Tomorrow, in addition to looking closely at a couple of the passage from the last blogpost, we will watch this 22 minute film that explains a short text by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, called "Postscript on the Societies of Control" . The text is actually quite short, but very dense. I am hoping that the video will communicate to you some of the aspects of Deleuze's theoretical work that may function as an interpretive device to bring to Super Sad True Love Story.
I show this video because it will serve as a contrast to our first part of class, which will be devoted to looking toward specific passages in the text in order to then "read" the rest of the text. Small passages frequently serve as microcosms of the macrocosmic work. However, as some of you may have noted, my own attempt to to this in the last blogpost transformed into larger Biblical themes.
"Theory" is another way (and the academy's most frequent way) to read literary texts. What we call 'theory' is shorthand for 'literary theory'. Literary theory has a long and fruitful history, but today, literary theory is frequently not only "literary" but "cultural" and even "philosophical" theory. That is, 'theory' does not only bear on literary issues of genre, historical precedent, or autobiography, but culture at large. While one can take something like Super Sad True Love Story and show how it imaginatively recreates, reimagines, or alludes to historical events, it is also interesting to think about the novel through a more general theoretical apparatus.
Today in class, I began to make an argument that there is a kind of "religious" aspect to the secular desires of Joshie Goldmann and co. Joshie and Posthuman services are populated by Jews. Jews, in general, do not believe in heaven, but the desire for immortality (and the concern with death) is still a religious wish. In some ways, it is to be as God (immortal, unchanging.)
A lot of claims about both Jews and Christians are made in this novel, sometimes contradictory. For instance, from Eunice's correspondence with "PreciousPony," we find that Sally conceives Christianity as an "activist's creed" and can thus justify her religious and secular Political commitments. Eunice is skeptical: "I think i want to meet whoever told her to say that and punch him in the face" (145). The chapter this discussion occurs within is called "Temperance, Charity, Faith, and Hope." These words are a variation on a famous passage in the Bible -- 1 Corinthians 13. "Charity" is frequently translated as 'love':
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If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
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In our own world, we see Christians arguing that Jesus wants us to be happy and prosperous at the same time others argue that Christianity should be about helping the poor and unfortunate. "Love," a self-love or simply an ultimate love of Jesus or God replaces the imperative of "Charity." The debate between 'good works' and 'faith' has been a major question in the Christian faith. Some believe in salvation by faith alone. Perhaps this might be those who would want to retain the translation of "love." What kind of "love" does Lenny have for Eunice? Is it a selfless, patient, love? Eunice seems to think so at times. Or is his love ultimately love of self because he believes that somehow Eunice will be the key to his immortality? Is he really practicing charity? Lenny writes,
"But one thing I knew: I would never follow Nettie's advice. I would never visit those poor people in Tompkins Square Park. Who knew what would happen to them? If the National Guard shot people in Central Park, why wouldn't they shoot them downtown. 'Safety First' as they say around Post-Human Services. Our lives are worth more than the lives of others." (165)
Our lives. Whose lives? Our family's lives? Our loved one's lives? Is this our idea of love?
The Christianity practiced by Sally and Eunice's family seem infused with a harsh Korean culture. Rather than caring for others -- even strangers -- the Korean/Christian service attended by Lenny is a bit terrifying (to me). The Reverend explicitly sets apart the believing Christians from the "Aziz Army" who are now framed as terrorists: "Only Geejush's grace will save this fallen country and protect from Aziz Army. Because you are lazy. Because you do not appreciate. Because you are prideful" (189).
Lenny doesn't believe this message and indeed would disagree with Paul, perhaps, that Love is not Proud. This brings me to my first passage I want to submit for close reading. This passage will be followed by others. I want to read these closely in class, taking the passages as jumping off points for interpreting other parts of the novel.
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Lenny: "I wanted to get up and address the audience: "You have nothing to be ashamed of," I would say. "You are decent people. You are trying. Life is very difficult. If there is a burden on your heart, it will not be lifted here. Do not throw away the good. Take pride in the good. You are better than this angry man. You are better than Jesus Christ [. . .] Do not believe the Judeo-Christian lie! Accept your thoughts! Accept your desires! Accept the truth! And if there is more than one truth, then learn to do the difficult work--learn to choose. You are good enough, you are human enough, to choose" (190).
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David to Eunice:
"I think that's where we went wrong as a country. We were afraid to really fight each other, and so we devolved into this Bipartisan thing and this ARA thing. When we lost touch with how much we really hate each other, we also lost the responsibility for our common future. I think when the dust settles and the Bipartisans are history that's how were's going to live, as small units that don't agree. I don't know what we'll call it, political parties, military councils, city states, but that's how its going to be and we're not going to screw it up this time. It'll be like 1776 all over again. Act Two for America." (177)
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Lenny on Noah:
"And I wondered about the excitement in his voice. What if Noah was secretly pleased that all this was happening? What if we all were? What if the violence was actually channeling our collective fear into a kind of momentary clarity, the clarity of being alive during conclusive times, the joy of being historically important by assocation?"
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Joshie to his employees:
"We are finally no longer critically relevant to the world economy. The rest of the globe is strong enough to decouple from us. We, our country, our city, our infrastructure, are in a state of freefall. But [. . .] We have to remember that our primary obligation is to our clients. We have to remember that all those who died in Central Park over the last few days were, in the long run, ITP, Impossible to Preserve. Unlike our clients, their time on our planet was limited. We must remind ourselves of the Fallacy of Merely Existing, which restricts what we can do for a whole sector of people. Yet, even though we may absolve ourselves of responsibility, we, as a technological elite, can set a good example. I say to all the naysayers: The best is yet to come" (181)
[Hint: think here for the Jews as "Chosen people"]
Welcome students to this space where I will hopefully be blogging about our books we read for the semester. Here you will find some advice on how to read the novel(s), how I am reading the novel(s), connections to our world (particularly with Super Sad), and probably some personal reflection.
Nostalgia comes in all different forms. I admit that in my own reading of Super Sad True Love Story I "identify" with Lenny Abrahmov more than Eunice and her friend Precious Pony or some of the other characters we will be meeting. However, I do not think that Lenny is an "objective" voice in the novel nor do I think Lenny's own positions, thoughts, or desires are unproblematic. The novel traps me in some ways by making me long for those days of "non-streaming media artifacts," even if I still participate (and not only participate, but claim to be STUDYING) daily within the digital ecology via facebook and other social media, sharing everything from videos, blogs, quotations from said "non-streaming media artifacts," links to news stories, comments on news stories, and sometimes just stupid shit I think sounds cool.
This post will be about how (I think) you can get the most of your reading experience and classtime.
1.) Don't be afraid to reflect on your own personal experience of love, technology, or politics when reading these novels.
For most of my literary career, I have tried to bracket my 'personal' experience when interpreting novels, but this is because I knew I was embarking on an academic career of Literary Criticism. Let's face it, most of you are in the middle or toward the end of your time at University of Florida and already have studied a particular field. If I'm not mistaken, none of you are literary scholars. So, although I will be introducing "literary" issues in this course, I also want you to encourage to use these novels to reflect on your own experience. I can tell you right now that despite the fact I am relatively young and Lenny is 39 (not really all that old), I feel like I have experience some of his thoughts, desires, and worries (death? AH! But immortality. . .). I think also that we can almost agree that Lenny's "love" for Eunice is more like a strange teenage crush or infatuation. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say we've all felt this -- maybe even for someone 'younger', 'out of our league', or, even, like he perceives Eunice (and sometimes who perceives herself in this manner) 'damaged'. In relationships, do we not tend to try and think about "changing" the other person? Do we not position ourselves as a "savior" of someone? Do we not consider how this other person can "save" us? Let us not shy away from these issues in class and in our reading experience.
Even outside the "love" relationship, are any of you just not concerned with death? I know I am, but I've watched too many Woody Allen films and read too much Heidegger. Have any of you thought about the balance between political/collective engagement and personal relationships? (Lenny: "I mean, what if Eunice and I just said 'no' to all of this?" -- SSTLS, 94)
That said, your journals and major papers should make an argument about the text and include citational evidence. What does it mean to make an argument about a text? It's to not only identify general themes (which we did very well today), but to start saying what the text is saying about these themes (and even, sometimes, *real world* events). How can we do this?
2.) Use your disciplinary knowledge to isolate ideas and themes in the text that interest you.
Do you study economics? What does the text say about the economy?
Do you study psychology? What kind of psychological issues might you identify in Lenny and Eunice? Sociology? What does the novel say about our culture AND a culture we might become?
Do you study communications? What is the text saying about how we communicate in a media saturated culture?
Do you study health? Don't get me started on the ways in which this 'health obsessed culture' mirrors our own. Or perhaps even shows us a society in which we all eat healthy and non-animal products? Is this a satire or utopia? What about the ideas between quality and quantity of life?
Do you study political science? What does this novel say about recent political events (indirectly) -- Occupy Wall Street ('tent cities'), the war in Iraq (Venuzuela), the common claim that though we are a 'two party system' we are essentially a one party system. What does it say about the Israel/Palestine conflict? What does it say about immigrant experience in America (particularly Russian)? So many things can be addressed.
Do you study engineering? How are transportation/cities etc. represented in the novel? How might we think of the "engineernig" of the human body (biology, your in on this one too!)
Do you study religion? How is "jewishness" or "christians" portrayed in the novel? Is there a way in which even the "secularized" society might still have a 'religion' (desire for immortality perhaps?). I must here direct you to a popular figure (and a key figure in Google innovation) Ray Kurzweil, a proponent of Transhumanism. Could we not see this man (this white, Jewish, man) as 'Joshie Goldmann' and vice versa?
You can see how, particularly in this first novel, ALL of you have an angle on the novel aside from the more typical 'universal themes' of love and death (these are particularly tied together in Russian Literature. c.f. Woody Allen's Love and Death.)
3.) WRITE/converse as you read
Record your thoughts. Blog (I can show you how to set one up if you don't know). Respond to my blog posts. Write IN the novel. Talk about the novel with people who haven't read it (or who have). Bring up aspects of the novel if they connect to your experience. "Live" with this novel. Come talk to me about it during office hours individually (or on Skype).
4.) With this novel in particular, read/watch the news (even the 'fake' news -- the onion, Jon Stewart, Colbert)
This novel is filled with reflections on media. Think critically while using your various technological devices and social media. Think about how you may be contributing to the circulation of something, etc. etc.
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In some ways, I see this novel as a possible dystopian media saturated America. But digital media harbors potentials difficult in a print/literate culture. It is not inherently the end of society nor going to lead to the kind of horrors of culture that Lenny both diagnoses AND tries to fit himself into.
I think this novel is not merely a satire of digital media, but also has a lot to say about the kind of subjectivities that are formed through certain media. I want you to think about the tension between the individual and the collective, the personal and political (which our most perceptive feminists have always maintains that the personal IS the political).
In my reading, this novel does not endorse the idea that we should go back to the days of "smelly old books" but rather to harness the affordances and benefits of our media situation for a new collective action and subjectivity rather than for surveillance, constant streaming of meaningless events, and the disintegration of unique idiolects of immigrant cultures
But the novel asks the questions, all ripe for argumentative papers or journals:
Can we actually have one without the other?
What is the kind of writing/media we will value in the future?
What is the role of the State (the 'government') in our age? Given Lenny's Russian heritage, do we not detect a little bit of a worry of a totalitarian state a la some of the Communist regimes of the past?
What is an 'authentic' human relationship? Do they exist?
What is our role as individuals in collective political and cultural action?
