Several Musings

When I was reading through the second half of the book, I kept forgetting that each number came from a different source and they kept blending together and I had to keep reminding myself of that. It made me wonder how Shields decided to put the whole book together, because it certainly could not have been random, but it seems random, but it makes sense? I guess? Maybe not. I don’t know.
Another thing that I was considering is that I think with this book, you kind of have to read it in one big gulp the way we did to really take it all in and let it mesh together all at once and float around. If someone sat down to read it over a longer period of time, I think it would get jumbled and they would forget things and it would lose a lot of its merits.

All of that aside, I really connected with much of the latter half of the book, because I, myself, am more interested in the essayist and nonfiction side of writing. (SHUN!) I have my own reasons for that, but that’s not up for discussion because I feel like I will be attacked, (not really, but most of you seem to be passionate about your love of fiction, so…).

Like Jess, I also liked the collage section. I actually highlighted numbers 324 and 339, too. The first exercise even said that we weren’t to be so concerned about plot, so it made me think of that. I think given that freedom, we are more able to explore our creativity and feel less restricted in a way. We don’t have to think about standard conventions. That’s not to say we can do things willy-nilly entirely, but we still have a bit more breathing room and it gives us the opportunity to look at things in a different way.

One last thing - section/chapter V, number 538 says "I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else." I find that to be ironic.  

This post is a lie (Just kidding)

I really enjoy the concept on contradiction in writing. After all, to be a good fiction writer, you need to be a good liar (or at least, you SHOULD be a good liar). But, all this talk about the personal essay and nonfiction and doing a dialogue...

Shit. Half the class is in the nonfiction class with me!

But I feel that contradiction goes beyond just that of the personal essay. Sure, the concept of the contrary IS important, and vital, and what i'm actually working on tonight, but I feel that there's also a connection with the collage. After all, creating something that is "ours" as a collage of other writer's work, well that in itself is a contradiction, isn't it?

I'm just trying to think it out in my head. I take a line from Melville, a picture from a comic book, and add it in with some text of my own, and suddenly I have a piece of collage fiction. At the author page, it will say: Drew Mears. There may be some regards to those I took pieces of, but all in all, i'm going around saying that it's my piece.

Maybe i'm just blowing smoke. But I feel that being aware of the contradictory nature of our work is helpful in a way. It keeps me grounded at least.

All Our Stories Are the Same

The latter half of the book was a great improvement in my mind. I loved the themes of brevity, contradiction, and the human condition. It's true (not just of lyric essays, fiction, or non fiction--but of all good writing) that writing deals with the human condition and that, even in autobiography, every person can relate in some way to the characters or themes being explored within a work. In this latter half of the book, Shields seemed less like he was trying to argue something and more that he was exploring a concept. The first half felt like Shields was trying to decide whether fiction or nonfiction was better and which had more merits. Finally, the book settles down and simply explored the art of writing and creating. Which I liked SO MUCH more. It shouldn't matter what form of writing the book/paper/pamphlet/video/picture comes in--what's the concept behind it? What emotions does it engage?

The collage section was helpful to me in understanding how to go about this class more. I liked 324 and 339: "The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things" and "Collage is pieces of other things. Their edges don't meet."

I think these two sections really emphasize the idea of thinking associatively when forming a collage. If a rabbit makes you think of a hat or Costa Rica or carrots, it doesn't matter if the connection is easily seen. Odds are, someone out there thinks the same things when they hear rabbit. The "reader" doesn't need to see the connections, or the edges, because without these there is a better absence of plot, which gives room for more thinking and various interpretations, which, we decided earlier in this class, is a great thing to aim for with our collages: no set meaning, multiple interpretations.

Huzzah!

"Every Man's Work is A Portrait of Himself"

I have to agree with Alyssa on this one. The "bright splinters" part seemed to catch my attention the most, and I feel like Shields did a much better job of not contradicting himself so much in the latter half of the book than in the first few chapters. I know he was probably compiling a lot of stuff, and I still feel sort of weird about the lyric essay thing, but maybe I'm just getting too caught up in that particular concept. Maybe it's just so much of his talk about finding the "real" in everything that gets to me. Toward the end, he says, "I'm bored by out-and-out fabrication, by myself and others; bored by invented plots and invented characters. I want to explore my own damn, doomed character. I want to cut to the absolute bone" (175-6). I would like to say that I'm all for dishing out the personal sometimes, (never in my writing, unless it's communicated through another character, obviously) but I feel like Shields just really shoves the importance of the reality of nonfiction in our faces. I'm not saying that what he says about reality and unreality isn't necessarily true, but for a fiction writer who does make up stuff all the time and who doesn't want to write about her personal life, I feel sort of... offended, maybe, by his notion that the lyric essay seems to mean so much more in terms of reality than what's contained in fiction. All in all, I did like some of the things he said about the laws of copyright and the significance of compiling a bunch of different things together to make something bigger and more meaningful to the new artist and the new audience... I just can't seem to make myself get past the pushy-ness of his lyric essay argument.

Bright Splinters

And now for the rest of the alphabet. There was a lot that caught my interest in the second half of the book. It seemed there was a much heavier focus on the personal/lyric essay, so for a good bit of it I felt like I was rereading an article for my creative nonfiction class--recognizable quotes were cropping up everywhere. I like the idea of the journey/exploration, the idea of asking questions without really sorting out definite answers, which can be applied both to nonfiction and to the collage. And speaking of collage, I enjoyed that chapter, as well; I think we've already discussed the concepts behind most of it, but out of the various descriptions, #319--"Life though...flies at us in bright splinters"--was my absolute favorite thus far.

One of my only complaints was the chapter "in praise of brevity." I definitely see the value and beauty in brevity, and agree that "omission is a form of creation." However, I don't believe that the briefest route is always the best route when it comes to writing. Sometimes a situation calls for an excess, an overwhelming and exasperating flow of words, unnecessary, repetitive, rambling, and on and on and on. Because that is just another aspect of life. And according to the the book, we're supposed to be reflecting life in our work, right? Well, I guess it depends on which chapter you read. It's always twisting into contradictions, anyway. And no, I'm not really sure if I'm referring to the book or life anymore...so I guess David Shields did a pretty good job of it.

D: Drew's Response to Reality Hunger (pt 1)

((aaaahhh! I'm surrounded by toilets!))

So, the first few "chapters" (if I can call them so) are focused on the more historical and technical parts of what is the "novel" and what is "collage." I found it interesting that some of the most famous sayings, such as "There's nothing to say that hasn't been said before" goes all the way back to around 200 B.C. So, the concept of pilfering other's work is an ancient and well refined craft by now.

I really enjoy Shield's discussion of multi-media types in collage fiction. Especially now, with the access of the internet, combining popular media forms (film, comics, internet) becomes more important in the aspect of collage. Something I really want to work on is bringing in the graphical media into my fiction, since most of the new media has influenced my writings. So, when Shields discusses "mixing" film together, I see it as an opportunity for some interesting collage ideas (hence, see my earlier post about the Star Wars UnCut Collage)

abstract expressionism

I’m not sure where to begin with Reality Hunger after just reading the first half. I appreciate what Shields is doing with the work so far, but I’m not exactly sure what it means just yet, if that makes sense… at least in terms of all of the points he makes. I had lots of issues understanding what he was getting at in part C (65), where he says: “The lyric essayist seems to enjoy all the liberties of the fiction writer, with none of a fiction writer’s burden of unreality, the nasty fact that none of this ever really happened—which a fiction writer daily wakes to.” ‘Some of the best fiction is now being written as nonfiction.’ But… is nonfiction necessary to find reality in something? Maybe I’m just misunderstanding, but I earlier in the book it seems as though he said that every artist tries to find a sense of reality in their work, no matter what medium it might be presented in. I don’t know if by the ‘burden of unreality’ for fiction writers he means the lies that fiction writers create in order to tell our stories, but the more I think about it the more confused I become. Does our ‘burden of unreality’ mean that we have to work that much harder than the nonfiction writer in order to be able to find that sense of reality in our work?

I know that Shields says later in the same paragraph that “the fiction writer labors under a burden to prove, or create, that reality, and can expect mistrust and doubt from the reader at the outset.” I know when we’re starting with a story from scratch we create a world for our readers and we must attempt to make them believe in that reality that we create, but I don’t think that a nonfiction writer’s work should be any closer to reality than the fiction writer’s simply because it is supposedly coming from a ‘factual’ source. There can be just as strong a sense of reality in the fiction writer’s work, can’t there? I think so!

(Still) Searching

So, where to even begin? My favorite portion was somewhere between "d" and "h," when the text discussed memoirs, the unreliability of memory, etc. I'm also in the creative nonfiction class right now, and as Rachel pointed out, we've already touched a bit on how creative nonfiction is based on fact, but not necessarily entirely factual, since as authors we put our own biased, and often distorted, "spin" on things.

Another passage I found interesting was on page 92: "...in this rush of technological innovation, we've lost something along the way and are going back to find it, but we don't know what that thing is. Eating genetically altered, neon-orange bananas, we aren't getting what we need, and we know something is missing. We're clinging to anything that seems "real" or organic or authentic. We want rougher sounds, rougher images, raw footage, uncensored by high technology and the powers that be." Strangely enough, that quote made me think of the Victorian Literature class I took a couple years ago. I remember discussing how the Victorians reacted to the Industrial Revolution by viewing the pastoral societies of the past through a very nostalgic lens. It made me realize that this hunger for "reality" is really nothing new; it's just another cycle that our society is going through as we react to the changes that are constantly taking place around us. It's just another search for someplace "safe," someplace that means something. Maybe even someplace real--without the quotation marks.

A Blending of Styles

So far in Reality Hunger, so much has stood out to me. I really can’t even express how many things I have highlighted and scribbled next to; so many things have intrigued me. I am fascinated by the idea that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction fades and actually becomes irrelevant. I think many people want to resist it because they want clear-cut answers and they always want to KNOW, but that’s the fun part of the concept of collage that we are playing with this semester. When I was reading through much of the text, I kept thinking about my Nonfiction writing class that I’m taking and we discussed in our first couple of classes about how when writing personal essays we sometimes have to stretch the truth or even maybe make things up to fill in holes, which is something that Reality Hunger points out, so it was particularly relevant to me. Like I said, I think many people fear or detest the idea and may find it to be a literary atrocity of sorts, but I think it is an interesting way to approach writing.

When I started the book, I didn’t know what to expect because the set up was so odd and scattered, but it works because we can see how perspectives on the same subject blend and diverge at the same time. Shields takes so many outside sources and brings them together to create such a comprehensive gathering of the ideas he seems to be trying to get across to the reader. 

"Anything processed by memory is fiction."

For while, I honestly couldn't find the relevancy of this book to our class. Aside from the obvious "it's a collage" aspect. The author seemed content to argue the same points over and over: 1. Everything is a collage 2. No one reads fiction anymore (and I won't get into the problems I have with this statement....).

Around section e, the numbered sections became more disjointed. It became more apparent that Shields was using quotes to make up his page and I actually felt more secure with the book. It felt more relevant. I liked section e a lot--with the argument of reality, and representing reality, being fiction. And fiction being truth. After all, "all the best stories are true" and isn't truth and reality all we have to base our fiction on? Even at the core of the strangest sci-fi, the elements--the feelings--within the story are true. It's what gives a story its validity.

Shields' point is that everything is fiction and everything is a collage--to a point. Memoirs and nonfiction are, of course, a form of fiction, because memory is faulty and our minds fill in the blanks with fabrications. That people want to read true accounts can never be fulfilled. And of course, everyone steals from everyone else, so why should it be a problem?

The thing with society is they want what they think is reality and they don't want to find out otherwise. It's hard to believe there is no fiction in a memoir or no script in "reality" t.v. But people want to believe it.

I think, as a class, we're walking a tight rope. We write fiction by stealing other people's and we argue that it's okay. We also argue that everyone's precious nonfiction, their facts, are fiction in a sense, and we expect everyone to be okay with that.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm rambling so I'm going to stop now.

TBC...

This post is not complete and will be revised/added to, but I just have to put down a few things before reading 'reality hunger' any further buries all those threads under the bulk of information. First I have to say that the descriptive 'Manifesto' of the title is too true, since the book is bursting at the seams! The fascinating thing is that you can read it front to back, back to front, sideways and by picking random numbers and much like 'the island of a thousand dangers' (which is the title transcribed from German, not sure whether it's the same here, but basically the novel that sends you to different places at the end of each chapter and manipulates the narrative that way) the way you choose to read it influences the way interpretation develops. Now I'm not really clear on what (or better If) the author actually fabricated himself, but frankly, I'm in no rush to find out. One of the things that appeals to me about this format is the chance to ignore the source of the text and instead go hunting for the context hidden in the structure of the composition. I'm especially taken with the regards of history (literary and otherwise) and the fundamental way our outlook onto the world is shaped by narrative, even though narrative is shaped by our outlook in turn, not stable or set in stone or even trustworthy.

Star Wars: THE COLLAGE?

Star Wars Uncut, a pretty badass project from a Vimeo Developer, is a shot-for-shot remake of Star Wars Episode IV (Aka, A New Hope). It's done in 15-second clips by hundreds of videoographers, kids, and nerds.

It ranges from Lego Stop Motion to Avant Garde Collage to music/video remixes of scenes. It's a big trashy, a bit funny, and a bit heartwarming to see it all come together.

Plus, it's another example of story-telling: Mass media collage from thousands of people to re-do a piece of mega-famous pop culture.

I wanted to post it here because well, it's another interesting example of collage, even if it's something that would be nigh impossible for our class to do (Unless we want to get together and slowly piece together Empire. I would be down for it)

If you have 2 hours to waste online, check it out:

http://gizmodo.com/5878151/streaming-movie-of-the-night-star-wars-uncut

(Oh, also, the best part? The old Dos Based text adventure scene.)

Help! I'm being eaten alive by subconscious influence!

So in the Ectasy of Influence, I cannot escape from the idea of crytpomenesia aka Simpsons Did It Syndrome. It is definitely something I have experienced many times when writing. But, let me go on another point about this piece first, before I return to something different. I loved how Lethem talks about non-literary sources throughout his article (and he uses them in Cars as well) and by that I mean sources like music and film. I love the concept of taking from the "modern" pop culture of the day, or should I say stealing stuff from this past generation.

From Burrough's treatment of Naked Lunch, one just takes the popular and the pulp and makes it into something literary. And why not? Why can't I take a still from Spiderman and make it something behind what Stan Lee has envisioned? Sure, Marvel Comics #1 is now priced at $250,000-$1,000,000. (Holy shit that's expensive!) But isn't it just "pop" or "pulp" from the 30's?

After all, we (as in, writers, artists, musicians) are always taking and building, and when we do it right, we create something amazing. When we do it wrong, we end up sued by Joe Satriani.

Also, i'm sorry it's 1:11 and i'm posting this. Dick move on my part.

Blame SOPA and PIPA. Because that relates to our class in a way. It's all about censorship and the power to censor creative works.

(really it's just because I almost forgot)

Readers Are Like Nomads

I really enjoyed Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence (not particularly more that Cars, but at about the same level) because I thought that his in-depth look at the concept of 'plagiarism'  was interesting. Even though he made many of the same points that we talked about in class, his look at all of the different types of 'plagiarism' was well done and thought-provoking, especially in the 'Usemonopoly' section. Of the copyright laws, he says that few of us ever stop to think and question the "contemporary construction of copyright," and goes on to state that what we normally think of the copyright is not true at all, but that the copyright is "an ongoing social negation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in every incarnation." So, copyright. Is it a necessary evil? Maybe in the way we typically view the 'rules' of copyrighting...

Jess brought up the point in class yesterday that she might feel a bit weird if she were to walk in a bookstore and find that someone had taken her work and scrambled it up into something new and republished it. I think it might feel a bit strange for all of us because we think that our ideas are our own, but, to put it in Lethem's terms (attributed to Thomas Jefferson, of course): the copyright has now become a construct that people put so much faith in because they "view the culture as a market in which everything of value should be owned by someone or other." I understand that someone can invent something 'original' and put a patent on it, but we've seen so many times now that the artist's work has been copied, changed, and reformatted so many times that everything becomes the product of the person who changed it because the new artist has applied his or her talents in some way or another to make it theirs. Lethem brings up this point in 'The Beauty of Second Use'. He discovered that the man who had taken his first novel and sculpted it to look like a gun was pretty amazing, no matter what he'd done to change Lethem's work. 

Old Story, New Context

"Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying an purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, an discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos."

I enjoyed reading Lethem, both his work and his argument. The latter brought forward some interesting questions and suggestions for writers, and creators as a whole, to think about. What makes a retelling any more of an infringement on copyright than a Hollywood remake (for which this decade will surely be known later on in time)? And what, if the original can still be accessed, is the real damage done? Could it be that we don't want to be upstaged by someone who may have taken our idea and--to be harsh--made it better? Do we want recognition or do we just not like other people touching our stuff?

There is one sentence I'd like to zero in on, because I think it's applicable, not only for this class, but for our lives as writers as a whole. "...simply placing objects in an unexpected context reinvigorates their mysterious qualities." I loved loved LOVED this line (and still do do DO).

As writers, let's strive to take our inspiration and do our very best to make it new and interesting. To take the tired and worn out Romeo and Juliet plot line, and make it fresh and seemingly unheard of.

Some last few points:

• I liked how "Cars" encompassed a lot of the trade secrets of the uncanny--seeming timelessness, intellectual uncertainty, dopplegangers
• I agree with Rachel that I have no idea how that man managed to put that entire story together.

Influence is Bliss

I was most intrigued by both of Lethem's works, 'Cars' because I did detect a break in the narrative (mostly relations of day and night, characters and their spaces) but that didn't curb the enjoyment I took out of it or made me anything less than impressed with the author's feat to FIND all these pieces in the first place to put them together into a new whole.
The philosophy that stands behind that kind of creative work is thoroughly expanded in the essay, which once again drove home one of the most striking points of our dealings with literature in contemporary times. There's NOTHING that hasn't been done before, and while some things have been done to death (yes, I'm looking the franchising in modern day movie culture, which gloriously nails the argument of economizing intellectual property in a way that is detrimental for creativity and originality) others have sunk back into the obscurity of time until some creative mind unearths them again, whether consciously or by chance and brings them back to the discourse of literary narrative.
The ingenious thing is that everyone is influenced whether they'd like to admit it or not, because no one can claim a blank slate for a cultural background. And they shouldn't have to. While the livelyhood or artists - literary or otherwise - of course rests on the fact of whether their products are 'marketable', a notion which is certainly not to be discarded, the current state of affairs regarding usemonopoly and copyright (culminating presently in the ongoing and harrowing debate about legislation like SOPA and PIPA) are woefully behind the consumer reality and in urgent need of a revision to free up all this potential for creative forces to be applied.

How Does It Work?

Jonathan Lethem's "Always Crashing in the Same Car" really intrigued me. I got to the end and looked at the "-Bowie, Hawkes, Evenson, Calvino..." etc., and was like… um? The whole time I was trying to find where it was all cut up and mashed together, but it seemed to be rather seamless. I won’t say that it takes more creativity to do the whole collage thing, but I won’t say that it doesn't, either. But that’s just my unpopular opinion, I’m sure. It takes a serious amount of skill to be able to stitch so many authors, stories, whatever, together the way Lethem did and make it all make sense. He wove it all so naturally, even though they didn't necessarily belong, and now that I have seen what that looks like it is even more of a daunting task, particularly since I liked the story so much.

I also found “Cut and Paste” to be an interesting little article because it traced the evolution of the idea of collage, in a way. The question of whether collage is the new “visual language of the adolescent” is interesting. I think, in a lot of ways, it has. Websites like Picnik, for instance, lets people ALL OVER Myspace, Facebook, etc., go crazy editing their pictures and throwing them in albums. I see it all the time. Some of it, (most of it), is horrid and tacky. But, hey, they can do it. And that is their form of collage, I guess. On another note, I found Ross-Ho’s project, “Untitled Proximity Collages” to be particularly interesting because it takes images that would otherwise be unrelated and mashes them together to create a work that would, I assume, be beautiful. I would like to further investigate, of course. When I go to Google images and random things pop up for a word, I am always curious as to how some things are related, so the fact that someone took that on as a project is fascinating to me. 

Never Say Never

I thought Lethem's argument in "The Ecstasy of Influence" was very convincing. I really only had one issue with it, which struck me on page 39, with his statement, "...even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of art: an ad has no status as gift; i.e., it's never really for the person it's directed at." Hmm. After a urinal ended up in our art history books, I thought we'd be a little more careful about saying things like "[that] can never be any kind of art."

Advertisements are designed for an audience just as much (if not more) than a book or a painting is--so if the latter can be "for" a person, why not an ad? I understand what Lethem was saying about commodification, but just because most people see something as a commodity doesn't detract from the fact that one person may see it as art. If the person who designed the ad considers it to be art, does it not make it so? Or, if the ad "moves the heart," has it not become a work of art for the person who is viewing it? I guess I just think we should should be careful when it comes to inventing rules about what is or isn't art. Because as we know from history, once we start establishing rules, someone's just going to come along and mess them all up anyway.

The Freudian Implication

That which is unheimlich would, it seems, not simply be that which does not belong in a setting. More precisely, it could be said to include that which we are unsure of, that which may or may not be at odds with the grand scheme... The tension of confusion added to the tension of the unknown.
Even Freud's comments about castration and eye-loss (which I find only somewhat convincing) seem like they could have some use to us as writers. That which is uncanny is born precisely out of the kind of web of implications we are learning to create. If in fact the two situations are comparable, then it seems likely that the tense association is possible precisely because of how similar (in an abstract way) the two losses are.
As for what specifically could be done to assist our work, it could be useful to realize and act on the tensions of the uncertain in what we create. An intentional lack of resolution can itself mean many things, such that the clever artist might make it the case that both the artwork itself, and any attempt to discern authorial intent, can evoke the uncanny. Perhaps a truly great use of this would be to generate a sense of the grotesque (which, as Freud noted, overlaps heavily) from elements that seem decidedly unlikely to do so. A critique of Freud himself might be that he insists on particular implications in the work, precisely because they are formulaically plausible, and not necessarily because they are any more explicitly valid. He may be a scientist after all, but he is certainly one who insists on his theory, along with his cigars.

Making Distinctions

First, one of the parts that stuck out to me, too, was the part on pg. 150 about how the uncanny is the line where fantasy and reality is blurred. I find it interesting, and eerie, when you can’t make that distinction. Honestly, it freaks me out. Ghosts and all that being my biggest fear, the supernatural and what not, that would make a certain amount of sense to be “uncanny” to me, as some argue ghosts to be real and others find them to be entirely fictitious. That being said, some of the discussion in the text freaked me out a little bit, but I am a wimp. But at the same time, I am always fascinated by it. While ghosts are my biggest fear, sometimes I like to indulge in watching Ghost Hunters or Most Haunted Castles or whatever. But I digress.

The other aspect of the reading that I found particularly interesting was on page 140-141 that says “According to [Jentsch] we have particularly favourable conditions for generating feelings of the uncanny if intellectual uncertainty is aroused as to whether something is animate or inanimate, and whether the lifeless bears an excessive likeness to the living.” I find that intriguing because if I could write something that is so ambiguous that could resemble something to be both lifeless as well as living, I would be impressed with myself. For a reader, I think it would be disconcerting because it would make them jump back and forth and question what they believe as they are reading. It is the intellectual uncertainty that Jentsch speaks of that really penetrates a person’s psyche and freaks them out a little.  

Uncanny Valleys ahead

So, reading Freud's The Uncanny, I found myself captivated by the reading and the analysis of Hoffmann's The Sand-Man. The most important piece of this analysis is the argument (not on castration and the eyes, because Jesus Christ, Freud really hammers that down by the end of the work) but instead that Freud states (concerning the "events" of the story) "These and many other features of the tale appear arbitrary and meaningless if one rejects the relation between fear for the eyes and fear of castration, but they become meaningful as soon as the Sand-Man is replaced by the dreaded father," (140).

Working on Exercise 1, I felt obligated to give some meaning as I tried to tie together thematic elements to my "experiment" (which I suppose everyone will see tomorrow) but it is here that I see the real heart of one of the ways to go about writing the collage comes from. When taking pieces, be they art work or lyrics or a paragraph from a book, the theme that ties them all together becomes the driving force of that piece. So in our works, having a theme that brings all of these seemingly arbitrary, different aspects together, will give our work meaning beyond "well, we were wanting to make something different". The theme leads to deeper analysis and understanding.

I just hope everyone doesn't do their theme on castration. Yuck.

Now, it may just be my penis envy, but...

...throughout the piece, I tended to lean more towards Jentsch and his hypotheses on the uncanny, than Freud's. All his talk of castration aside, a major point of contention I had with Freud's theory is on page 139 where Freud states, "The notion of intellectual uncertainty in no way helps us to understand this uncanny effect." This of course follows Jentsch's point that the uncanniness behind The Sand-Man is that the reader is unsure of Olimpia's being a doll or human. While I do agree that Jentsch's summary is inadequate for the story, I do believe that the inability to distinguish between reality and delusion is the primary sense of the uncanny for the story. (Freud makes note of various Shakespeare plays, stating that ghosts and faeries are simply a part of the universe. True--and this is what makes them "heimlich." By not stating whether or not the Sand-Man is simply a part of the universe, it leaves the text open to interpretation, allowing for the uncanny to be possible.) Nathaniel's mental seclusion caused by the fear of the Sand-Man causes him to lose his ability for close human relationships---or is there really a Sand-Man slowly destroying Nathaniel's life?

That being said, the introductory definitions of the various ways to interpret "heimlich" and "unheimlich" was INCREDIBLY interesting. I like that at some point, the uncanny becomes normal. That normalcy is exactly the thing that can become uncanny, if looked at with a certain lens.

The literary uncanny

My approach to the uncanny in literature stems largely from my experience with the Gothic (in which category the exemplified 'Sandman' undoubtedly falls as well from a certain perspective) but I guess it can apply to the concept of collage just as well. The almost familiar, yet different that grates against the aesthetic consciousness, the way Freud describes it, is certainly a well founded topic in collage. It takes things out of their original context and pieces them together into a new one that we might perceive as outlandish, barely accessible or just plain disconcerting. Uncanny to sum it up into one word. But this unfamiliarity, this unhomeliness where all the conventional aesthetic handholds are taken away also makes for suspense, for excitement and therefore for a compelling narrative. The concept of being one step removed - but only one step which is the crucial part - from what is familiar and by association ordinary is the appealing feature about the uncanny in the literary and artistic as well psychoanalytical perspective. It makes us want to 'get to the bottom of things' and holds our attention, which is why it is frequently revisited and reinvisioned by all sorts of creative minds.

Relating to the Unfamiliar

"'One of the surest devices for producing slightly uncanny effects through story-telling,' writes Jentsch, 'is to leave the reader wondering whether a particular figure is a real person or an automaton, and to do so in such a way that his attention is not focused directly on the uncertainty, lest he should be prompted to examine and settle the matter at once, for in this way, as we have said, the special emotional effect can easily be dissipated.'" (135)

Section II of Freud's The Uncanny really stood out to me in terms of the way that he discussed some popular conventions of the uncanny effects, obviously using Hoffman's story as a way to explore how a writer may or may not employ the uses of the uncanny to create a sense of disturbance with the reader that is not always immediately noticeable. One particular passage that caught my interest comes after Freud's summary of The Sand-Man when he says "we recall that children make no sharp distinction between the animate and the inanimate, and that they are especially fond of treating their dolls as if they were alive." (141) I can remember being a kid and believing that the minute I walked out of my bedroom, my stuffed animals would come to life and talk to each other. I wasn't necessarily afraid of this happening, but I can remember always wishing it would. However, now as an adult, thinking about inanimate objects coming to life does obviously provoke a sense of the uncanny for me personally, but I suppose that's all thanks to the horror genre, which as we know relies heavily on the uncanny and using that to its full advantage. I think with Jentsch's explanation, though, in terms of collages especially, the use of the uncanny will be really effective at provoking responses from readers simply because the inherent meaning of something isn't laid out in black and white. And of course each reader may interpret something differently, but that's to be expected. It's the sense of the uncanny that can't be figured out right away that matters... Maybe not in trying to figure out whether or not a particular object is real or an automaton, but in other subtle ways where the reader's attention is captured by that sense of a disturbance, or that 'unhomely' feeling.

Imaginary, Until Now.

Overall, I found Freud's exploration of the uncanny to be fascinating. I really enjoyed learning about the word's ties with "home" and "familiarity" because it's something I've always subconsciously associated with the word--it doesn't just evoke the sense of the utterly bizarre, but of the almost familiar, the almost normal. And that's why we often have such powerful responses to it; we can relate in some way to the situation or object, while being simultaneously repulsed because there is something not quite "right."

The statement that came closest to the way I personally view the uncanny was on the bottom of page 150: "...an uncanny effect often arises when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred, when we are faced with the reality of something that we have until now considered imaginary, when a symbol takes on the full function and significance of what it symbolizes." The "we have until now considered imaginary" is particularly striking, because to me, that gets to the heart of the word--the uncanny threatens what we think we know. And from both the examples in the article and my own understanding of the word, it tends to attack directly at an instinctual, emotional level. The fear response, the uneasiness, comes first. The rational mind doesn't realize it's being attacked until the doubt is already there. Which, as a writer, I love. I thought "[tricking the reader] by promising [them] everyday reality and then going beyond it" sounded like fun. But maybe that's just me.

One point of contention I'd like to bring up, however. Freud talks a bit about "surmounting primitive beliefs," operating under the assumption that it is these beliefs that cause our experience of the uncanny, rather than the reverse. He seems to believe all mysteries are knowable and if we can simply become intellectual enough, we will escape the uncanny. But I'd like to think the uncanny would follow us anyway, changing our views on reality, proving how much we don't know.

Multi-Dimensional Spaces

"The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them." - The Death of the Author, 146.

I suppose we all really are coming from places where everything that has been written (like specific writing styles or themes or subjects) has already been covered in some sort of fashion or another, and this quote from Barthes' piece really made me think about the nature of the collage and just how mash-ups, cut-ups, remixes, etc. can change the meaning of the original authorial intent. I understand the purpose of removing the Author from his or her work in order to leave the writing and interpretation open to the reader, but I don't think the removal signifies the Author's death. The Author still has some great significance to the original work, no matter how much we might want to take him or her away from it. Even though the ideas presented aren't necessarily original, in the truest sense (since it's all been done before,) the words that said Author chooses and the way he or she decides to present them to the reader is still the Author's purpose. As for works like collages, it makes perfect sense to separate the Author from the work in order for a new artist to create a whole new piece based on the foundation that they've started with. I don't think it means that the original author isn't still present in the work, but once it is changed and made into a completely different work by a new artist, it takes on a different meaning for readers. Barthes says that "a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination," and it struck me as a very interesting way to look at collages. Plenty of new authors have taken the same subject matters, characters, and themes that countless others have shaped before them and made them into new works of art to, I think, both pay homage to the original while adding their own influence to make the work a completely different experience for the reader. Readers are always going to have their own interpretations of how the Author constructed his or her works, and collages, remixes, mash-ups, etc. are unique homages to that original construction.

From Matt Kish's Illustrations for Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Collage Takes Away the Reasons

At the beginning of “The Death of the Author” on page 143, Barthes talks about how literature and literary criticism focuses on the author and the details of his/her life to explain the “genius” of their work or what have you, (Van Gogh’s madness, he points out, for example). Critics seem to always look for a reason for why they wrote something some way or painted something, etc. I think this is an interesting point in collage because with collage you take that away, because when you compile a bunch of things from different sources, (or even just change something from one source), you can’t really analyze it in the same way.  I think this idea of the collage contributes to the death of the Author because it produces a kind of shade of grey, and then, like Barthes tries to explain, allows the words to come across without the thought in the back of the reader’s mind of “Oh, so-and-so wrote this, so I have to like it,” or whatever, (that’s happened to me, at least). Later on the same page, he writes “…It is the language which speaks, not the author,” and I think that is an important point to make because the words are what should resonate with a reader. 

Conceptualization of text

The fact that language works when it's essentially an arbitrary pool of signs stuck together that contains a perfectly clear message for some and is not at all understandable for others is due to the adherence to conventions that makes people able to decode the message. At the same time, it is miraculously not a static system, but flexible and very changeable, with a constant fluidity of meaning, an adaptability to ever-changing circumstances.
I feel that the basis of Barthes' arguments is rooted in the same juxtaposition concerning the production of text. On the one side there is the set of conventions acquired through cultural and educational circumstance and on the other there's expansion and inversion of said conventions to accomodate new ways of dealing with the process of textualization.
Do I believe that the production of a text is entirely disconnected from the author? No, because s/he is the conduit and will always leave marks on the result, like a bullet bears the marks of a barrel it's fired from. In both cases they are unique and can be matched back together after being separated. Do I believe that a text cannot be interpreted without the author? No, because we have been in the business of interpreting texts for far longer than the notion of the author is even in existence.
The crux is the acknowledgement that intertextuality and discourse (which I believe are the actual content of Barthes' 'Text') play a big role in the reception and conceptualization of 'works' that go way beyond the author as for example a physical entity in the text or a indeed legal body which needs to be taken into account upon reflexion.

Nothing Sacred, Everything Free

In From Work to Text (specifically pgs. 156-157) in Barthes' first point, "The Text is not thought of as an object that can be computed..." and etc. I found myself agreeing with Barthes' explanation that no work is somehow "sacred" against other works. The written word is just that; it's symbology with meaning attached to it. If I took a sheet from the Bible, ripped it out and wrote a grocery list on it, I would not be committing any sort of moral crime even though it would definitely be viewed as a social (and to some, moral) faux pas. (This is not to say that I advocate tearing out Biblical passages to carry out one's grocery shopping, just an extreme example.)

From the second point, "Text does not stop at (good) Literature; it cannot be contained in a hierarchy..." does two things for me in furthering an understanding of where Barthes' arguement is going, as well as giving me a better view for the class in terms of "playgarism" in that, coupled with the non-sacredity of the texts, the symbols put in a text can be manipulated by themselves, and put in other contexts to change the symbolism entirely.

So if any of us in the class ends up in a lawsuit at the end of this semester, we can always point to Barthes' argument and state that since we have changed the inherent meaning of the text, we are no longer voiding the copywrite of the text.

I really shouldn't even jinx anyone at this point. Lawsuits are messy things.

Language is the Collage (The Medium is the Massage)

Language is expressive. This triviality is complicated in the very next instant of thought, when we realize that expressivity implies non-immediacy, and thus, imperfection. On this level, it would seem Barthes and myself would be in agreement. Words are, after all, merely a construct. More than this however, they are the rough worn edges of other people's thought, expressed (usually) in the form of an animal articulation of teeth and gum and tongue. On this too we would seem to be in agreement. It is from this that we must realize that Barthes does not kill the author. No, he asserts the author was never alive, in the sense that we think of him.
We might like to think of the author as being central to the understanding of his work, perhaps even the end of his work. We might like to imagine that the centralized, atomized "soul" of the author is what speaks to us, about something "it" has to say. Truth be told, the "it" might be better understood, and his critique better analyzed, if the "it" was seen as a "they", this "they" in turn... Perhaps a "we"?.
This thought process, which depends on the Freudian understanding of the self born from the unconscious, and the group unconscious being best expressed through the way that language (read: the ideas expressed by language) fit together, comes to see that language is, as such a self fitting societal puzzle, the true constructor of the work. Further, it is the substance of what can also be analyzed, since there is no atomized Author. Simply and succinctly put, because of this, the reader is the only point at which any of this does atomize in a way the reader can talk about.

Perhaps the most interesting quote is the comment about Surrealism on page 144, Because of it's application to both our own potential work in this course, and postmodern art in general.

"I slew the Dragon with my pen, who first declared that he was me. For I thought were I this beast, surely would I wish to die. Since thus I cannot die, I weep at worthless immortality. At least I would tire of the eyes rolling back in my head."

"Only Language Acts"

The entirety of “The Death of the Author” was thought provoking and frustrating for me. I can understand, from a literary standpoint, separating the author from the text (or work) in order to avoid confusing the intent and purpose of the piece, as well as not mistaking the narrator for the author, however, Barthes’ (or the text’s) assertion that the author should be ignored, considered dead, and only the text itself acknowledged seems to take the principle too far. I appreciate Barthes’ nod to oral cultures; that being said, it is easy to say that the story performance of oral cultures lies beyond the “author”/performer, that the traditions and fables told are a collection of retellings upon retellings (a great example of collage) and therefore beyond the performer, but it’s harder to claim that only language functions within a text.

With opinion pieces, or the newspaper, just ignoring the author seems conflicting. It isn’t merely the piece’s opinion, just as the piece doesn’t merely exist (as Alyssa pointed out) without the author. To say that a work doesn’t have meaning without the interpretation of the reader—without its “destination” as it were—seems to insinuate we should ignore the purpose of the text. And of course, where does the purpose come from except from the author? How does it exist without the author?

Perhaps what we as a class can take from this piece is that as we try to formulate and understand the “collage,” we should try to separate the author from his/her work. A collage should exist as a piece, as art, and the author (and the other author’s used) should be ignored, allowing the work to derive meaning from what the reader/audience perceives. This is not to say that the author is dead or does not matter, but that a “close reading” approach should be taken—untangle and analyze the piece, not necessarily the authorial intent.

(Of course, this could be stripping the piece of a layer of meaning. The pieces used within the collage could have heavy meaning for the work as a whole, or meaning to the author; so all in all I suppose the theory should be used with responsibility.)

Tissue of Quotations

One of the passages I was interested in discussing is from "The Death of the Author," page 146, particularly Barthes' statement that "The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture." I found this intriguing because it suggests that all writing is essentially collage. However, I didn't agree with Barthes' subsequent conclusion that this aspect of a text necessarily means that the Author is "dead." Rather, the text itself is only "a tissue of quotations" because it is reflecting its Author, since we as human beings are also products of all the various opinions and experiences that we have encountered. The thing we refer to as our "self" is really just a collage of different aspects of culture that we have accepted as "true" or "good." Thus, the text, as collage, is still very much tied to its Author, because it is the Author that determines just what "tissue of quotations" will be included in the text. No, perhaps the Author is not the true originator of these ideas any more than a carpenter is the originator of the tree that provides the wood used to make his or her creations. But that doesn't change the fact that without the carpenter, the chair would still be a block of wood. And though Barthes claims that "life never does more than imitate the book," without life, without the Author, the text would not be in existence, the "signs" that make up its tissue scattered, with no meaning at all, deferred or otherwise.

Greetings!

Hello, and welcome to the Spring 2012 blog for Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction. This semester, the course is focused on collage, appropriation, cut-ups, mashups, and remixes.  The collage impulse has taken many forms across the spectrum of artistic practice over the past century, from the pre-World War I "paintings" of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and the Surrealist games of André Breton to the photography of Cindy Sherman, the music of John Cage and the Beatles, and the remixes and mashups of DJ Spooky and DJ Food, among many others. During this same period, writers from John Dos Passos to William S. Burroughs to Gretchen Henderson have been employing a variety of collage techniques in fictions, ranging from cut-ups of published texts to juxtapositions of writing and images. In its time, the Internet has contributed significantly to this impulse through its innovation of hyperlinks and applications such as YouTube, Photoshop, iMovie, and Facebook. Despite its most common attributions to the periods of Modernism and Postmodernism, however, we might think of collage (specifically in terms of the creative combination of symbolic text and image) as having a much longer history, dating back to some of the earliest narratives we know, including cave painting, Egyptian murals, and Mesoamerican codexes. At the very least, as artists considering the form of our own contemporary collage works, we should include these ancient narratives as part of our formal and stylistic considerations.

The first readings on our list are two essays by Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" and "From Work to Text." Looking forward to your comments on these and our subsequent works!