Toni Morrison, Margaret Garner, and Beloved

Tomorrow, we'll begin talking about Toni Morrison's seminal 1988 novel, Beloved. Beloved is a book rich with Cincinnati history. It fictionalizes the life of runaway slave Margaret Garner into a magisterial narrative about love, human rights, and our ability to truly "own" the lives we lead. Some of you might be familiar with the story of Garner. She was a slave on a plantation in Kentucky during the 1850s and escaped from her masters with her young children by night from Covington across the Ohio River into the Union enclave of Cincinnati. When slave-catchers reached the home where she and her children were hiding, Garner killed one of her children and attempted to kill the others rather than allow them to be returned to a life of slavery. An America already at odds over the issue of slavery was captivated by the story of Garner and her subsequent trial, which posed fundamental questions about liberty, personhood, and the law. When Junot Diaz was asked by Newsweek to name the 5 books of fiction that were most important to him, he placed Beloved at the top of the list, saying that "[y]ou can't understand the Americas without this novel about the haunting that is our past."

Thomas Saterwaite Noble, "The Modern Medea" (1867)--painting based on Margaret Garner


Toni Morrison based Beloved loosely on the Garner narrative. She also wrote the libretto for an opera on the subject of the runaway slave's life, entitled Margaret Garner. Beloved and Margaret Garner are just two examples of Morrison's interest in tracing the history of black life in America. She is one of the most important authors of the twentieth century and a major force in popularizing African American fiction, both as a writer and editor of other writers work during her time in the publishing industry. Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize, but many other novels by Morrison were justly celebrated--from The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon, two earlier works to Paradise and the soon to be released A Mercy. She is also famous for her many works of literary and social criticism, including Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. In 1993, Morrison received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

History and "Papa Doc" Duvalier in The Dew-Breaker

In class on Friday, we discussed the many ways in which The Dew-Breaker references the history of Haiti and particularly the repercussions of dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier's reign on the Haitian people. All the characters in Danticat's book of linked stories suffer from their associations with the violence of Duvalier's Haiti and attempt to understand how to live with the decisions they made in a society where every individual was either "hunter or prey," as Ka's father describes it in the first story of the collection. I gave you an outline of Papa Doc's place in Haitian history in class, but I'm providing you with the following links to get more acquainted with him as you read The Dew-Breaker. Please post any comments on the book or the interplay of history in the lives of the character's in Danticat's book below.



List of Duvalier links:
Papa Doc's Wiki page

Another article on Duvalier reign

Site about Haitian history

Edwidge Danticat and the Dew-Breaker

Edwidge Danticat spent the first twelve years of her life in Haiti before moving to a Haitian-American community in Brooklyn. Danticat was educated at Barnard College and Brown University and came to prominence at a very young age with the publication of her first book, Breath, Eyes, Memory in 1994. Attaining widespread critical praise upon its publication, she became the first Haitian-identified author to achieve renown in the United States and the acceptance of her work is seen to mark the beginning of a belated opening of American literary culture to the stories of women and people of color.

Danticat's writing focuses on a number of themes we've discussed in class--from the power of the past to the importance of telling stories in order to construct an identity. Her work also often represents another theme fundamental to our work in class, her sense of feeling pulled between a number of cultures: Haitian and American; black and white; English- and French Creole- speaking; the political and the literary.

The Dew-Breaker is a particularly interesting book to read alongside The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao because it shares many of the central preoccupations of Diaz's novel (not to mention the fact that Danticat and Diaz are good friends). However, Danticat's book more directly addresses the questions about torture and human rights that Diaz's introduce. Also, unlike Oscar Wao, The Dew-Breaker is not a conventional novel, but a series of linked stories that function much as a novel does. As you read, think about how Danticat's choice to render the narrative in this way affects your experience of The Dew-Breaker. What are your first impressions of the book?

Junot Diaz Interview about Genre

Junot Diaz originally conceived of Oscar Wao as being not unlike a comic book. Read this interview with Diaz for more.

Scifi, pop culture, and the novel

Yesterday in class we discussed the many ways in which Junot Diaz uses speculative fiction, scifi, and fan fiction culture in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao . This movement toward integrating what has traditionally been known as pop culture with literary fiction is an increasingly powerful one in contemporary American fiction. Some of you have mentioned how much you like Michael Chabon, the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Wonder Boys. If you're interested, read the following article for some more information about the subject. What do you think of this movement? Are there other books you've read that bring in topics usually associated with what many call "genre fiction"?

Introducing Junot Diaz and the American Novel Beyond America

For the next week or so, we will be exploring The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Oscar Wao, published just this past year, is Diaz's first novel; he published his award-winning book of short stories, Drown, almost ten years ago. Since its publication, Diaz's novel has gone on to win a bevy of prizes, including the vaunted Pulitzer.

Diaz's novel introduces a number of questions we will focus on during this portion of the quarter. Most prominently, the novel asks us to think about the American novel outside of the continental United States. Diaz is Dominican-American and his novel moves smoothly between the Dominican Republic and the U.S., the past and the present, with ease. Diaz's novel represents a move toward a different concept of the nation and citizenship in the nation. It also asks us to think a lot about the form of the novel--as we have been doing thus far in class. Oscar Wao is littered with footnotes that threaten to take over the novel and texts that interweave with Diaz's main narrative. Like Mao II, Diaz's book also asks us to think about the intersection of history and literature; Diaz provides us with a graphic, politicized history of the Dominican Republic at the same time as he gives us a fable about a fat, nerdy Dominican boy in the U.S. who can't get a girl to date him.

Junot Diaz will be reading at Miami University in the Spring, so stay tuned!

Forum for posting comments on Coover reading

Your homework assignment for Monday asks that you read the article, "The End of Books," by Robert Coover and make a blog posting of 1-2 paragraphs with your response to the material. You can access the reading here, by clicking on the title above, or by going to the course documents page on Blackboard. Please post your material before class on Monday. I will print out the responses and we will discuss them, along with the end of Galatea 2.2, in class.

As for directions on the assignment: I am not looking for a formal response, but you want to make sure that your response is based in part on the text you read. So, it's definitely great to include your thoughts on a whole host of topics related to the questions Coover and/or Powers raise, but make sure you refer some of them back to the reading. Please write me with any problems posting or completing the assignment. I look forward to reading your work and having an opportunity for you to share your thoughts with your classmates outside of class!

ADDENDUM: In case you are having trouble accessing the Coover reading on the NY Times website (sometimes they require a password if you're not on an institutional computer), I'll put a Word document version up on our Blackboard site, as well.

Ninth Letter and Galatea 2.2

Click here to see a video collaboration between Richard Powers and the artists at Ninth Letter Journal created in order to celebrate Galatea 2.2.

The Author is Dead; Long Live the Machine

At least that's what Erika T. Carter's creator says on "her" website... In class today, we discussed Powers' Galatea 2.2 and paid a visit to Ms. Erika T. Carter, machine-poetess extraordinaire. Take a few minutes to draw up some of your "own" Erika poems and to think about how the creation of poetry generation software like Erika affects our idea of writing and of authorship. Do we own what we write? Is most writing appropriation or "plagiarism" anyway? Can a computer think the way that we do? How do these questions come up in Galatea 2.2?

Here's more information on the creation of a fake poetry anthology, Erika's newest project, and the controversy it is engendering.

If you're interested in reading/experiencing writing that playfully uses the internet, but is written by a real, live person, check out The Jew's Daughter or Eunoia, two examples.

If you're interested in poetry or experimental writing (something I'm happy to integrate into class if you'd like more), you'll find a great resource at PennSound. The site is even edited and administered by one of our very own new professors here at UC, Michael Hennessey.

DeLillo and Terrorism

One last point on DeLillo before we leave him forever for Richard Powers: I've been thinking a lot about how differently the term "terrorist" functions today than it did when DeLillo was writing (in the case of Mao II in 1991). At this point in American history, "terrorist" has come to function as a disturbingly politicized catch-all term that is employed during the presidential election to cast aspersions on candidates or call into question people's patriotism. Does DeLillo use the term in a similar way? We didn't end up talking much about the political valences of his use of "terrorism," but I think it's important to note that he is writing in a time before it had quite the meaning it does today in American politics and culture. A lot to think about as we finish with DeLillo and move on to Powers.

Open Forum on DeLillo

A few of you have been sending me some great responses (negative and positive) to Mao II, so I thought I'd create a final forum for discussion of the text before we move on to Galatea 2.2. So, if you have perspectives on DeLillo you'd like to share or points of interest, please post them here. Also: if you read the posts of your classmates, please feel free to respond to them. I look forward to the conversation!

Pygmalion and Galatea

Falconet--Pygmalion et Galatee (1763)

The sculpture above depicts the famous Pygmalion myth. The myth of Pygmalion was first related in Ovid's Metamorphosis. Ovid tells the story of the sculptor Pygmalion, who creates a statue so beautiful he falls in love with it. The statue, carved of ivory, is named Galatea. As Pygmalion becomes increasingly obsessed with the statue, he ceases to be interested in the real world or the real women in it. Eventually, seeing his love for the statue, the gods give the statue life and allow Pygmalion and Galatea to marry.

The Pygmalion myth has influenced many subsequent works of art and literature--from the 18th century sculpture depicted above to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2. In class, we'll discuss why and how Powers chooses to make this Greek myth so central to his novel.

Richard Powers

Our next work is by noted postmodern novelist, Richard Powers. Powers is famous for focusing much of his work on the role of technology and science in American culture. Powers worked as a computer programmer before he became a novelist and studied physics, as well as English, in college. In Galatea 2.2, Powers updates the Pygmalion story for the e-generation. Galatea 2.2 tells many different stories; it's part modern-day fable, part romance, part scifi experiment, and part playful postmodern meta-fiction. In class, we'll use Powers' fascinating work to open up questions about whether the computer has superseded the novel, whether the university functions as an appropriate place to study literature, and whether a novel that stars its own author is a novel at all.