Modernist Baroque

I'm sorry to have missed class! I hope the Carter discussion went well -- wow, what a prose stylist! Her sentences are gold. When I chatted with people they seemed frustrated with the apparent repetition of subject matter, and the "unradicalness" of her retellings of the fairy tales. But consider this: she clearly enjoys the deep, disturbing aesthetic of the fairy tale, and she wouldn't want to disrupt that, I think, with postmodern experimentation (although there is a bit of that; muted). What I like about her writing is that she stays true to the baroque machinations of the fairy tale, the laquered language, the assumptions of otherworldliness. What I think is so innovative about her approach is, in fact, that reverence for language itself as a fairy tale: an impossible and aestheticized system of rules where reality is heightened or even dismissed, and where pleasure (this is key; sheer pleasure and tittilation) dictates linguistic boundaries. The richness of her sentences are like meals: fettucine alfredo, chicken kiev, a salted avocado eaten whole. Has anyone read her novels?

Posted by augus072 at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Can we please have a viewing party for this? Preferably a themed viewing party where everyone comes in wolf costume. The movie is based on Angela Carter's wolf stories and she co-wrote the screenplay. Plus, super duper special effects!

Posted by liuxx675 at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I don't want to say "I told you so," but I was re-reading _The Bloody Chamber_ when I came upon those two words, "wild surmise," which had also appeared in _Under the Volcano_ (anybody remember where?), and I thought: well, they--meaning "you," my students--can say that I warned you that this phrase, and more particularly this idea, would show up in our reading. Please do yourselves and me a favor and think seriously about why this idea/phrase/condition keeps turning up in our reading. It will take you into some interesting cognitive corridors.

And if you want a pop culture parallel, think about those moments in Spielberg's films when someone (often a child) looks at something (usually looks up) and sees something that he/she doesn't understand but which causes his/her jaw to drop open; the word for this (recently corrupted and co-opted by the Bush Administration) is "awe."

Posted by baxte087 at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Under the Volcano, the movie, was shot in 1984 by the great John Huston. Though I have yet to see this film, I have seen Huston's version of Joyce's The Dead, a film that is very faithful to Joyce's text. Reviews for Volcano say the film follows Lowry closely, though Charlie did mention in class that he thought there was a "problematic" nature to a part of the movie, if I remember correctly. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Albert Finney as the Consul). If anybody has a big TV, let's have a screening!

Posted by char0261 at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When it comes to phantasmagoria, South American writers have been at it for decades. They haven't labored under quite the same tradition of empiricism that we have; they go off into derangement of the senses quite easily. If you really want your head immersed into a dream world whose prose is so thick and baroquely oxygen-deprived that you feel as if you're deep-sea diving, try some of the following: Clarise Lispector's _The Apple in the Dark_ (she was a Brazilian writer, originally from Russia, I believe). The book used to be available and probably still is from the University of Chicago Press in what my Portugese-reading friends tell me is a good translation. Then try José Donoso's _The Obscene Bird of Night_. Then anything by Alejo Carpentier, who was Cuban. My favorite of his is _Reasons of State_, a bit hard to get your hands on, but beautiful and funny. Garcia Marquez's _The Autumn of the Patriarch_ is brilliant, of course. Faulkner was a big influence on some of these people, Garcia Marquez in particular. There are many, many others.
Probably one of the best American practitioners of this sort of writing, whom I haven't assigned, is John Hawkes, who was Marilynne Robinson's teacher. Try to find a copy of his book _The Beetle Leg_; see if you're big enough to stand up to it. This stuff makes David Lynch look like a walk in the park.

Posted by baxte087 at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)