Nerd Bullies and Cyborgs

I get so many book catalogs in the mail thanks to my semi-pointless student membership in the MLA. Some of them tease me with books I'd really like to read, if I could afford them -- books on everything from the love lives of obscure philosophers, to King Arthur mythology, to life in poor, rural America. Some of these things might sound silly, or maybe snobby to you. But I thoroughly enjoy these topics and I thoroughly enjoy imagining reading these books about them.

You can bet there are so many more books in the catalogs that I think sound silly and snobby and even what I'd call academy-trendy. I can't figure out if they make me cringe so much just because they are on subjects I don't personally enjoy, or at least subjects I don't wax scholarly on, or if the "ad copy" promoting the books is just so pretentious, or if it's because the titles of the books themselves drip with "isn't this relevant?" -ness. In short, I feel like I am reading a catalog of parody summaries of parody books (complete with parody reviews) put out by The Onion.

Some of them I keep by the bed to read for laughs at night. The way some of them make me laugh but then just a little angry at the same time, I think I might be becoming some kind of academic bully. Ralph from The Simpsons, if he made it to grad school. I'm a nerd, but I have to pick on the nerdier nerds. "HA ha! You said diASSpora!"

I just picked up a catalog from the bed pile. University of Minnesota's "Cultural Studies" catalog. As a former art-school-girl I'm partial to the pages on Duchamp, film studies, architecture...but there is a very painful media studies section that for my comfort takes pop culture and technology far too seriously. I mean, I understand why we study media and technology, but it looks funny when it's backed up to a page of all-Lyotard books. I get all excited about French philosophy and then "wham!" a centerfold of nerd culture. I admit this media page spread simply falls under the category of "not my taste." I don't plan on reading any scholarly works on gaming culture or superheroes anytime soon, and I won't scoff at someone who might. But I can't promise I won't try to give him a swirly. In the girls' bathroom. It might be sexist of me to say so, but I think mostly men read these books: Biomedia, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, etc.

Then follows several pages of film studies ending with an entire page dedicated to Derek Jarman. A review of one book on him is glowing and wordy: "...his rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship and lucid, perceptive writing are inextricable from his passionate personal engagement from one of the most influential and charismatic European artists of the latter third of the twentieth century." That's a lot of adjectives, and that's the first time I've had to consider "the latter third." He probably could have just said "He writes really great, and you can tell he really likes the really great guy he writes about." The review is so specific and at the same time generic. The reviewer probably keeps a notebook of verbose stuff that just hits him (or he steals) at dinner parties or while sitting in a bar, and when he is called upon for a blurb he can piece the praise-phrases together to make myriad reviews befitting any literary occasion.

On the Dada and avante-garde page there is a little treat about which I have mixed and giggly feelings -- I love Dada, and some nerd went and mixed it with science! They sullied it up with robots. The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimar Berlin, it's called. "Finding the cyborg in early twentieth century art," is what it's about. Ok...Futurism, Hannah Hoch's men with factory-machine parts, the kitchen appliance creatures on the large glass, the semi-robotic Woman Descending a Staircase... I see why they see the cyborgs. But what of it? What do you do when you "find" them? "Coooool! Cyborgs!!!" I wonder if I wonder enough to read the book and find out. My interest is disturbingly piqued, and it gives me that sick tickly feeling in my stomach, like when someone won't stop doing something annoying yet slightly endearing. And then you have to punch them.

Here's a funny one. For a book on how French theorists changed American thought (aptly titled How Foucault, Derrida, Deluze & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States) there is a review from an expert on the subject: "A remarkable book in every respect." --Jacques Derrida. He would like a book on himself wouldn't he? Old coot.

There is one spread labeled "literary criticism." A couple of the books are actually about literature. One of those is on science fiction. The rest are about linguistics, travel writing...they tried.

I probably don't need to mention the sick feeling I get from all the titles containing slashes, commas, and colons, and endless uses of trendy gerund words like finding, recovering, reconstructing, queering, and best of all this whole title of them: Firsting and Lasting. They're kidding right? Like when that Facebook dissertation quiz tells me my topic should be "Othering the Others: A Metaphorology of South Park." These titles are no less ridiculous! Best title in here: Manhood Factories. There's nothing funny or stupid about the book itself.

Now it was probably wrong to pick on Minnesota, but I don't have any real doozies in my pile right now. There is a Dutch catalog that's somehow even worse. And I trusted the Dutch! Tons of lit crit, but every title initiates instant gag reflex. Sometimes I think the books can't even be real -- they're just doing this to get to me. I hope I get another one soon so I can post its goodies here. I probably burned the last one, or tore it to shreds in a fit.

That Dutchy catalog also has French language books, and the summaries are in French. That makes sense, and of course I feel cool as shit when I can read them...but it also feels like it might be another level of alienation for some would-be readers.

So, why do these things make me sick and happy at the same time? In a way I'm glad people think about all this stuff. No one person can think about all of it. That part is pretty cool. What's uncool is the latching onto title trends, vocabulary trends, using pompous language in a summary or a review, publishing on trendy topics just because of the market segment they might command (scholarly publishing might be part of academia, but it's still an industry!). I don't like the way it's all so professionalized. That's the stuff I actually have a problem with. That's the stuff that really needs to be parodied.

The stuff I don't have a real problem with (like the Dada Cyborgs) but that gives me the tickly yuckies is partly the nerd bully coming out. I guess the things I like, while nerdy, have been liked in academia for long enough that they are the tough guys there. Avante-garde art, French philosophers, Victorian stuffs, there's gangs to back all that shit up. The new kids on the block, the cyborg finders, the gaming culture scholars, the superhero politicizers, well, they might have to watch their milk money for awhile.

(It did occur to me that bullies bully because of insecurities. And it did also occur to me that I might not understand some things (especially cultural studies...) as well as some other students. And that maybe I'm threatened because it's quite possible these new fields of "relevant" studies are going to steamroll the old standbys. And maybe that's why I need to laugh at them.)

"A Place up Ahead"

This is the first few pages of a short story I started a couple years ago. I just revised this section, which was weird, looking back on such old words. The people and places in it are real (except for the car), and the situations are loosely based on things that sometimes happened. I guess that's what some folks call creative non-fiction. I call it a fun way to bullshit. I don't know where it's going, but I really wanted to capture some of Maryland in a story, along with everything that makes it so perfect in my memory.

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I wrapped my hand in the tail of my tank top before I reached for the car door handle. The sun beat at a near ninety degree angle, and the air was at least that hot. The door handle, I knew, was much hotter. I gripped firmly and pushed in the old fashioned button, popping the door. It skreeked open and I perched on the edge of the seat, careful to avoid butt burns, and kicked at the gravel driveway while I waited for the car to air out. And for my sister to get her ass outside so we could leave already. I gazed around at the fluffy green treetops and squinted at the sun until it hurt. Then I shut my eyes tight, savoring the scent of my car’s super-heated vinyl mixed with the gas and grass clipping smelled that floated on the breeze. It smelled like a classic summer day.

Blea emerged from the house wearing one of her godawful swimsuits with the tassels and fringes and sequins or some shit. I am sure there was leopard print involved. The dark orangey tones of the suit matched her tan skin; she was as dark as any Indian girl who’s never seen a tube of sunblock. She wore cutoffs on her ample bottom and a loose eighties looking string of a tank to cover her not-so-ample top. On her feet were, as usual, white high tops with no socks. Oh to be as fashionably care free as her. Although I was wearing Jesus sandals and hemp shorts that were three sizes too big over my lime green bikini, so we were a perfect fashion match except for our tans. Mine started dark brown at the top and got progressively whiter as it went down my body, until my ghastly, ghostly pale legs could be found sticking out of olive drab, oversized shorts. Yes, we were beautiful.

“Took you long enough. Did you fall in?”

“Shut up and drive, slave.”

Blea jumped in the passenger side and whacked me in the shoulder for punishment as her butt got a taste of the stinging seat covers. It was my fault because I was the one who had to have an old car. I loved my Mustang – it was a ’70. My favorite year for cars and lots of other things. I wouldn’t get rid of it to save my sister’s ass from an occasional burn, nor would I indulge in animal print seat covers. She would like that too much.

By the way I call my sister Blea because her name is Deborah Lea, in the Southern tradition of having two first names. If you say "Deborah Lea" really fast it becomes "D'Blea." Drop the D and you’ve got Blea. A name like no other. But it suits her. She is a fully grown brat. I had been lucky enough to be given only one first name, and despite the obvious humor in being named Robyn Byrd, no one ever noticed. My mom always told me she put in all the Ys (the middle name's got it too) so I could sign big loopy autographs someday. Maybe. Maybe not.

So we were off, me driving as always. Blea hates to drive and I love to as long as I can look cool while doing it. And we definitely looked cool that day. The open windows thoroughly cooled the rest of the car’s interior as we rolled down Maryland 28, giving the obligatory one-finger-off-the-wheel-wave to passing muscle cars of note. The roads there really do roll. I sped up over the “tickle bumps” as we called them when we were kids. Our hair blew around like crazy and I knew mine would be a rat’s nest by the time we got to the creek. Didn’t matter ‘cause I looked so good getting there.

“Put something on the radio!” I called over the wind. Blea picked classic rock, which wasn’t much of a choice for her since that’s all I kept on my presets. Well, and one hip hop station in case I got bored and felt like raising the roof. But I preferred playing the steering wheel guitar. I was in luck: Boston was on, singing “More than a Feeling.” This was going to be the perfect classic summer day! Over the music and road noise played our game of calling out the funny road names as soon as we saw the sign. I got “Zittlestown,” but Blea won with “Mousetown” and “Elmer Derr.” I was too busy trying to hit the high note in the last “See my Mary Ann walkin’ awaaaaaaaayyyyy!” before my steering wheel solo.

Half an hour later, which was much too soon, we turned into the dirt lot in front of Poole's General Store, where we saw my cousin’s truck parked. We had come to Seneca Creek to put in for a long ride down to the river on inner tubes of dubious seaworthiness. The ride was a free one, (B.Y.O.T.B.- bring your own tube and beer) organized by some local “tubers.” You put in at one end, and some people (probably drunk people) in pickup trucks pick you up at the other end and haul you back to your ride. We find out about such events through our cousin Lee Michael, who hangs out with such desirable people as would transport living cargo in the bed of their truck while a dwindling thirty -pack of High Life scoots around on the hot floor of the cab.

Poole's General Store -- Now with pavement!

“Let’s go find Mike,” I said as an aside to Blea. I wasn’t ready to mingle with the thirty-something scantily clad element that thronged around the parking lot. Mike was our bridge to hanging out with these oldies. Plus he had the beer and lemonade.

Lee Michael is thirty-four and he lives with his mom. He drunk-tubes in the summer, races motorcycles (hopefully sober) in spring and fall, and runs his snowmobile over helpless creatures in the winter (probably a little buzzed). I guess that’s what a single guy with no expenses does with himself in a mid-Atlantic state. Anyhow, he’s fun and he always gets me to do crazy things that I would never try without persuasive arguments from a male who is large enough to carry my battered corpse out of the river or woods or wherever if I didn’t make it.

That day I was setting sail on an inner tube that was mostly made out of duct tape, and my sister was doing the same, only her tube had the added caveat of half a stem still sticking out of it. My dad had cut it off with pliers the night before and made an attempt to use more duct tape to secure the remaining, possibly lethal, metal stem to the inside of the tube. He always brought home old tires and inner tubes from work and expected us to use them for everything from buoyancy in snow and water, to planters for the front yard, to a great way to roll down a big hill and kill ourselves. Being the first born, I guess I was spared this deluxe sawed-off stem feature on my sticky grey tube.

Unsure of what to leave in the Mustang and what to take aboard the tube for my journey, I figured that traveling light is always the best option. Then I would be comfortable, and have one hand for beer and another for swimming in the likely event of a capsized tube. I took off my pants and shirt and winced as the rough clothes scraped over my burnt red-brown shoulders. It was a good kind of pain though. I always like to be reminded of the power of the sun, how it gets held in your skin and makes you smell like the beach for days. I kept the Jesus sandals for the trip. I hate touching river bottoms in bare feet. You never know what’s down there.


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The shouts and laughs and general carousing ended abruptly, as every one of us on the water must have seen the view at the same instant. We had reached the end of the Shenandoah River, where it pours its clear mountain waters into the Potomac (only to become polluted beyond recognition about twenty miles downriver). Rocky Appalachian mounds surround the mighty confluence, and the remains of hundreds of years of bridges, forts and train trestles drape the valley in an aura of history. We floated into the shallow warm water just as the sun slanted over the treetops and made everything sparkle around us. I thought about the plaques by the riverbanks that talked about Thomas Jefferson first setting eyes on this place, and how visiting Harper’s Ferry is like “taking a trip to the past.” Cheesy stuff.

It was beautiful though – one of those views that always hits me in the gut and makes me want to move back east or wonder why I ever left. Sometimes a scene or a smell can hit me just right and I feel like I should just stay there against anyone’s better judgement, simply send for my things in stale, flat Illinois and never offer any explanation for my rashness. Sometimes a field is so green, or the smell of tar by the railroad is so strong, or a town square is so damn quaint that I just want to burst with homesickness. That’s how I felt when we looked at Harper’s Ferry, at “Jefferson’s View.”

This is where we had to get off. I grabbed Blea’s inner tube by the stem and wriggled one of my legs inside my tube. I stuck my safely sandaled foot into the river and guided us, avoiding the polished but possibly sharp glass shards I could see glinting on the bottom. We bumbled and bobbed over to one of the naked stone pillars that no longer supported a bridge. The water was always extra warm and ripply around them, and it gave us a place to rest and get used to not moving before we got out of the water. To jump right out onto solid land was to invite a motion sickness like no other; you add near sun stroke and six beers to the picture and the river seems like a safe place to “set” for awhile.

Soon we were in the pickup bed of a new acquaintance, breezing down West Virginia roads and drying out our bodies and our brains. I enjoyed the wind and last bits of sun while I could. Once across the Maryland state line we would have to lie down so our chauffer would not get a ticket. We Marylanders are civilized.

Why there ain't no bridge on top of them pillars no more.

Next morning a train woke me up out of a dead sleep, and I twisted around under the covers trying to straighten my slippery night gown. At grandma’s house we always had to wear night gowns. She would pull them out of a musty old chest by one of the twin beds in her parlor that functioned as a guest room (there was no door, only an arched eight foot wide opening into which every visiting neighbor or cousin could peer). She insisted we sleep clothed, even in the second week of August. We were obedient, but left the windows wide open and the rickety metal fan on high all night. It was no special morning to have a train wake me up. Grandma’s house is three doors down from the only tracks I know of that have neither a crossing gate nor pavement over the ties and tracks, and twenty engines a day haul iron ore and limestone past her neighborhood. The water tastes like both.

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Edit: 1/8/10 I added some more about our names since I never remember to give my first person characters names (and it would help if the reader knew the "I" was really me without being told). Also changed some first mentions of Mike's name to his proper double-name for more Southern flair.

I realized that the most untrue thing about this story is that I never lived in Maryland as an adult. I suppose it could be a long vacation I'm on. All my grown-up but youthful adventures happened in California and Arizona. I think I write things like this (there are more) because I wish I could have experienced my "motherland" this way. There's something about writing on motherlands that courses through a writer, that's not in our control. My accounts of Arizona and California can be very visual, grounded, complete-sounding. But they are constructed out of perceptual and sensory experiences, as recounted by an adult who had most of them as an adult. Maryland is not like that -- it's got a mythos for me, and a spirit that sticks with me. In fact, my physical descriptions of it are sometimes hazy, based on memories from very early teenhood, or from as far back as three or four years old. But I'm usually semi-satisfied with the "feel" of it, or how I clumsily manage to impart it.

I don't think about these things when I write, or even when I revise. Only afterwards. To do otherwise would probably be counterproductive.

I Resolve

I think "resolution" is one of those words that people just forget where it came from. It gets tossed around and watered down, much like "empower" and "hysterical" are abused. (No that chocolate bar with vitamins is not empowering, and no that funny girl is not hysterical.) Speakers seem to only know "resolution" in the context of "my New Year's resolution," and they only use it as a noun like this. When I think about what it really means, that one has resolved to do something, it seems like a much stronger verb-word than a hollow "resolution." The resolution is so impersonal. It's a thing that you own I guess, but it's not you. Your resolve is you and it's something you do. I think we should all be more involved in our own potential life-changes, if that's what we really think they are. Let's all resolve to resolve, and not "make" any more "resolutions."

I resolve to come back to my semi-abandoned blog this year, and start to write down all the things in my little head. I think them over and over at night, I dream them, I scribble them in margins. They keep me up, they worry me, thinking I might forget about them, and then I always have that feeling I really have forgotten about something. I haven't carried them out as complete, presentable thoughts in some time.

I've graduated with my BA now, which is my excuse (I need excuses I guess) for slacking on the extracurricular writing front these past few months. Now I'm not so busy, with a flex-hours job and only occasional school-related work (still working on an independent project that I'll present in the spring, and the school's going to publish in the summer). Other than that, the excuses have run out. I am back, as of today.

Now that I've allowed biography to seep into the text that is my online presence (oh no!), I'll try to get started on some academic, creative, and hopefully funny stuff for this new year.

You might see some fiction or creative writing excerpts on here, as I think I might use this semester (I will hopefully NEVER have to stop thinking in semesters!) to exercise my fictive mind a little. Just a heads up, in case you thought I was only one kind of Englishwoman and not the other.

Go forward and make a year, resolved citizens!

Graduation Domination

I don't know when I'll get tired of cheesy rhyming and alliterative titles. Given the uninspired, smug disgustingness of some current titles in academia, I hope never!

I haven't been on here a bloggin' in a long while. I graduate next week, and damn if that kinda thing doesn't take up a lot of time.

Speaking of titles, here's some things I'm working on, some of which I'll merrily post here when the craziness is finally over:

"The Resurrection of the Author: Writer, Reader, and Biography in The Hours"

Now that's an ambitious title! Hopefully I can do it a shred of justice. I'm still torn between fawning over and railing at Kristeva, hence the first title-chunk. The second title-chunk explains. Notice I didn't say "Michael Cunningham's The Hours," because "The Hours" encompasses both his work and Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (it was her working title). Ha! The paper's about both, of course. I'm writing about how Cunningham is dancing pretty close to the edge (well, sometimes plunging right in) when it comes to authorial intent, reader's interpretations, and pulling biography into the "conversation." These things Kristeva would mostly poo-poo, even though pairs of works like these have a lot of generic (rather than brand-name Kristevan) intertextuality to talk about.

On a much siller note, here is a direct-to-blog release I've been working on intermittently:

"Gidget and the Gypsy Learn Voodoo" or something like that. It's a little postcolonial analysis of an episode of Gidget I caught on one of those classic TV channels while I was trying to write a paper. (Sometimes the background noise helps.) A gypsy steals her surfboard and all kinds of hoodoo about Voodoo (what's Voodoo got to do with gypsies?) comes up, along with "superstition" bashing, gypsy orientalizing, and Gidget's usual Malibu hijinks. I couldn't help myself. The funny part is the title of the episode is "Like Voodoo." I don't know if this means, in sixties language, "It's, like, Voodoo man!" or if the writers wrote it that way because they knew deep down that gypsies are not Vodouisants. There is so much more to say about this thing... I might finish it up tonight.

Next, heres a paper I haven't titled yet because I don't even know where to start with it:

My final paper for my final english class of my final semester (whew!) is a reflection paper. An extremely long reflection paper, but a reflection paper nonetheless. We are to state our theoretical position (!) -- or at least our theoretical leanings anyway -- and discuss what led us down our particular theory paths. Now I know when I get to grad school there may or may not be students who claim "I am a Marxist! or "I am a Narratologist!" or whatever have you, (I hope first that they wouldn't jump to such a conclusion so early in their studies, and second, that they wouldn't ever come to such a hard and fast conclusion!) So while this won't turn out to be a critical writing sample, it will definitely be a good way to work on a paper from which I can extract a good statement of academic purpose.

Finally, in philosophy land (since I'm also in the last class to complete my philosophy minor):

I'm glad to be working on a paper that combines literature and philosophy -- I'm writing on Kafka's The Trial and "the incomprehensible" in Existentialist literature. Quite a way to go on this one. It'll be a tough week. I'm hoping time become a little uncompressed in grad school, at least as far as paper-writing goes. Two-week papers don't seem like the thing to do there.

I just got home from an excellent little party at the cozy house of my senior seminar professor. It was kind of funny because he used it as a practice party for all of us, sort of an etiquette lesson for future professorial dinner parties. Some of the students who sometimes annoy me in a classroom setting ended up being great at a party, and some of the smarter students were actually very quiet. I dropped some good one-liners. It was nice to see everyone in a new context, and I hope next fall I can begin a new chapter where social interaction with like-minded English nerds who tell literary jokes is not just an end-of-year treat, but a regular ongoing sort of thing.

Now to the papers.

Heaths, Moors, and Pinafores

The November Anthropologie catalog arrived today, and the dreamy photos on its matte finish pages were more stirring than usual. In what I would guess are the West Midlands of England (they never let on) a realistically beautiful girl wanders over moors, trips over becks, and communes with low stone walls and knotty pines. Having just read Jane Eyre, I pictured her running on those same heaths and stumbling down those same winding roads. And of course, as Anthropologie would have it, I pictured myself there too.

While the clothes are always gorgeous, I have to admit it's the whole Anthropologie package that works on me. Though sometimes less than others. There was an issue in which a tragically hip man and woman lived in a burnt out house on an island, basking on their threadbare fainting couches and kicking their $400 boots off under a half-destroyed kitchen table in a kitchen that did not look heated. Those kinds of scenarios just make me laugh. Those people, as much as they might think it hip to live in a decrepit 19th century farmhouse, would probably never really do that.

I, however, would most definitely run across a moor! Maybe even in heels, as some of the pictures suggest. But more likely in sturdy shoes and lots of scarves. I would also lean gazing out the window of a Moroccan hotel and then go get lost in bazaars full of lamps. I would also sit on the porch of a trailer covered in license plates and let the old man who lives there tell me a story. All these things have been shown to me by Anthropologie, but I think they were already waiting in the back of my mind to be awakened by suggestive photographs.


Are these scenarios cliche? Only among art-school-girls. But those are cliche too I guess. I think most people would find these pictures strange. Why go to a cold wet moor when you could go to Hawaii? That's what the Victoria's Secret girls do. You won't catch them wandering the Midlands in tights and peacoats, just longing for a bumpy carriage ride. They might head to Morocco now and again, but certainly not to buy a live bird at the market. Only Anthropologie girls do those kinds of silly things.

But there must be a lot of girls to whom those off-beat activities appeal. Anthro counts on it. Perhaps half their customers (the ones who can afford the clothes) just like the look of the photos, the idea of visiting strange places, the aesthetic efforts that went into matching frocks with places. Or they're like the ex-Manhattan newlyweds living in the tear-down farmhouse, just imagining themselves slumming it. Or, they like to Orientalize* the photo locales and project their fantasies onto them. I can't know how these girl/place/beauty representations look in the eyes of the privileged, but I think some of the women and girls who look at these photos see them as real places they could go and things they could do.

*With some of these locations there is a Pandora's box of postcolonial as well as feminist issues that I could go into. But that's for another time.

Looking at the last few issues and drawing on my memory, it seems the first half of the catalogs are for the first type of Anthro girls I described. The fashion is the focus, and the locales, while sometimes whimsical, are sleek or opulent. Sometimes this division doesn't hold true, especially when they find a locale they love, but it's usually split in two. For the first halves, November's has a girl lounging by enormous baroque mantelpieces and mirrors. October's features a woman in a modern feng-shui sort of home. Years ago we find a first-half lady sipping lattes at a coffee shop and puttering about her loft. The first half ladies are all well off, all in high fashion or sleek understated looks, and they appear to be kept. They're mostly blonde.

A first-half woman, her house, her man.

In the refreshing second halves of these same respective issues we find: our brown-haired Jane Eyre on the heaths, a stern-looking tousle-haired woman exploring an ancient barn, and a red-headed funny-faced waif who appears to work (not shop) at the art gallery that serves as her backdrop. The back-of-the-catalog girls are the adventurous, self-sufficient, less-than-perfect ones. They aren't sitting around the house, they aren't out shopping for shoes in some European city, and they don't look like they're thinking about what their men are doing. They're the ones who I identify with, whether I like to admit it or not.

I know there are problems with all of this. Even if these women represent some positive things for me, they are still trying to sell me clothes. I almost never buy the clothes, so I guess I win on that point. I think I have three things, collected over the past ten years, and I got them all from the clearance closet. However, they are also trying to sell me beauty, even if it is not of the 100% symmetrical and flawless variety pictured in the first halves of the catalogs. They use the artist's, the writer's, the dancer's love for these beautiful places, plant a gorgeous but approachable looking girl there, someone you might like to talk to (especially since your lot tends to be lonely) and then they wait for the scenario to do its work on you. You might not buy the whole new line this season, but at least they can count on you to wander into the clearance closet once in a while, in search of that dress that makes you feel as if you're perpetually appearing in a stone doorway.

Whether they're just plain evil, or whether they're nice to send me some pretty pictures every month I'm not sure. But I am sure that I cannot now go to England without making a special point of finding a place like this one, and frolicking in it for a time.

Stealing the I-word

After spending a few evenings with Julia Kristeva and her detractor William Irwin, and doing a little bit of research on the Sokal affair, I feel like I'm caught in the middle of a dirty fight.

Kristeva's "Word, Dialog, Novel" is the 1966 article wherein she coins the term "intertextuality" and sets it apart from other types of intertextual happenings we may have wanted to accredit to it. The first on her list of "not intertextualities" is allusion. Irwin is quick to hit the ball right back at her in his "Against Intertextuality," and the first action of hers he tackles is her dismissal of allusion. This beef about allusions is not the main point of his article, but since they are the first thing that Kristeva makes clear are not part of the intertextual play, Irwin uses allusions (and even makes allusions to other texts in the opening paragraph!) to make a point about the consequences of Kristeva's approach to literature and meaning. "As some would tell the story," Irwin writes, "allusion died along with the author. It is now naive and reactionary (emphasis mine) to speak of allusion, and it has been displaced by intertextuality."

I understand why allusion is excluded from Kristeva's theory. It's just not part of what she's getting at. Her intertextuality comes from linguistics, semiotics, and even metaphysics. It's about fluidity and ambivalence of meaning being unavoidable, because every text is caught up in the flow of language, history, the literary corpus, and anything else we could call a text (even the reader and the author are texts, not interpreters or creators). No use in me trying to explain it. Suffice it to say that it's highly theoretical, can be put to work for the political, but does not appear to have any necessary teleology. As far as I can tell, it is a descriptive ontological theory of literature and of all texts.

But Irwin even asks the big question, whether it's "an ontological description or a mode of interpretation?" The short answer is both, that the description "gives birth," as Irwin says, to the mode of interpretation. That makes sense -- first you figure out what something is, then you figure out what to make out of it. But then things start to get blurry. All these descriptions are so fluid themselves, and as Irwin jokes, the I-word "has come to have almost as many meanings as users."

So tracking down allusions and considering what new meanings they bring to the text, or what new lights they shed on the text alluded to, may not offer any insight into a Kristevan look at a text. I'm still not even sure what a Kristevan interpretation looks like. But I don't think we can really dismiss the "naive," elementary sort of take on the term intertextuality, that is, the things it sounds like it means. It sounds like it means you have to look at what happens between literary texts, especially when one text is aware of others. I'm not talking about Lisa Simpson playing Ophelia, but I am talking about things like frequent and specific Biblical references in a text, master narratives shared by myriad texts, recurring figures i.e. Christ or Faust, and yes, I'm talking about what happens when one text has the balls, the unmitigated audacity, to directly address another!

This last category leaves me baffled as to what to do about the dead author and his stifled intentions. Is there nothing to be gained by reading an old text in the light of a new text, knowing full well that new text was meant to shed some kind of light? We are discussing some important pairs from this category in my senior seminar on intertextuality: Beowulf/Grendel*, and Mrs. Dalloway/The Hours. (Watch out for those slash marks - something might fly apart.) These pairs are intertextual in the non-Kristevan sense. First of all, we're mostly looking at them in pairs, not so much as floaters on the intertextual sea. But I don't think that makes our work on them "literary study for dummies," nor does it mean my professor didn't get Kristeva. I think he thinks that Kristeva is brilliant, but certainly not the keeper of every incarnation of things that could be said to be intertextual. And I think I agree.

*I think interpreting some three (or more) texts "Beowulf/Beowulf/Beowulf, etc" (as in "traditionally translated poem/Heany-wulf/the Beowulf oral tradition, etc.) in light of each other would be closer to Kristevan intertextuality, but even that's not exactly Kristeva's vision of what to do with this thing.

I also think there's probably no reason to get worked up about intertextuality because Kristeva would just call what we are doing in our humble classroom something completely different, and not a threat to her ontology of texts. But I do think there is a sort of snobbery that surrounds Kristeva and her followers that makes the rest of us wonder -- When we get to grad school, what words are we still allowed to use (did she service mark them?) without being corrected? And what sort of interpretations are we allowed to engage in that won't get us kicked out of the Rainbow Room? See there I go being reactionary!

By the by, I just learned about the Sokal affair: A hoax article with a hilarious, senseless title was published in a postmodern journal in 1996. The physicist (Sokal) who wrote it thought this proved postmodern theory was in the toilet. I don't know if it's as simple as that, but I do think that there is some riding around on high horses going on, and that a fundamental problem with postmodernism is its hypocrisy. It claims to be a leveler, to embrace the popular, to be anti-elite. But it makes a new elite, the kind where people look at the kitschy sculpture and pretend to know what's ironic about it, and get away with it by saying something about hermeneutics (since no one else at the party knows what that is). I know this sort of scenario could never come true (or could it!?) in academia, but being only explicable within the highest echelons of academics only adds to postmodernism's internal problem of being esoteric and therefore hypocritical. I have to laugh with it, be boggled by it, and stick my tongue out at it at the same time. At least in that sense, I think it's doing its job?

Explaining the Joke

I. PREFATORY DISCLAIMER

You're about to witness me trying to pull together examples from a postmodern novel, some popular fiction and even (dare I!?) a few cartoon series, in order to show what I mean by "explaining the joke." This is liable to be ugly, but it might be fun!

II. GROENING, et al.

Let's start with the cartoons, because the explanations (and jokes) happen most obviously there, and when I say they "explain the joke" I mean it quite literally. It is impossible to watch an episode of The Simpsons, for example, without having at least one joke (or situation) explained for you.

I think the goal of the writers (who get paid way too much money) here is twofold. First, they want to make sure the highest number of gags work for the highest number of audience members. Second, they want to make a second joke by explaining the first joke.

The first type of explanation is used when a reference is made, and the writers are afraid it might be lost on younger (or stupider) viewers.

The second type of explanation is used whenever a writer feels like it (maybe when a scene is moving too slow) and wants to explain the obvious, especially the obviously ironic -- and that's the joke. This happens most often on Family Guy, but The Simpsons cannot be absolved of guilt either.

Homer is having a bad day, then he walks away from the
coffee table and it's stuck to his pants.
He tells us the coffee table is stuck to his pants
and adding to his bad day.

A mix of these two, a third type of explanation, happens when some kind of rhetorical or plot device is used that might be lost on some viewers. It is explained for their benefit. But this explanation functions as an "explaining the obvious" joke for the savvy cartoon viewer (as if there is such a thing!). I picture Stewie Griffin saying something like:

"You see what I did there? I equated you with a transvestite.
You're a transvestite. You wear women's clothing."

I have always poo pooed these kind of jokes as an insult to my intelligence, as a damper on the actually funny jokes, and as a comedy crutch. I especially can't stand the explanations that make reference-based jokes funny for everyone. I have always thought of a reference as a sort of inside joke for those who know the reference -- right? In one Simpsons episode, there is a rapid succession of references ending with Homer riding a bomb to his death. I got them, and they were not explained. I felt like they were much more successful "jokes" because of what was left unsaid.

But you know, until the scene was over I didn't put it past those writers to have Homer say something like, "I'm riding the bomb! Just like the cowboy guy in Dr. Strangelove when he falls out of the plane! Weeee!" and then have Bart walk up and say "Enough with the sixties movie references, Homer." You know it could happen just like that, reader. Does it not make you even a little annoyed?

(Sorry if I seem hostile -- I've been hanging out late nights with Charlotte Bronte. Plus I'm listening to Kansas who are insisting that I'm dust in the wind.)

III. YATES

My next example of explaining the joke is more like "explaining the literary device." But it functions like the joke explanations in that the author seems to want to ensure that no subtle (or obvious) device is lost on the reader, and in that the effect on the savvy reader is an insult to the intelligence, and a lack of satisfaction with the allusion, foreshadowing, etc. compared with the satisfaction they would have gotten with discovering the device on their own.

I recently gave a five-star review on Goodreads.com to Richard Yate's novel Revolutionary Road. I loved the unapologetically manly style, the intensity of the characters, the treatment of some horrid situations, and the insights about '50s culture (it was published in '62, so these critiques were not yet trite a la Pleasantville). After a few days, I went back and knocked the review down to four stars. Throughout the book I'd been prodded here and there by parenthetical references to earlier character dialog and inner dialog, and I couldn't forgive that.

Here's how it went: Whenever a particular character description resurfaced, like April recalling a negative description of herself by Frank, the earlier negative statement would show up in parentheses and italics. As if we'd forgotten Frank said that. Then, say, whenever April is thinking about what to do, she would reflect on a conversation with Frank and how she regretted it and snippets of the conversation would be inserted for us. They have said these hateful things to each other throughout. Dear author, it might have been more fun if you let us remember or go back and look for the exact phrase you are referring to. We get it without the explanation!

This also happened with foreshadowing in the novel. Once the foreshadowed event or statment was realized, the author would provide us with a parenthesized and italicized recap of the actual foreshadowing line from back in chapter five or whatever. Thanks, man. That's a big help.

As if all this weren't bad enough -- Yates is great at intense scenes, gets us all wound up, yet he has these parenthetical things show up right in the middle of fighting or sex! Sometimes it makes sense, but other times -- what a bummer!

I'm sorry I didn't put actual examples here but I described them pretty true to the book. Believe me, you can just flip through RR and find these things. The parentheses even make it easy to go back and find'em for your high school book report!

III. a. SIDETRACK THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRANSITIONAL.

Now I still like The Simpsons (maybe excluding some of the newer writers) and I still like Revolutionary Road but their overexplaining has certainly put a damper on my enjoyment of them. At least The Simpsons are an ongoing text, always offering to redeem itself. I'm not sure though. I was reading while watching the new "Treehouse of Horror" this month, and had to look up and sigh when:

Marge: Ok Maggie, we'll see you in three hours.
Homer: Or later, if something happens.

I know this is supposed to be ironic (or what people call ironic nowadays), but it does get old after awhile. The fact that entire cartoons (Family Guy and its offspring) are based on things purposely not being that funny, jokes purposely dragging out too long, or a whole joke being that someone's purposely being way too obvious about plot devices and self-sconscious of everything that happens on the show, indicates that it's time for a humor overhaul. When eveything's ironic, nothing's ironic. (And doesn't dramatic irony depend on what the little people in the TV box don't know?)

IV. GARDNER

The last thing on my list is last because I really don't have a problem with its explaining. I just read John Gardner's novel Grendel for my Senior Seminar in Literary Theory (which is really a last minute "Oh SHIT! We totally forgot to tell you about this literary...uh...theory thing!" crash course), and I thought it was great. It was the perfect, easy book for a last minute "Oh SHIT!" course, but an enjoyable read (or game) for those readers who can instantly tell what's going on it too.

The novel is purposely designed for beginning theory students to be able to find a million and one things to take apart, to help them begin a very easy jog down the intertextuality path (follow Beowulf directly to Beowulf...), and to put on display every element of postmodernism that points to "Hey guys! I think this is postmodernism!"~"Wow, get over here and look! Tommy found some postmodernism!"

To be more specific for those of you who aren't the same kind of nerd as me (you're all nerds if you're reading this, just different flavors), Grendel is postmodern because it is self-conscious, funny, purposefully intertextual (it "talks" back to Beowulf), pushes the limits of genre, and most of all because it knows it's going to be subjected to criticism and picked at by theorists. If you think of earlier novels, like 19th century ones, I'll bet you can't think of many that behave this way. That's the postmodern, in a smoothed over nutshell.

Now for the theory games planted in it: they give this text a meta-text aspect that's pretty unique, even to postmodern novels. But the games are almost all very obvious, and some are superfluous, not really offering any new insight into the text. This could be interpreted as yet another task of self-reflection and postmodern playfulness (look at this funny thing I'm doing by hiding all this theory stuff in me!), but it's also interesting to me because of the obvious authorial intent. That is, Gardner didn't do all that stuff by accident or because of some sea of texts flowing through him. Theorists, especially Kristeva, grandmother of intertextuality, like to deny the importance of any authorial intent. I like to think of Grendel as a game played with Gardner present. But I suppose he doesn't really have to be there. His (the) puzzle box works autonomously.

I don't have a conclusion about all this yet, but I think it's fun to think about it from both sides of the author is dead/alive argument when you have a book that appears to have a tutorial purpose like this one. (I busted up my class when I asked if Kristeva often tells her husband he doesn't exist -- he's a writer. Petty and missing the point on my part, but it went over well! "Ecris! Ecris! Tu n'existes pas! Tu es MORT!")

Anyhow, some of the treats in Grendel are hard to find but others are so painfully obvious that they are not really fun to "discover" unless you are a total theory virgin. Which is why I said it's great for this class. The treat I laughed most at was "mor(t)al," which is just a call to whip out your handy step-by-step deconstruction manual . But the zodiac in twelve chapters? C'mon. Some kids got waaaay too excited about that. The zodiac supposedly acts as a key to the twelve philosophies developed in the chapters (the philosophy is fun to read -- Nietzsche and other existentialists lurk and lurk), but I'm not sure how. Besides, that's just what Gardner said the zodiac was there for when he was pressed to explain it. And what does he know?

V. SHOULD I STOP NOW?

So you've endured three very different, very half-assed analyses, but I hope you get the point. In most cases, explaining what you're doing in humor or in art is obnoxious and does not serve the art, but subtracts from it. Unless you're a brilliant novelist -- then it just makes you "postmodern" (cough) and I can forgive you.