme for "when love is lost," and so put down his leather bound notebook somewhere and hadn't looked upon the thing since.
In his youth he had read many books, and saw many movies, and scrutinized many paintings, and in all of them he had offered a sort of cold admiration that weighed the banalities and immensities art as "just about the same." Here we hear the Self-styled snottiness: Robert weighed pedestrian or grand art as "just about the same." His lack of discrimination is expressed in the language he tends to use, which itself evokes the banality of the way he thinks, also expressed in his attempts at poetry, his consumption of various media - and dirty underwear. We and the speaker bond by looking down on people like this (but also see ourselves in these characters). Jordan's well-written and lengthy piece dared to be disgusting:
Like fish sticks drenched in chocolate milk and left out on a swelteringly hot summer day, her odor, her essence, her proverbial aura, could draw alley cats for miles in search of a delectable meal. A simple trip to the ‘gyno’ would have fixed this condition, but on some sick level, like getting a whiff of one’s own b.o., she derived a certain sense of pleasure from this sent that was all her own.
The pleasure is all her own and so is the scent - being a very personal scent. This is transgressive: offensive to some readers but funny; it mimes the characters' language a little, an essential Self-ism (gyno), and uses a great simile to talk about body smells. The word "proverbial" is great here; but I don't think Self would use "sick" - which shows an awareness of propriety, morality, etc. This passage, from Kerry's piece, uses repetition to forge a great ominous quality.
Donna smoked and leaned and imagined. Sam slept and sweated and foamed at the mouth. It was four in the morning and Donna hadn’t slept a wink. In fact, she hadn’t had a night’s rest in weeks, maybe months. She had lost track of time. Donna spent her days in their apartment, cleaning and brooding, while Sam answered phones and checked files for a drowning carpet company. Donna would often catch herself daydreaming while scrubbing dust off the shelves or vacuuming the rug, about Sam drowning too, stuck at the bottom of a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Sometimes she imagined him drowning at the bottom of their bathtub, but she always went back to cleaning.
The clipped, matter-of-fact quality, telling-not-showing, elevates Donna's sleeplessness and restlessness so it seems she's about to crack. We get the sense that something bad is about to happen to her and Sam. His carpet company is drowning too - presumably failing. The fact that Donna can't remember when she slept neatly evokes the dreary and unreal quality of her life. Anna's version borrows the conceit of transformation:
Two unfamiliar legs swung from under her floral duvet and delicately planted themselves on her carpet. As the immense quantity of fabric that was her nightgown followed suit, Brittany realized that those slender ankles were now her own. She held out her arms and pushed up ruffled sleeves to reveal smooth thin pale protrusions that ended in perfectly pointed fingertips painted her usual beigey pink. She used these hands and fingers to feel around her bed searching for wet spots, puddles, fatty chunks of flesh, reminders of the shape she was before she had fallen asleep.
A great move here is the disembodied quality of the body parts. Her "legs swung"; "nightgown followed suit"; "she used her hands and fingers." Her body parts act on their own. This mimics what's actually happened and the sense of self-alienation that results from it. Jessica's tells a transformation scenario in a fairly conventional narrative style.
No amount of lotion would smooth out the rough, greenish-grey skin. He tried, with an entire bottle. When that failed, he stood, staring into the mirror, contemplating with the strange calmness that comes after a serious shock. He certainly couldn't go to school or to work like this. He doubted if he could go out in public at all. He couldn't even go to the doctor. He wondered whether his physician made house calls. He wondered whether he would give his physician a heart attack, when the doctor saw that the young man strongly resembled a tortoise.
The passage is from the man-tortoise's point of view, without brusque intrusions from the author. It drifts into his thoughts too - "omniscent" mixed with third person subjective. What's the advantage of this style? It's that the situation has some urgency and we feel the character's bewilderment at becoming - a tortoise. Maura's piece, also not very Self-ish, uses a classic narrative technique I remember from every Stephen King novel. A sense of foreboding:
She went out to dinner with her friends, something that she normally would have enjoyed, but was so caught up in her bewildering anxiety that she mostly just sat there, quietly staring into space. She continually felt like someone had just told her that she had a month left to live, but of course, this was not the case. A week later, and nothing has changed. She can't shake this all consuming worry, nor its accompanying stomach pains and dull headaches, from her being.
Becca's piece, though short, actually captures Self's style well:
It was Wanda that never liked riding on buses, but somehow Rob got Wanda to set foot on a Greyhound.  She also never imagined she would be traveling to Cleveland to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Rob had a way of making Wanda feel so alone without him, that she followed him around as if on a leash.  Her dependency started when they met at a friend's party, back in 2003.  
"It was Wanda that" - the sentence structure is indirect and creates a distanced feel. It could have been "Wanda never liked..." The use of specific names creates a sense that this is happening in our world, a world we know. And the brisk way of stating complex relationships. Finally, J.R. evokes an unreal world:
His name was Max-a-million Horatio Brocker, and he loved to key cars. All day long he would walk along the parked cars on the hot dark avenue, house key in hand; scraping along he would whistle his car-keying song. Until one day he was whistling along and keyed the wrong car. You see, the car was a Lincoln, and nobody on God’s green America would hurt a Lincoln, not even the President… And it was MY Lincoln, that I mowed lawns all summer to pay for. The year was 2012, and Maxy and I had a little showdown.
Ridiculous name and flat characterization, signaling us that this is a made-up world. Inside joke about hurting a Lincoln... But the sense of possession and loss may be more emotion than we find in Self. On the other hand, "Maxy and I had a little showdown" is elaborately casual.

More Bull + essays etc.

M 4/16: “Bull”: 147-173. Also read criticism: “Post Realism Obscenification.” (Blackboard - Resources)

W 4/18: 174-236. Amis/Self interview (Blackboard - Resources)

Post for both days in the usual manner. Pay special attention to the extra readings. Print them out for class. You should work them into your comments on the end of Bull and Cock and Bull as a whole.

The Final Transgression (paper guidelines)

• Like the midterm paper, it should be driven by a question
• These are the main differences:
• style can be informal and even creative
• alongside transgressive fiction you can discuss transgressive culture in other media
• given the broad scope of the paper, you are writing about UK / American culture more generally, not about the works themselves, but how they fit into the world of ideas, themes, stories, stances. What can we learn from transgressive culture?
• you are asked to use an additional novel from the American school. It should be post 1975.
• But it's really not that different:
• your essay should be question-based, asking how a certain theme is treated in satiric / provocative literature and media - and why? What are these artists saying or how do they look at the world? And how are they reacting to mainstream culture?
• while the writing can be informal, it should be coherent, readable, given a logical structure
• as before, don't express opinions: use evidence to prove something or at least learn something about something
• Possible additional authors: Ellis, Homes, Acker, Leyner, Palahniuk, Cooper, (Denis) Johnson, Gaitskill, Roth (some); also possible: older authors like McCarthy (Blood Meridian), Mailer, Thompson: you should discuss them as forerunners. The book you pick may depend on the question you want to explore.
• What is transgressive, as we define it? Not just violent or about drug use or sexual misbehavior. It is comic and morally ambiguous. It has a notable, playful, fancy style that draws attention to itself. It takes place in a slightly unreal world. May use mythic elements. This applies to American Psycho as much as to Crank 2: High Voltage.
• Do you have to use other media? No.
• Does it have to be informal or looser? No. But if you write a formal paper, I'll judge it by those expectations - the ones you set.
• Your question may relate to: the theme of substitutes or simulacrae; the presentation of the body - changeable, subject to abuse, yet durable; the doppelganger theme; the de-evolved world-view of many transgressive books - the opposite of "progressive"; the culture and mindset of consumption; relationship of the implausible or fantastic to the realistic; author's appearance as character; the idea that one is controlled by an internal or external force - yet striving for control; use of echoes of myth.
• As I say, you're asking and answering a question, not collecting evidence about a motif. Your question could be: Satirists seem to be concerned with the limitations of the body. What are they expressing through this disrespect for the body? A nihilistic lack of concern for safety - or a belief that the spirit transcends the boundaries of the body?

Critical Essay Basics: Ten Easy Rules!

This is basic Stunk and White stuff.

1. An essay is an argument to a stranger. You must introduce your subject matter to the reader. There's a universe of literature out there: make it clear exactly what you're writing about and why.
2. You are imposing on the reader's time. You must justify your argument. Usually this is framed as a "problem" or question about the literature which you propose to solve or answer.
3. An essay's argument is composed of a series of topics. Every paragraph encompasses one topic.
4. Put basics first: background to the literature (if needed); your approach and the ideas you are using. Remember, there are many philosophical approaches to interpretation. Pick any one you want, but clarify what it is and why you're using it.
5. Each sentence in a paragraph should be connected to the previous by picking up something (like a word or idea) from the previous and reusing it. You should reuse it in a way that is obvious to the reader and helps the sentences to flow together. (See! I did it in these last two sentences.) Sometimes the flow is obvious without a technique like a linking word.
6. Each paragraph should flow from the last. As with sentences within a paragraph, you should use a transition of some sort. It isn't always necessary if the paragraph obviously picks up from the previous.
7. Introduce everything you mention: characters, events in the book, the basic scenario, theorists, etc. The only exception is if you are mentioning something widely known to everyone: like Freud or the plot of a very well-known book.
8. You must prove your point with evidence. Sometimes you make a statement you don't back up, but only if what you're saying is pretty obvious. Here is a hierarchy of types of evidence, from best to worst:
a) quotes from the book that you interpret through close reading; b) very specific details from the book that you retell without quoting; c) events from the story that you retell, referring as specifically as you can to the book; d) interpretations by other critics; e) views you express about the book and its meaning.
9. Know the difference between theorists and fellow-critics. That is, if you use a theorist, say a psychoanalytic writer like Lacan, you are borrowing someone's approach and using it to interpret the book. Explanations of this approach should go early on in your paper, since it is the foundation for your interpretation. If you use a fellow-critic, you are including his/her interpretation alongside your own. You may agree or disagree with this critic, but don't rely to heavily on him/her. Your own interpretation should build on other people's writings, not repeat them.
10. Include an appropriate summation, your final paragraph. This should return to the question of the importance of what you've written and the work itself. It might look forward to later writers, noting what points still remain to be pursued.

Self-love / Self-hate / Self-parody

for Monday, 4/9: read through 146. presentation: Peter
for Wednesday, 4/11: read through 173. presentation: Becca.




I will return your essays with grades and midterm grades on Wednesday.
for Monday write a book review of Cock, or of Cock and Bull if you've finished both. See instructions on the book review form here.
for Wednesday write an imitation of Will Self's style. Post it on your blog. Pursuant to our (somewhat sketchy) discussion of beginnings of books, your piece will be the beginning of a story. That is, imagine it is the beginning of a story.

COCK AND BULL

Do the reading: pp 1-42.
Then pick one of these two questions, and write about it in your blog.
1. Who is Will Self?  No need to do an exhaustive “bio.”  Instead, find one legitimate source, i.e. a newspaper, magazine or journal article (something that appeared in the print world) with something interesting about his life (not his work).  In your response, see if whatever you find sheds some light on his writing style, literary voice, or subject matter.  Be ready to expound on this in class.


2. Ch-ch-changes. In Cock, someone experiences a physical transformation, leading to... other changes. This isn't a new conceit in fiction, and the most obvious example is Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." And the whole thing comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, really, doesn't it? Find another - less obvious - example from this genre, and compare it to the transformation theme in Cock. How is Self using the tradition, following it, being consistent with it - or messing with it. (Hints: Roth's The Breast; the film The Watermelon Man; vampire stories; werewolf stories; other tales of gender transformation....)

Stuff writers of literary essays should know

Literary criticism is a rich tradition and one of the oldest literary traditions - dating back to Aristotle. Fundamentally, it's a form of philosophy, because through analysis of literature we gain an understanding of the potential of language to express meanings. Literature, due to its complexity, expresses subtle ideas that can't be gotten across in any other way.

Remember these things before you write:
1. You are not writing for the teacher or class. Never address your writing to members of the class or assume that your readers know things said in class. You are writing for an educated audience that has read the book you're discussing.
2. You are writing to shed new light on the book. That's why you should look for a creative approach.
3. Before you write you should know two things beyond the "topic" of your paper. What is the question you are asking? Write it down. It should be a real question: i.e. a question to which neither you, nor anyone else, knows the answer. For instance, let's say I'm writing about the theme of air travel in Crash. My question is: We know Crash explores the relationship between technology and an evolving sexuality. How does the emphasis on air travel help define Ballard's presentation of this theme?
4. Lastly: you should know why it's important to ask this question. And you should incorporate this argument about the importance of your essay into the beginning of the essay. For instance: "Ballard's Crash is an epochal and influential statement about the effect of technology on human life. However, most readers focus on the extreme or explicit passages, neglecting the clues to be found in the background details and setting of the novel. One of these details is the persistent presence of airports and air travel in a book about cars. In this essay, I will explore this motif as a key to Ballard's view of the dangers - or benefits - of the new machine era."

Assignments for 3/26 - 4/4 (changes from syllabus)

for Monday, 3/26: read the end of Nights at the Circus; also read "The Spectacle of Her Gluttony" (posted on Blackboard - Resources). Your post should summarize your thoughts of the novel and evaluate it in light of the critical piece.

FOR WEDNESDAY, 3/28: this is a changed assignment. Read "The Guts and The Guts Effect" by Chuck Palahniuk (posted on Blackboard - Resources). It is a short story and an essay by the author. Your post should analyze Palahniuk's style, comparing it with the "British style of transgression" that we've seen. Print story and bring it to class.

FOR MONDAY, 4/2: YOUR ESSAY IS DUE THIS DAY. Late essays will not be accepted. In addition, read "Don't Cry" by Mary Gaitskill. This is a recent story and probably not her most transgressive. All the same, it is exemplary of her writing style. Also read the interview with Mary. All are posted under Blackboard - Resources. Your blog post should comment on her writing style verus the "British style," as with the previous assignment. Print story and bring it to class.

Additional assignment for Wednesday the 21st: paper plan

Your paper will be 12-15 pages, double spaced and typed with one inch margin and 11 pt font. You should write about Crash, Money, or Nights at the Circus, seeking to analyze an aspect of the text that will shed light on the significance and meaning of the novel. It is important that you pick an angle for analysis that will give you a fresh perspective on the book. Avoid themes, such as "technology and sex" for Crash, which will lead you to comments already covered in class discussion or fairly apparent to anyone who has read or thought about the book. In order to gain a unique perspective, you might choose to see the text in light of a related work or aspect of the time period in which the work was written. For instance:

• Money is related in many ways to Thatcher's economic policies, which may surface in the book in the theme of value - in the economic sense - or value in the ordinary sense: how we value things
• Crash appeared at a time when there was a significant cult of masculinity associated with cars. Now, this is true in the present day, but in Ballard's time a persistent pop culture theme involved rambling or driving as a mark of masculine freedom.
• References to sports and games in Money may be a clue to its purport: Amis imitates Nabokov's love of games. Amis is an avid tennis enthusiast who has written extensively about tennis.
• Crash contains many references to evolution: a "new sexuality." His novel of sexual experimentation comes at the height of the sexual freedom of the 1970s. Are there clues in the novel as to whether it is a comment on this new culture of sexuality? Pornographic films such as Deep Throat enjoyed a mainstream audience in the same era, and were regarded as art films - for a short time until restricted by the Nixon administration.
• Nights at the Circus is often read as a feminist novel, but it has also made many feminist critics uneasy, and has sometimes been seen as a somewhat caustic attack on separatist feminism close to the novel's time or excessively romanticized images of women. Are there specific references to feminist ideas in the book that might assist us in reading it?
• Angela Carter's book is often seen in terms of Bakhtin's idea of the "carnivalesque." Using Bakhtin as a reading tool, you could write about the book in this tradition.
• Martin Amis' Money is not only about cinema but in many ways influenced by cinema, especially in its use of a likable anti-hero. It would be interesting to find a film or set of films that may have influenced the book.
• I don't know if Tod Browning's Freaks, a cult movie, may have influenced the subject matter of Nights - people with physical oddities parading before an audience. Certainly it refers to the old world of traveling shows, burlesques, and so on - a world which was disappearing due to social disapproval at the time of the book.

Most good ideas may require some research. The above ideas are only intended to give you a sense of a good subject for a critical essay. Such an essay is written for readers of the book and attempt to add something new to the knowledge about the book. Its subject should be carefully introduced, and it should draw evidence from the book, avoiding general, unsupported statements or plot summaries. Think of a possible theme and bring in two copies on Wednesday.

Suggested authors for final paper

In theory, these should be transgressive authors from North America. But if you really want to add another Brit, I probably wouldn't object. The idea is to broaden your range of the transgressive "movement." And write about a special favorite, hopefully. Here are some suggestions:
Brett Easton Ellis
Dennis Cooper
Nicholson Baker
Poppy Brite
Chuck Palahniuk
A.M. Homes
Mary Gaitskill
Kathy Acker
Philip Roth


Earlier authors, like Hubert Selby or Hunter S. Thompson, are bound to come up. To be transgressive as we're defining it, the work should be humorous and somewhat elusive as to its intent. It should emphasize taboo behaviors. It probably has a "picaresque" or episodic structure as described in class. It is often written in a fancy, self-conscious style which adds to its elusiveness. Simply violent or sexually explicit novels are not necessarily transgressive. These books have a special complexity that helps them get past the cultural guardians of good taste, whether these guardians are conservative or leftist. So, feel free to pick one not on this list if its seems to fit.

Carter's Circuitous CIRCUS

read "London" and "Petersburg" up to Chapter Four (p. 125). Pick two of the following questions: answer one for Mon. (due Sunday) and the other for Wed. (due Tues.).

• Carter's book constantly plays on the theme of reality vs. artifice. This theme is relevant to the question of the story's fictive reality and also germane to images of femininity. Find a passage in which these issues are present and analyze the passage, showing how Carter's style exploits the ambiguity between the real and illusory.
• Carter's style, like Amis's, is quite "fancy" - but in a different way. Carter employs what I would call "delicate malapropisms" - words that don't quite make sense in the context she uses them. These "misused" words actually add complexity to her writing, expanding the range of possible interpretations. Find a passage in which she uses language in this way and analyze its effect.
• Both Amis's humor and Carter's employ humorous juxtapositions. In other words, there is often a certain distance between the way characters represent themselves and the way we perceive them. Find a humorous passage from Money and another from Nights at the Circus: compare/contrast the apparent function of humor in each case. What is the author getting across through humor?
• This is really three questions in one. Crash, Money, and Nights have many themes in common. In each novel, there is an awareness of our relationship to consumerism and the culture of products; in each case there is a comment on our relationship to our own bodies; in each case there is a comment on our identity as affected or altered by technology.  Pick one of these themes and discuss how it is treated in each novel, specifying at least one passage from each work.
• Like Amis, Carter is a well-bred writer in the sense that her work is rich in historical and literary allusions. Write about an allusion that occurs more than once in Nights. Comment on how this echo plays into the seeming thematic concerns of the book.
• Like Amis, Carter plays on a juxtaposition between high art and cheap commercialism. While in Money this juxtaposition occurs in the context of a depiction of masculine experience, in Nights it may well be a comment on femininity as experienced or seen from the outside. Contast the art/money theme in the two books.

Amis interviewed by Rose

Try this at home

How writers come across as witty: some of it you can't explain; it's just talent. Here's the part that you can.

ALLUSION: "If you take this parking place, it'll be World War II all over again."
AMPLIFICATION: Names something, then puts additional description in. "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too." (Queen Elizabeth I)
ANADIPLOSIS: Repeats the same word, using it in a grammatically different way each time. "Some men are born with greatness , some men achieve greatness, and some men have greatness thrust upon them." - William Shakespeare
ANALOGY: Sure, all writers do it. But outlandish analogies are funny. Here's an example of analogy mixed with ALLUSION. "You would think that Colorado voters might have remembered that, like Groucho Marx apropos Doris Day, they knew Michael Bennet before he was a virgin." OR "Now we get Mrs. Obama scolding us about eating junk food like a twenty-first century Marie Antoinette: 'Don't let them eat cake!'"
ANAPHORA: Repeats words. Like anadiplosis, it uses them again and again in a grammatically similar way. "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun" - Raymond Chandler
CHIASMUS: In which you reverse the sentence structure so that it makes sense both ways. Who better than the famous wit Samuel Johnson: "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good - Samuel Johnson
DOUBLE-MEANING: Also known as puns. Shakespeare used this in his comedies to make sex jokes. Example from the UK Telegraph: "At American universities, people study themselves, getting a degree for navel-gazing. Sometimes literally. Now, fat people can major in 'Fat Studies.'" Groucho Marx: "I believe in computer dating, but only if the computers love each other."
EPONYM: You give something or someone a humorous and familiar name. This one also uses Chiasmus. "The unhealthiness of Dependistan isn't that it's a waste of money; it's unhealthy money that wastes people." (from the Wall Street Journal editorial page)
HYPERBOLE: Exaggeration. "This steak isn't rare; I've seen cows hurt worse than this get up and get well."
PERSONIFICATION: Martin Amis, Money: "The truth is very tactless."
WORD-ORDER MANIPULATION: From the New York Post: "They say every student has a right to a 'non-threatening learning environment. If they don't learn anything in this non-threatening learning environment, it's still better than the non-learning threatening environment of most schools."

There's a lot more, but this should get you thinking about rhetorical devices. Or devising some rhetoric to express your thoughts.

Posts for the last week of MONEY

Due Sunday. There are three articles on Amis in RESOURCES on Blackboard.
1. "Martin Amis Writes Postmodern Man"
2. Jon Begley Translatlantic Amis
3. "Drabble & Amis in Thatcher's Era"
Pick ONE of these articles, read it, and use it to comment on 180-253 in Money. Extra kudos to those who pick the longer, more elaborate one.

Due Tuesday. Finish Money. Also watch the Charlie Rose interview with Amis, posted in this blog. Comment on the theme of "acting" or being an "actor" and the related theme, mentioned on Wednesday by James, of Shakespeare. You'll find significant references to acting on pages 70, 72, 115, 126, 175, 188, 200, 205, 210, 223, and 347. You'll find references to Shakespeare on 54, 59-60, 61, 63, 124, 127, 137-139, 141, 168, 172, 184-5, 193-4, 200, 220-221, 226-227, 235, 276-278 (Othello), 338, 343. How do these related themes relate to the overall concerns of Money? If it helps here's a relevant quote from the Bard himself.

"Crash" with Cronenberg's commentary

What was he thinking? Here's a clue.

MONEY: analysis: posts for this week

due Sunday: analyze the narrator's voice.
Probably the most important element in understanding voice-driven fiction. Pick a passage or a set of passages from the assignment for Monday. Analyze it using the rhetorical categories in this list - partularly: connotation (or the affect in John Self's tone); denotation (or the distance between the formal definition of a word and the way he is using it); diction (notable in "polyphonic fiction": words that come from different modes of speech); figurative language (see link); rhythm (or "foot" - the pattern of stressed and unstressed words); and imagery. Looking at a passage from (53-117) you find striking, use this language to break down John Self's voice. How does his way of speaking influence the way we respond to the events and utterances in Money?

For both posts, pick and mark a specific passage for use in class.

due Tuesday: analyze humor in Money, pages 117-180.
Humor is tricky, because it involves a tacit agreement between the writer and reader. And the reader may not consciously know that he or she is agreeing with the assumptions of the joke. That said, humor can be simpler: exaggeration, absurdity, farce, and - transgression itself can be humorous. Pick a passage or passages you find funny, and analyze it using these characteristics of humor. How many of them does Amis employ? Do the jokes have a meaning? Do they make a statement?

PRESENTATION ASSIGNMENTS

These are close reading presentations. You will pick two key passages from the assignment due for the day and lead the discussion on that assignment with a close analysis of each passage. All of these writers are noted for there extravagant style, so the writing is a good place to begin. How do you close read? Look at the word choice, presence of the author, repetition and patterns, appearance of themes and motifs in the language, hints at the overall intent of the work, references to earlier works or to cinema.... You're looking at what's on the page, not summarizing the passage or commenting on "what it says." The first one is next week.
2/27: Kerry; 2/29: Jessica; 3/5: James; 3/7: Kevin; 3/19: Anna; 3/21: Lexi; 3/26: Jordan; 3/28: Tancrede; 4/2: Maura; 4/4: Tyler; 4/9: Peter; 4/11: Becca; 4/16: Zeba; 4/18: Alex; 4/23: Aaron; 4/25: Douglas; 4/30: Michael; 5/2: Marcos; 5/14 (on film): Vinnie.

Posts due Tues. night

Two posts are due for Wednesday.
Firstly: Cronenberg's Crash is a very different story from Ballard's book. Write an informal review of the adaptation. Remember that an adaptation of a provocative book is an interesting study, since producers can get away with less in the "mass" medium of cinema. That said, Cronenberg is a bold director. How do the ideas, story, and world of Crash the book come across differently in the visual medium of film, and why?

Secondly: read the assignment (over 50 pages) of Martin Amis's Money. 

1. How does the reader (in this case you) relate to the narrating character, John Self? 
2. How does the author of the book, Amis, appear as a presence?
3. Amis is both praised and derided for his unique writing style. Pick a passage and analyze the language, tone, etc. with an eye to describing his style in this book, and what makes it unique. Include this passage in your post.

A kid who kills...

A few years back there was a bestselling novel by a British writer Lionel Shriver. Zeba posted about the movie version, which may represent a non-transgressive approach to a common theme in transgressive literature: sociopathy. Sociopathy in children would be a rich subject for transgressive fiction to come...

And more

Zeba found this composite picture of Vaughn derived from the description in the novel. Is this how you saw him?

More

Aaron posted a Crash inspired technopunk song by The Normal from 1978: "Warm Leatherette":

Best posts on the end of CRASH

Aaron, in a great post, sees Crash as a comedy.

Jessica, in a brief post, is baffled by what Ballard is trying to do; Vinny takes on the same question.

Jordan and Kerry and Maura and Michael take on the question of the reality of Vaughn.

Marcos interestingly comments on Ballard's curious use of certain words.

Zeba and Tancrede give personal takes on what it was like to read the end of a strange book.

Contemporary fiction in context

When you write about contemporary fiction, you want to fit the work under consideration into some kind of tradition. When you do this, it can provide a frame for your comments about the book. Also, it's the way professionals analyze literature.

1. Satire. As you know, this is my way of categorizing these books, but don't feel you have to go along with this. There are a lot of other ways to set the scene for these novels.

2. The Realist novel. Realism in fiction begins with Austen, Dickens, and Melville. Each represents a different take on the "realist" novel, and a different definition of how novels can represent reality. In essence, early 19th century novels like Sense and Sensibility were considered "realist" because they dealt with the middle classes instead of knights errant on their way to their ladies fair. These knights were uncomplicated creatures: noble, certain of their love, consistent. In contrast Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice are prone to mistakes, misunderstandings, and changes of mind. This is why Austen's book represents reality more surely than an escapist novel by, say, Sir Walter Scott. Reality, in this case, means the human experience, including psychological aspects - like having an excess of pride or being blinded by prejudice. We still think of novels as "realist" in this sense: providing tales of education through right and wrong choices.

3. The Naturalist novel: Alongside 19th century realism you had naturalism, represented by writers like Faulkner, Dreiser, or Frank Norris. Naturalists often wrote about lower class characters who were gradually undone by their own inner weakness or corruption. I think the naturalists were influenced by Freud, who saw the id, or the primal and unrestrained part of the self, lurking beneath our respectable exteriors. For Dreiser, the id eventually shows itself and proves to be the undoing of the main character. Many transgressive novels seem to fit this category.

4. Cultural contexts: Is Crash a punk novel? Well, punks were anarchistic, deliberately offensive, tried a do-it-yourself approach rather than carefully crafting their music... This seems to fit Crash to some extent. It might also be called "new wave": the New Wave in music tried to be deliberately experimental, giving their music an oddball quality that was the opposite of the slick, grandiose music of the time.

5. Kung Fu movies and porn: These movies, violent or obscene as they are, are not transgressive, and by now we know why not. But they have something very important in common with transgressive fiction. This kind of fiction is light on story but long on action - violence, sensational events, explicit sex. Just as the plot of a Kung Fu movie is essentially a device to get the story back to another fight scene, these novels are circular. Or, you could say, they're designed like an Italian city, where the streets always lead to the next piazza. They have a circular structure, rather than the "arc" structure of a traditional story. (Old dance movies with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers have this structure too.)

6. Surrealism. Surrealism as a movement in European art actually precedes modernism. The Surrealists had a strong Freudian influence and saw their work, often, as revealing the "id" - the primal part of the mind. Transgressive fiction, which often takes place in a (slightly) unreal world, may be in the surrealist vein.

for Sunday the 12th

Finish Crash. Also read the "simulacrum" essay under Resources. Your post should be a harvesting of the themes in the novel, including the big ones - technology, time, and death. With your future paper in mind, you might focus on a specific motif: photography, the metaphoric world of the novel (in which everything resembles something else), impressions or records left by people, the nature of sexuality. The fundamental question is: what is Ballard's intent? Is he being disruptive in a Swiftian manner - throwing out all our normal ways of seeing life and the world - or does he have a message about modern life? Is the book fundamentally a comedy or tragedy. Like many transgressive novels, Crash resembles a picaresque (although it is not a pure picaresque like Candide or Don Quixote). Here are some other provocative questions you can pursue (if you want):
1. Are Vaughn and Ballard the same person?
2. Is Vaughn a symbol of the literary "author"?
3. Does Ballard, after his crash, imagine the events of this book?

Pick a specific passage or two and cite page numbers in your post.

Ballard imitation exercise for Wed. the 8th (due Tues.)

Think of it as a one-page or half-page story. update: post this in your blog but also bring four copies to class. (Sorry for the change.) Tips on how to imitate the writing of Crash, which is also a good way to understand it.

1. use a motif: Ballard discusses everything in mechanical terms, using the peculiar language of machines. In American Psycho the narrator discusses everything in terms of consumer products and buying. Use a "language" (such as the language of beauty, military talk, medical jargon, computer talk, academic/theoretical jargon, architectural terms) and limit yourself to this language. 
2. use technical, descriptive language: Ballard is descriptive, but usually in a dry, almost pedantically detailed way. His tone is almost never casual or colloquial.
3. if you want, use a transgressive style: this is optional: but you can talk about disturbing or taboo behavior without giving an indication of whether the behavior is good or bad.
4. set it in a familiar, yet imaginary world: as we discussed, Ballard makes his world distinct by limiting it. This is a great lesson for any fiction writer. What if a fictional story had an amusement park feel with bright colors, games, rides, clowns, and gaffers. That's a world: real yet not.

This can be short and is essentially for fun and as a way to understand experimental fiction. Don't sweat it too much.

Highlights of posts

Alexis wrote: "James is unable to have single interaction with another human (and with most cars) without having sexual thoughts." That's true, but are his feelings genuinely sexual?


Doug's question: "My question brings us back to a class discussion where we addressed the difference between directors "hovering above your head and dropping their messages onto your nose" and solely implying, relying on the viewer to decipher his or her message. With these two options of delivering an ethos, I am curious to know what people think about these approaches. Does using the first method deter from the work itself? Is the latter method stronger?"


Jessica: this is a plot question:  "But will Ballard get what he wants, and have a sexual encounter with Vaughan? Does Vaughan have any interest in that?"


Jordan: invisible forces: "More interestingly though is the way in which Ballard describes this world of traffic as almost bound for certain destruction. The way in which our main character gazes at the flow, or lack thereof in certain instances, of the surrounding traffic paints a picture that is reminiscent of the world of Hot Wheels I once played with. I am continually brought back to the image of all the cars connected by string, invisible string, and when one moves the whole world is set into motion."


Kerry: "Catherine has been an intriguing character for me from the beginning; she was the one that really made me believe that they very well could be in some different made up world because her reactions to events were so outlandish and calm. However, she has been developing into a much more typical wifely character. She is accompanied in her new attitude by her secretary. Catherine's new reactions to James' decisions seem much more realistic now, but after seeing her in the beginning, she only seems to be much more complicated. James describes how his wife has become much more concerned with his sexual behavior despite the fact that she takes part in the same types of sexual experiences. " But this is all through James Ballard's mind. Is Ballard depicting his wife accurately?


Marcos: "Aside from that psychological aspect that leaves readers fearful hoping not to ever meet these characters in a collision, I enjoy Ballard’s use of the word “rainbow.” He uses this word to describe any visual transition of colors." In Ballard's carefully-crafted visual world, let's look at the role played by color.


Check out Maura's excellent post - good to read in full. She says, "The ideas of negative theology and apophasis in the Menippean Satire reading reminded me of the way morals and sexualities of the characters in Crash are portrayed by Ballard. So far in the novel, there have not been any outright declarations of what is considered right and wrong in the characters' minds or in the world in which they live. However, we can get a pretty clear but hard to articulate idea of the characters' moralities based on their actions and reactions to different events in the novel. For example, when James gets in his first car crash, he is never guilty, shocked, or repulsed by the fact that he had killed a man and was covered in his blood."


Michael's post is also worth a look: "Apophasis is “absence of belief.” (18) I found this notion to be fundamentally contradictory because, by definition, apophasis also suggests an unnamable belief.  An unnamable belief, while abstract and unspecific, is still a belief in something.  I like the term anarchistic here, because while an anarchist may be anti-establishment and anti-just-about-everything, an anarchist is firm in his or her opposition.  In other words, the stance of opposition alone, even in the absence of clear-cut goals in mind, is still a belief.  So can an apophatic believe in his or her apophasis?: I guess the answer must be YES."


Tyler's comment is similar: "The whole concept of apophasis is a bit contradictory in itself. It is nearly impossible to not believe in anything because that act of disbelieving is already believing in something. Like nihilism, the decision to not hold any morals and beliefs is holding the absence of belief above the possession of belief. On the other hand, though, writing in an apophasis matter is a transgressive approach."

For next week: due the 5th and 7th

Read up to chapter 11th in Crash - make notes, commenting on patterns, writing issues, voice, repeating motifs, relationships, the subtleties of Ballard's world, etc. Post on Ballard by Sunday night and again on Tuesday night.

Due Sunday (for Monday): read "Menippean Satire" - on Blackboard, under Resources. This is long, so you might focus on the key parts, and read the "literary history" sections more lightly. Comment on the idea of "negative theology" or "apophasis" in relation to Ballard, Nabokov, or any other satiric work you can think of. Important: write some questions on the key ideas in the criticism - ideas that need clarification. I will answer these in class.

Due Tuesday (for Wednesday): read up to ch. 17: comment on the sections of Crash discussing James Ballard's deepening involvement with Vaughn. Write a short imitation of Ballard's style. Instead of eroticism, technology, or auto-crashes, you could focus on some other object of obsession. It is an obsessive style. Try to catch the tone of the voice. (This can be short.)

Update: more weird sexuality...

If the sexual activities in Crash strike you as rather bourgeois, check out the video in Zeba's post about a woman who married the Eiffel Tower.

Reality/unreality in "Natasha" - helpful posts

Check out posts by J.R., Aaron, Marcos, and Alexis.

Ideas that came up in class on 1/30

1. Mel Gibson: the actor-director has had one of the best careers in Hollywood, starring in cult movies, a well-liked action series, and even winning Best Director. But his views are widely considered unacceptable, so much so that his career as an actor may be over (unless he does Lethal Weapon 5). Is Gibson "transgressive"? By my definition, no: because transgressive artists upset widely-held values, but somehow make it into the mainstream. They avoid being labeled and dismissed. Somehow they make it through the cultural filters. How?

2. Music and literature: Burroughs said he wrote "picaresque" fiction, not fiction after the nineteenth-century model. This traditional type of story designs plots on a spatial model. You know, the person who wrote Lethal Weapon (Shane Black) would call it a "story arc." But avant-garde or just disagreeable writers (like Jack Kerouac) often use a musical model to design their stories. And a picaresque novel features a character who moves from adventure to adventure - no arc: and it's sort of like the way a song moves from verse to chorus to verse to chorus. (Or the way a Kung Fu movie or a Fred Astaire dance movie always gets back to the dance/fight scenes. A transgressive novel gets back to the violence or other intense content.) And polyphony (also called "counterpoint"), the interweaving of voices (melodies), may have no big-picture structure at all. A fugue in music often lacks a fixed structure - it is a tapestry of distinct melodies all at once, such as in Bach's works - best played (transposed from the harpsichord) by Glenn Gould.

Highlights from last week's posts (on Burroughs)

Burroughs has had an enormous influence on rock - Aaron talks about Cobain/Burroughs and embeds a video. In a funny way, Burroughs and Bukowski are opposites. For one thing, Bukowski doesn't ostracize the reader quite the way W.S.B. does. James talks about the relationship. Kevin's post on the effect of the cut-up on the idea of authorship as well as the experience of reading can be a resource for all of us. Tyler's comments on the picaresque and transgressive are interesting; of course, the picaresque is a defiance of the "nineteenth-century" novel - and has a very different structure. Tyler also includes a cut-up from the syllabus. Zeba noticed Burroughs' rejection of feminist assumptions and said she thought transgressive authors would go against conservative assumptions. But they don't seem to accept either conservative or progressive ideas; I think they're looking for a p.o.v. completely outside the conservative/liberal thing.

Post due 1/31 9 PM (for Wed's class)

J.G. Ballard Crash (1973): read chapters one through four. Respond in your blog post in any way you like, but here are some thoughts: i) in what kind of world does this story take place and how do we know? Ballard crafts the setting of his novel - it is not "really" London; ii) what is the relationship between Ballard the author and James Ballard the character? iii) Martin Amis said that Ballard's work appeals to a part of the mind not yet discovered: find examples.

The book deals with alternative or unimaginable sexualities. You might include other examples of such sexualities in your post... also with technology... use your imagination and make it fun.

Simple and complex satire

1. Simple satire uses exaggeration or imitation to mock someone or something or an idea.

 People have always had trouble understanding that satirists don't mean what they are saying in a direct or literal fashion. So, how should we interpret Newman's song?
2. Menippean satire attacks many objects, recognizable types, ideas and beliefs, government, social norms - just about everything.

In its literary form, Menippean satire usually has a fancy style; Humbert Humbert said, "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." This style helps the content get through cultural filters... In the case of "Family Guy," the unusual style is... cartoon animation.

POST due 1/29 9 PM (for Mon's class)

Before our next class: write your cut-up composition, using ten of the phrases, one per line of poetry. Or write it as a prose piece - one per sentence. We'll hopefully look at some in class. Don't labor over this; it's an exercise.

Also read "Natasha" and "Bakhtin on the Novel." (Remember that you must read the first 4 chapters of Crash for Wednesday - start now!)

Suggestions for your post: always try to be specific about VN's LANGUAGE.
1. Discuss the story in light of this idea: the art of Nabokov, like the art of Flaubert and Joyce, became in many ways an art of the distance between the author and the reader, between the personal experiences and trials of the hero, and between generally accepted ideas and personal opinions.
2. Also: discuss the themes of an uncertain sense of reality and imagination or art in the story.
3. Required: relate the Bakhtinian ideas of polyphony or dialogic writing to Burroughs and Nabokov.

Please include a couple questions on the reading about Bakhtin - things that need clarification.

Post due 1/22 9 PM on W.S. Burroughs

Posts for the Wednesday readings will as a rule be more open. For the Monday readings I will be more likely to ask a specific set of questions. Also, the Wednesday readings will be lighter - nearly always - than the ones due Monday. So, what to post on Burroughs?

• first make your blog, as described above and on the syllabus
• read the excerpts and the interview
• comment on Burroughs' personality, as far as you can make it out
• on his "cut up" style - what motivates it or what is its value
• on his "transgressive" qualities: he sees things differently from regular folk
• or anything you want
• idea: write a Burroughsian cut-up as part of your post. Here's info on how to do it.

Welcome to the Class!

I taught a class like this once before, and it was called "Writers Behaving Badly." As a result, I'm writing a book on a genre of contemporary literature which I call "transgressive" or "transgressional." I mean that in a specific way, as will become clear to you as the class goes on. The transgressive genre is actually British and American, so this class covers one side, with a nod to the other side. We'll also glance at the roots of this peculiar form of writing. Transgressive books come from a lot of places, but I locate them in one of the oldest traditions in literature: satire.

That said, let's move on! Bookmark this site and check it before you do your own post for each class. My second post, above, has the green assignment icon - you should always look for this. We begin with a unique figure in American literature, one who had a tremendous influence on transgressive authors like Dennis Cooper, J.G. Ballard, or Will Self. The inimitable W.S. Burroughs. Excelsior!