Andrew McCormick
ENGL 701: Graduate Methodology
Prof. Richter
Article Assignment Pt. 1
27 Sept. 2010
My Developing Question
Of the many themes found in literature that interest me, one that is yet to be equaled is how it has reflected and been in dialogue with class, specifically poverty and privilege. I am also increasingly interested, as I learn more about theory and criticism, in the emergence of postmodernism and the ways it has augmented but also conflicted with earlier lenses. These two interests have lately come together for me; in particular, I have grown curious about the ways in which postmodernism in literature has interacted with earlier, more traditional representations of social class and power struggles. I get the sense that while earlier lenses, especially, say, naturalism and realism, were often openly political (arguably to the point of being didactic in some cases), in the poststructural and postmodern lenses, politics and power struggles cannot be (re)presented too explicitly or polemically, as this would be to simplify identity and reality in ways incompatible with the poststructural and postmodern dictums that narratives and events, particularly solutions and res/revolutions can be, at best, “temporal” and “contingent” to use the words in one theory book (Klages 169).
A year or so ago, when I was working on an essay on William Saroyan’s short story “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” set in the Great Depression, my research revealed some interesting debates about the author, including to what extent he might be variously categorized as, among other things, a romantic, an existentialist, some blend of the two (Shinn, Floan NP), or a modernist whose work occupies the bridge, or, as one writer put it, “a critical point of least convenience between the first wave of Modernism […] and that new wave of Postmodernism—Kerouac, most obviously—that he is shown to have influenced” (Locklin NP). This piqued my curiosity as to what other works (by Saroyan as well as other authors) written and/or set during the Great Depression might be considered or argued to have elements of what one could perhaps call the proto-postmodern. Moreover, I grapple with the question, if certain among such works of the 30’s can be argued to exhibit developing tenets of postmodernism while still being fundamentally or partly grounded in some other lens or movement, say naturalism-tinted modernism or just straightforward, didactic proletarian radicalism, how might one reconcile the apparent disjunction between the traditionalism of the former and the professed instability of language and identity inherent to the latter? This is my area of concern, my developing question, for the time being.
Much more recently, for this assignment, I found an article from the late 1980’s, published in Representations, on the famous, seminal 30’s work Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by Walker Evans and James Agee. In it, T.V. Reed argues for a “postmodernist realism” in this book which, he explains, is very difficult to categorize.[1] Reed explains that although the term and movement now called “postmodernism” was not around in the 1930’s, that there are still distinctly postmodern elements to Evans’s and Agee’s interdisciplinary work (157).
My hope, then, is to build off of, or use as a starting point, Reed’s argument about Evans’s and Agee’s work, seeking similar (but hopefully not identical) phenomena in other works of the time. The “postmodernist realism” (156) Reed argues in favor of, which simultaneously represents the disenfranchisement of the impoverished, also refuses, Reed explains, simplifying binaries, categorizations, or, most vitally, the unwitting fetishization of the poor sometimes produced in mimetic and didactic writings in literary fiction that merely serves to further Other the impoverished and reinforce comparatively privileged readers’ position of power (Reed 168-69). Hence, explains Reed, the blended, partly literary, partly journalism/documentary, occasionally sociological nature of this complex, multi-natured text that refuses to be labeled as the province of one discipline just as it refuses to be traditionally, meta-narratively labeled the property or product of any one ism or political ethos. With this type of postmodern analysis in mind, I hope to examine similar intersections of the postmodern and the (naturalism/realism influenced-) political in the work of such writers as Saroyan as well as, perhaps, Erskine Caldwell, Henry Roth and one or two others of the 30’s. At this point, Saroyan is the 30’s writer of primary interest to me; the others mentioned here are possibilities.
Clearly, Reed’s article, “Unimagined Existence and the Fiction of the Real: Postmodernist Realism in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” (1988) is at this point my critical touchstone. But I have also found useful ideas to incorporate and build upon in Morris Dickstein’s recent book Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, which I am reading and enjoying, and whose references and suggested readings I intend to check out as I continue to develop this bibliography—this book has made it clear to me that Roth’s Call It Sleep is probably also a strong candidate for this type of analysis. I also have a potentially useful historical article, Allen Guttman’s “Think Back on the Thirties,” but I will be seeking more contemporary articles like it from the fields of history and sociology (Guttman’s article is from the sixties, so I will probably not be pursuing too many leads from its bibliography/footnotes). As for primary texts to which I might apply whatever theoretical lenses that develop, as mentioned, these may include Saroyan’s play The Time of Your Life as well as several of his depression-era short stories (including the one mentioned), Caldwell’s Tobacco Road, and Roth’s Call it Sleep. Thus far, I have also consulted Mary Klages’s very accessible literary theory book, but I may likely consult some others, and there is a good chance that I will be seeking more readings, perhaps books, on postmodernism.
Full Annotated Bibliography in Progress:
Agee, James and Evans, Walker. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. (1941). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.
Caldwell, Erskine. Tobacco Road. (1932). Athens, Ga: Brown Thrasher Books, 1995. Print.
Dickstein, Morris. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression. New York: Norton, 2009. Print.
Floan, Howard R. William Saroyan. Twayne’s United States Authors’ Series 100. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1966. Gale: Cengage Learning. Literature Resources. Web. 05 Sept. 2009, 19 Sept. 2010.
Guttman, Allen. “Think Back on the Thirties.” The Massachussetts Review. 9.3 (Summer 1968): 605-611. JSTOR. Web. 22 Sept. 2010.
Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum, 2007. Print.
Locklin, Gerald. “William Saroyan: A Study of the Short Fiction.” Studies in Short Fiction. 30.2 (Spring 1993). p199. Gale: Cengage Learning. Literature Resources. Web. 17 Aug. 2009, Sept. 2010.
Reed, T.V. “Unimagined Existence and the Fiction of the Real: Postmodernist Realism in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Representations. No. 24 (Fall 1988): 156-176. JSTOR. Web. 24 Sept. 2010.
Saroyan, William. “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” The William Saroyan Reader. New York: Barricade Books, 1958, 1994. Print.
Shinn, Thelma J. “William Saroyan: Romantic Existentialist.” Modern Drama. 15.2 (Sept. 1972). p185-194. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Aug. 2009, 24 Sept. 2010.
[1] Reed notes that the current edition actually classes itself as sociology, which is, he explains, a very problematic categorization for such a work. He also refuses to label it straightforward fiction/literature either, though. More to come on this issue.
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