Alison Bechdel and Fun Home

Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was named one of Time magazine's 10 best books of the year in 2006. Prior to the publication of her graphic novel-cum-memoir, Bechdel was best known for her comic strip, "Dykes to Watch Out For," which was syndicated in a number of alternative publications throughout the country. In Fun Home, Bechdel persists in exploring some of the themes she first examined in her strips, particularly gender and sexual orientation, as well as the trials and tribulations of a smart and witty young woman in America. However, Bechdel's memoir is an even more personal and poignant account--both of growing up gay and simply growing up. Bechdel's book, alongside David Foster Wallace's essays and short stories, asks us to look at the future of contemporary American literature? Will the "great American novel" be something other than a novel? Have we moved past the genre of the novel onto more hybrid literary forms?

Forum for posting: Fun Home and the Graphic Novel

For Monday, please post your response to the questions we posed in class today: how does reading a graphic novel/memoir differ from reading a novel? how does Alison Bechdel's use of images affect our understanding of her narrative?

E Unibus Pluram and the Conquest of Cool

For those of you who liked reading David Foster Wallace's essay, "E Unibus Pluram," I recommend checking out The Conquest of Cool by Thomas Frank, the editor of The Baffler, a fascinating magazine of cultural critique. Frank's book is one of the first and the best to take on the phenomenon of co-optation--namely, the way in which advertising companies have harnessed dissent to sell products since the 1960s. We can discuss more about Frank and his work in class (he has recently taken to writing about politics in America, an offshoot of his earlier project on advertising). For an excerpt of The Conquest of Cool, click here. How does Frank's work intersect with that of David Foster Wallace?

David Foster Wallace and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

David Foster Wallace's recent death shocked critics and readers alike; since 1987, Foster Wallace had been producing some of the most avant-garde and challenging prose in American fiction. For class, we'll be looking at his non-fiction in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, as well as a few of his short stories from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Foster Wallace is most renowned, however, for his 1079 page magnum opus, Infinite Jest, which was published in 1996. In Infinite Jest and in his earlier novel, The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace pushed at the boundaries of the genre of fiction and challenged readers by introducing them to extended footnotes that threatened to take over the stories he was telling and lengthy, punctuationless sentences that carried the reader into Foster Wallace's own unique system of mental processes and associations.

Foster Wallace's presence in American fiction will be sorely missed. Time magazine named Infinite Jest one of its "All Time 100 Greatest Novels" and critic David Ulin called him "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years." Foster Wallace was also known as a kind and generous teacher, who taught creative writing and English classes at Pomona College in California for a number of years prior to his death.

The One-Drop Rule

For more background on the one-drop rule, discussed in class on Wednesday, check out the following links and post your thoughts. How does this idea of race as immutable affect the discourse of passing? How does it come up/not come up in The Human Stain?

"Who is Black?," the commentary from a PBS special

An article, "The Invention of the One Drop Rule"

Philip Roth and The Human Stain

Philip Roth is one of America's most prolific and successful authors. Many critics have marked him as a likely recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature at some point during the coming years. When the New York Times asked hundreds of the most prominent critics, writers, and editors to pick the best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years, six of Roth's novels made the top spot repeatedly. The essay accompanying the results of this survey stated that "[i]f we had asked for the single best writer of fiction over the past 25 years, [Roth] would have won."

Roth was born in 1933 and grew up near Newark, NJ--much like the protagonists of The Human Stain and many other Roth novels. Roth was recognized as a great writer at a young age, publishing Goodbye, Columbus in 1959 (when he was just 26). After receiving the National Book Award for this volume in 1960, he went on to publish a number of other texts that form the fundament of postwar American literary fiction. From 1969's Portnoy's Complaint to 1979's The Ghost Writer to more recent works, such as American Pastoral (1998), The Plot Against America (2004), and The Human Stain (2000), Roth has managed to write books richly evocative of the era in which his readers live.

The book we'll be reading in class--The Human Stain--is one of Roth's more recent, but it manifests many of the themes that have preoccupied the author since the beginning of his career. The complexities of race in America is a primary subject in the novel, as is the relationship between men and women and the way they negotiate the vagaries of power in their sexual relationships. Roth is also deeply interested in the links between autobiography and writing, as well as those between the family and the individual, in The Human Stain. As you read The Human Stain, think of how its rendering of race and ethnicity compare to that portrayed in Beloved. What picture of contemporary America emerges in Roth's novel? What does it say about race, gender, and the academy--not to mention the links between Jewish and African American identity as symbolic poles in America's self-fashioning?

Slave Narratives

An important intertext for Toni Morrison's Beloved is the slave narrative. In class, we went over the first page of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one of the most celebrated memoirs detaling slavery from the inside in the United States. However, it's equally important to remember that there were a number of former slaves still alive in the United States well into the twentieth century--many of whom told their stories via oral narratives. For some fascinating stories about what it was like to live as a slave in this country, please check out these narratives collected by members of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) during the late 1930s. Keep these stories in mind as we read further in Beloved.

Slavery Timeline

Below you will find a timeline of events relating to the history of slavery. In order to understand Beloved better, it's helpful to get a sense of the historical backdrop in which the novel is taking place.

Slavery Timeline

Courtesy of www.africanaonline.com

1501 African Slaves in the New World Spanish settlers bring slaves from Africa to Santo Domingo (now the capital of the Dominican Republic).

1522 Slave Revolt: the Caribbean Slaves rebel on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which now comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

1562 Britain Joins Slave Trade John Hawkins, the first Briton to take part in the slave trade, makes a huge profit hauling human cargo from Africa to Hispaniola.

1581 Slaves in Florida Spanish residents in St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement in Florida, import African slaves.

1619 Slaves in Virginia Africans brought to Jamestown are the first slaves imported into Britain’s North American colonies. Like indentured servants, they were probably freed after a fixed period of service.

1662 Hereditary Slavery Virginia law decrees that children of black mothers “shall be bond or free according to the condition of the mother.”

1705 Slaves as Property Describing slaves as real estate, Virginia lawmakers allow owners to bequeath their slaves. The same law allowed masters to “kill and destroy” runaways.

1712 Slave Revolt: New York Slaves in New York City kill whites during an uprising, later squelched by the militia. Nineteen rebels are executed.

1739 Slave Revolt: South Carolina Crying “Liberty!” some 75 slaves in South Carolina steal weapons and flee toward freedom in Florida (then under Spanish rule). Crushed by the South Carolina militia, the revolt results in the deaths of 40 blacks and 20 whites.

1775 American Revolution Begins Battles at the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord on April 19 spark the war for American independence from Britain.

1775 Abolitionist Society Anthony Benezet of Philadelphia founds the world’s first abolitionist society. Benjamin Franklin becomes its president in 1787.

1776 Declaration of Independence The Continental Congress asserts “that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States”.

1783 American Revolution Ends Britain and the infant United States sign the Peace of Paris treaty.

1784 Abolition Effort Congress narrowly defeats Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to ban slavery in new territories after 1800.

1790 First United States Census Nearly 700,000 slaves live and toil in a nation of 3.9 million people.

1793 Fugitive Slave Act The United States outlaws any efforts to impede the capture of runaway slaves.

1794 Cotton Gin Eli Whitney patents his device for pulling seeds from cotton. The invention turns cotton into the cash crop of the American South—and creates a huge demand for slave labor.

1808 United States Bans Slave Trade Importing African slaves is outlawed, but smuggling continues.

1820 Missouri Compromise Missouri is admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state. Slavery is forbidden in any subsequent territories north of latitude 36°30´.

1822 Slave Revolt: South Carolina Freed slave Denmark Vesey attempts a rebellion in Charleston. Thirty-five participants in the ill-fated uprising are hanged.

1831 Slave Revolt: Virginia Slave preacher Nat Turner leads a two-day uprising against whites, killing about 60. Militiamen crush the revolt then spend two months searching for Turner, who is eventually caught and hanged. Enraged Southerners impose harsher restrictions on their slaves.

1835 Censorship Southern states expel abolitionists and forbid the mailing of antislavery propaganda.

1846-48 Mexican-American War Defeated, Mexico yields an enormous amount of territory to the United States. Americans then wrestle with a controversial topic: Is slavery permitted in the new lands?

1847 Frederick Douglass’s Newspaper Escaped slave Frederick Douglass begins publishing the North Star in Rochester, New York.

1849 Harriet Tubman Escapes After fleeing slavery, Tubman returns south at least 15 times to help rescue several hundred others.

1850 Compromise of 1850 In exchange for California’s entering the Union as a free state, northern congressmen accept a harsher Fugitive Slave Act.

1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin Published Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about the horrors of slavery sells 300,000 copies within a year of publication.

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act Setting aside the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Congress allows these two new territories to choose whether to allow slavery. Violent clashes erupt.

1857 Dred Scott Decision The United States Supreme Court decides, seven to two, that blacks can never be citizens and that Congress has no authority to outlaw slavery in any territory.

1860 Abraham Lincoln Elected Abraham Lincoln of Illinois becomes the first Republican to win the United States Presidency.

1860 Southern Secession South Carolina secedes in December. More states follow the next year.

1861-65 United States Civil War Four years of brutal conflict claim 623,000 lives.

1863 Emancipation Proclamation President Abraham Lincoln decrees that all slaves in Rebel territory are free on January 1, 1863.

1865 Slavery Abolished The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlaws slavery.