ALLERGY TO ORIGINALITY.
Questions and Answers on Anthem — Ayn Rand Novels. A high school teacher had assigned Anthem, Ayn Rand’s novelette to her tenth grade English classes. She wrote to Miss Rand, reporting that her students enjoyed the book because of the “unique ideas and theories presented”; however, the students raised questions about the book which the teacher was unable to answer, and she asked the author for help. Printed below are some of the questions, and Miss Rand’s answers (from The Objectivist Calendar, June 1979). Did you model your characters after particular individuals? No. All the characters are invented by me. How did you decide upon the names for the characters in the book? Since the people had no concept of individuality, they could not have individual names—only numbers.
What race is Equality? Any race—since he represents the best possible to all races of men. When Equality went into the forest, wasn’t he afraid after he heard about those who never returned? How were the people in the Unmentionable Times destroyed? It was a subway. Allen Ginsberg. Two recordings from the Reed College archives of Howl, being read in 1956 Reading at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University,October 25, 1956 Complete Recording (24:41): MP3A Supermarket in California (2:21): MP3 [text-audio alignment]In back of the real (0:44): MP3Introduction to Howl (2:43): MP3Howl I, II, III (18:27): MP3Howl I (12:36): MP3Howl II (3:30): MP3Howl III ( 2:21): MP3 Big Table Chicago Reading, 1959 Complete Recording (53:20): MP3Howl (20:06): MP3Sunflower Sutra (4:31): MP3Footnote to Howl (2:47): MP3A Supermarket in California (2:15): MP3Transcription of Organ Music (3:55): MP3America (4:41): MP3In Back of the Real (0:49): MP3A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley (0:46): MP3Europe!
Europe! (3:14): MP3Kaddish, part 1 (9:50): MP3 Reading at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, February 27, 1959 Reading Recent Poems at Robert Creeley's Home, likely 1959 Reading "Sunflower Sutra," 1960 (from a Jonas Mekas film) complete recording (2:42): NYC, December 15, 1969. Allen Ginsberg's "Beat Literary History Course" Books I Will/Do Teach. GoogHangout w Sherman Alexie. A Look at the New York Novel ‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt. Rhizome (philosophy) "As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of 'things' and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those 'things.' A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by 'ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.' Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a 'rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.' The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Louis Menand: Paul de Man’s Hidden Past. The idea that there is literature, and then there is something that professors do with literature called “theory,” is a little strange. To think about literature is to think theoretically. If you believe that literature is different from other kinds of writing (like philosophy and self-help books), if you have ideas about what’s relevant and what isn’t for understanding it (which class had ownership of the means of production, whether it gives you goose bumps, what color the author painted his toenails), and if you have standards for judging whether it’s great or not so great (a pleasing style or a displeasing politics), then you have a theory of literature. You can’t make much sense of it without one. It’s the job of people in literature departments to think about these questions, to debate them, and to disseminate their views. This is not arid academicism. It affects the way students will respond to literature for the rest of their lives.
There were some demons. Readings | the postmodern novel & beyond. Syllabus | the postmodern novel & beyond. Syllabus (1.14.13) This course assumes no prior knowledge of postmodernism, literary theory, or contemporary fiction, and it values “appreciation” and gut-level response along with critical interpretation. We’ll explore theories and practices of US postmodern fiction and develop an account of where US fiction stands in the early 21st century. The first part of the course focuses on the formal, thematic, and philosophical signatures of “high” postmodernism of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to tracing the critical and creative development of postmodernism, we’ll question the category’s relevance. The rest of the course brings us into the 2000s.
To give our inquiry focus, we’ll look to our texts for accounts of how we come to know ourselves and our worlds. Books ordered for the University Co-op but available widely. Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy (0618871713) DeLillo, Mao II (9780140152746) Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Gibson, Pattern Recognition (9780425192931) 61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list. The thing about postmodernism is it's impossible to pin down exactly what might make a book postmodern. In looking at the attributes of the essential postmodern reads, we found some were downright contradictory.
Postmodern books have a reputation for being massive tomes, like David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" -- but then there's "The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker, which has just 144 pages. And while postmodern books would, you'd think, have to be published after the modern period -- in the 20th or 21st centuries -- could postmodernism exist without "Tristram Shandy"? We think not. Below is our list of the 61 essential reads of postmodern literature. It's annotated with the attributes below -- the author is a character, fiction and reality are blurred, the text includes fictional artifacts, such as letters, lyrics, even whole other books, and so on. And while this list owes much to George Ducker and David L.
And now: The 61 essential postmodern reads! Paul Auster's New York Trilogy. Huffenglish - American Postmodernism Literature Page. Contemporary Literature: British Novels Now | Literature. Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Martin Amis Recall Surviving the Satanic Verses Fatwa. On a roll, Rushdie started a giant-size novel about India, Islam, and London. “I didn’t know if it was one book or three,” he has said. “I must have been feeling very confident. I’d had these two very successful books, and that put a lot of fuel in my tank, and I thought I could do anything.”
He spent the next five years writing The Satanic Verses, applying the magic-realist touch to headline news: terrorist airline hijackings, pilgrimages to Mecca, rough-and-tumble immigrant London, and Thatcher-era British unrest. He made the Prophet into a comic figure called Mahound (Muhammad, put profanely). He etched an acid portrait of a “bearded and turbaned Imam” akin to Khomeini. But his real struggle was with the Verses.
He had reason to think that the novel would enchant the London smart set and would speak for England’s people of color. The Satanic Verses, says E. A few friends read it early on. The Art of the Deal Wylie was representing Rushdie for the first time. Condemned in Advance. Www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/holhome.html. Contemporary Literature: British Novels Now | Literature. Ocw.mit.edu/courses/literature/21l-488-contemporary-literature-literature-development-and-human-rights-spring-2008/lecture-notes/21l_488_pstlecnt.pdf. Literary Interpretation: Literature and Urban Experience | Literature. UTAustinX: UT.2.01x: Ideas of the Twentieth Century. *Note - This is an Archived course* This is a past/archived course.
At this time, you can only explore this course in a self-paced fashion. Certain features of this course may not be active, but many people enjoy watching the videos and working with the materials. Make sure to check for reruns of this course. The last century ushered in significant progress. Philosophers, scientists, artists, and poets overthrew our understanding of the physical world, of human behavior, of thought and its limits, and of art, creativity, and beauty. Scientific progress improved the way we lived across the world. Yet the last century also brought increased levels of war, tyranny, and genocide. Join this thought-provoking, broad-sweeping course as it draws intriguing connections between philosophy, art, literature, and history, illuminating our world and our place in it. Before your course starts, try the new edX Demo where you can explore the fun, interactive learning environment and virtual labs. Syllabus | Eng181: British & Irish Modernisms. English 181, Summer 2012, Emory University British and Irish Modernisms Instructor: Amy E.
Elkins MTWThF 1PM-2:20PM Callaway Center N203 Office hours by appointment Callaway Center N207-A Email: aelkins@emory.edu “British and Irish Modernisms” is a writing intensive course that will introduce practical exercises in critical analysis, research methods, argumentation, and literary analysis through writing about literature. The modernist period in literary history is celebrated for its creative energy, political activism, and experimental aesthetics. Required Texts They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Mrs. Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs English 181 Course Packet (CP) Other readings will be available on Blackboard. Course Website I have created a website for this course ( Course Particulars Attendance: Attendance is mandatory.
Assignments: Paper 1 20% Design in a Nutshell: One-Minute Animated Primers on Six Major Creative Movements. Comic surrealism. Early in his career, René Magritte devised and published a rulebook for the rest of his life's work, "Les mots et les images" (La Révolution surréaliste, no. 12, 15 décembre 1929; in Magritte 1979: 60–63). It's a Dada rulebook, as hard as that concept might be to embrace. But the piece has been republished widely throughout the world of art and literature since the 1930s, and has become "canonical" (though one should note its first entry).
Dada knew comics well (very well indeed; see Inge 1990: 41–58), and Magritte's rules are hardly absurd or even irrational viewed through the same frames as newspaper comics of the period, most notably Krazy Kat. The correspondence between word and image might be literal (or very close) in many mainstream comics, but the links become increasingly Dada and surreal closer to the margins. It is tempting to speculate that Magritte invented none of these guidelines, but merely observed them. Words and images Some objects can do without a name: Broadsheet, 1558. Alan Moore: 'Why shouldn't you have a bit of fun while dealing with the deepest issues of the mind?'
There is a certain degree of swagger, a sudden interruption of panache, as Alan Moore enters the rather sterile Waterstones office where he has agreed to speak to me. The jut of beard, the ringed fingers, the walking stick one feels he could use as a wand or a cudgel at any moment: he looks like Hagrid's wayward brother or Gandalf's louche cousin. He has a laugh that might topple buildings, though I doubt the man who reinvented the superhero comic would want such powers. He is here to promote Fashion Beast, a project that is unusual even in terms of a career that has been exceptionally idiosyncratic.
Fashion Beast, an idea initiated by punk legend Malcolm McLaren, was to have been a film. It is now – 28 years later – a comic book. I tell Moore how delightful it is to be speaking to him about an unmade film that turned into a comic, rather than a comic of his turned into a film. McLaren was described as a "couturier situationniste", and I wondered what Moore felt about the movement. Introduction to Theory of Literature | Lecture 15 - The Postmodern Psyche. S Comprehensive Guide to Modern Literary Movements | Qwiklit. Postmodernism FAQ. From Mark Twain to Ray Bradbury, Iconic Writers on Truth vs. Fiction. Do It: 20 Years of Famous Artists’ Irreverent Instructions for Art Anyone Can Make.
By Maria Popova “Art is something that you encounter and you know it’s in a different kind of space from the rest of your life, but is directly connected to it.” One afternoon in 1993, legendary art critic, curator, and interviewer extraordinaire Hans Ulrich Obrist — mind of great wisdom on matters as diverse as the relationship between patterns and chance and the trouble with “curation” itself — sat down in Paris’s Café Select with fellow co-conspirers Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier, and the do it project was born: A series of instructional procedures by some of the greatest figures in contemporary art, designed for anyone to follow as a sort of DIY toolkit for creating boundary-expanding art. Over the twenty years that followed, manifestations of the project popped up in exhibitions around the world, from the most underground galleries to the most prestigious museums.
RECIPE FOR BUCKY FULLER Skin but do not stone a peach. Sculptor Nairy Baghramian (2012): I. Start a rumor. Who am I? - Postmodernism and the question of Identity. Do you really know who you are? Can anyone? One of the most fascinating stories in contemporary cultural history is how the social conditions of the modern (and postmodern) world and postmodern philosophy have conspired to destabilize our sense of self. Do we as Christians have a solution? Do we have a perspective that answers the legitimate concerns of these postmodern thinkers, while at the same time challenging their unbelief? I believe that Christians are uniquely positioned to provide the kinds of answers that rootless postmoderns are seeking ... if we can articulate these answers in a language they can understand. I’ll review a brief history of the self from the modern, stable self to the postmodern, fragmented, shifting self.
The New You Review: Postmodernism and the Question of Identity In today’s world, identity is no longer a given, but an open question. I. A note on terms: -ism = ideology/philosophy (e.g. modernism, Marxism) -ity = social conditions (e.g. postmodernity) 1. 2. 3. Paths of the Parkway: On Borges and New Jersey — CASE MAGAZINE. By Michael J. Harrington During spells of creative paralysis, Don DeLillo would resort to practices of procrastination familiar to most writers—walk around, gaze outside windows, look up random words in the dictionary. What steadied his focus, he once remarked in an interview, was a photograph he had of Jorge Luis Borges: “The face of Borges against a dark background—Borges fierce, blind, his nostrils gaping, his skin stretched taut, his mouth amazingly vivid; his mouth looks painted; he’s like a shaman painted for visions… [T]he photograph shows us a writer who did not waste time at the window or anywhere else. So I’ve tried to make him my guide out of lethargy and drift, into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination.”
I read Borges a lot when, due to unforeseen circumstances, a healthy dose of psychological abstention, and, yes, some straight up lethargy, I was unexpectedly home in New Jersey for about two months. Borges possibly understood how this was and was not true.