DOCSLIB.ORG

Ghost Novels: Haunting As Form in the Works of Toni Morrison

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Ghost Novels: Haunting As Form in the Works of Toni Morrison GHOST NOVELS: HAUNTING AS FORM IN THE WORKS OF TONI MORRISON, DON DELILLO, MICHAEL ONDAATJE, AND J.M. COETZEE By JAEEUN YOO A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in English Written under the direction of Marianne DeKoven and approved by ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2009 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Ghost Novels: Haunting as Form in the Works of Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje, and J. M. Coetzee by JAEEUN YOO Dissertation Director: Marianne DeKoven This dissertation examines formal innovations in contemporary novels that revise the way reading happens. Reading recent works by Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje and J.M. Coetzee, I show how these innovative novelists utilize the very impossibility of properly representing others as a narrative device. I argue that the novelists design their works in such a way that reading them becomes an encounter with ghosts that confront the reader. My introductory chapter discusses the use of ghost figures in post-structuralist thought and traces their usefulness back to the Enlightenment. In the first part of the dissertation, I analyze two American novels, Love and The Body Artist to consider the influence of postmodern spectrality that emerges from reproduction of images. The phantom narrator of Love discloses and overthrows the distorted representation of African American women by inviting the reader to witness the ―murder‖ of the Father‘s spirit. Chapter Three proposes that The Body Artist performs a haunting that is marked with the ghostly traces of tele-technologies. By incarnating the specter that comes out of the internet ii on the body of the protagonist, DeLillo attempts to instill in his novel the subversive potential of what escapes visual representation: the body and the spirit. In the second part of my dissertation, I turn to postcolonial fictions to investigate how similar narrative strategies transform the representation of none-western others. My reading of Anil’s Ghost reveal that its convoluted narrative functions like the spiritual ritual it depicts—by suggesting alternative ways to become perceptive to others, it forces the reader to experience the void and grief the disappeared leave behind. In my final chapter I argue that an authorial ghost in Slow Man highlights fissures in the text, including the individual histories of Australian immigrants. Through my analysis of these texts, I demonstrate how these writers seek to return what has been forgotten or dismissed to disturb the reader‘s comfortable and safe reading space with the ―real‖ power of ghosts. Their ghosts break out of the world of phantoms, paradoxically representing the corporeality of others and traversing the border between the book and the reader. iii Acknowledgement Early versions of the chapters in this dissertation were presented at University of Karlstad, the Northeast Modern Language Association conference, and the American Comparative Literature Association conference. I would like to thank my hosts and the audiences on all of those occasions. Parts of the first and the second have appeared in other forms: ―"The Site of Murder: Textual Space and Ghost Narrator in Toni Morrison‘s Love" in Space, Haunting, Discourse ed. Maria Holmgren Troy, Elisabeth Wennö (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), and "A Ghost Book Haunting Itself: Performing Return in The Body Artist" in Perforations 29 (2007). I like to thank my committee members, Richard Dienst, John McClure and Louise Barnett, for their discerning comments, insightful questions, and emotional support. I could not have written this dissertation if it were not for Marianne DeKoven, who have led me intellectually and emotionally from its inception to its completion. I am deeply grateful to her. My warm thanks to my friends and colleagues for their scholarly help and friendly support during various stages of writing this dissertation: Sanja Bahun, Heather Robinson, Malgi Choi, Ji-yeon Lee, Leslie Dovale, Soo Yeon Lee, Sungyeon Park, and Jung-hyun Choi. I thank my husband, Eun-Gu Baik, for his love, trust, and encouragement. He fills my work and life with meaning and hope. I should also like to thank my parents for their inexhaustible love, patience and prayer that have sustained me through all these years. Finally, God, as imperfect as it might be, I dedicate this work to You. I owe everything to You. “Ego sum, nolite timere” iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgement iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1 29 Chapter 2 96 Chapter 3 133 Chapter 4 133 Bibliography 169 Curriculum Vita 182 v 1 Introduction If it—learning to live—remains to be done, it can happen only between life and death. Neither in life nor in death alone. What happens between two, and between all the ―two‘s‖ one likes, such as between life and death, can only maintain itself with some ghost, can only talk with or about some ghost. (Specters of Marx xvii) Ghosts of the Enlightenment In the climax scene of the horror movie The Ring, a cursed video tape plays itself. On a TV screen that turns on by itself, a female ghost crawls out of an old well, and continues to come toward the camera until it comes out of the screen and approaches its viewers1. The next day, people who watched the tape are found dead. The horror effect of the movie The Ring is a classic example of the uncanny; the border between what is real and what is spectral is so violently disturbed that the spectator, encountering the ghost through the viewer‘s eyes, experiences the simulacra, the ghostly images on the TV screen, as ―real.‖ At yet at the same time, it bears a peculiarly postmodern twist; its female ghost emerges from and haunts an electronic zone consisted of videotapes and TV screens, and the ghost‘s demand is not justice, nor remembrance, but endless reproduction of the videotapes. Thus the movie The Ring simultaneously inherits and deforms the legacy of the Enlightenment. While the dichotomy of the unreal and the real—‗the unreal‘ is the images on the screen and ‗the real‘ refers to everything outside the screen—is the legacy of the Enlightenment, the female ghost that crawls out of a TV screen with real killing power 1 Originally from a Japanese novel, Ringu, the scene has held the popular imagination so strongly that it resulted in three variations of the movie (Japan, 1998, Korea, 1999, Hollywood, 2002), two serial movies, and numerous parodies on both sides of the globe. 2 signifies a desire to resist and revise it. The same contradictory impulse conditions the structures of the novels that I discuss in my dissertation. As is well known, Freud defines the ―uncanny‖ as a feeling of ‗dread and creeping horror‘ that arises when ‗infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when the primitive beliefs which have been surmounted is seen once more to be confirmed (245).‖ Employing this concept as a historical paradigm, Terry Castle argues that the uncanny was ―invented‖ by the Enlightenment: The very psychic and cultural transformations that led to the subsequent glorification of the period as an age of reason or enlightenment—the aggressively rationalist imperatives of the epoch—also produced, like a kind of toxic side effect, a new human experience of strangeness, anxiety, bafflement, and intellectual impasse (Castle 8). Modern systems of reasoning, generated in the Enlightenment period, inevitably create an unseen realm beyond knowledge. In metaphorical terms, the ―light‖ of the Enlightenment creates ―darkness‖ by banishing what cannot be rationalized, drawing a clear boundary between the ‗real‘ and the ‗unreal.‘ Inexplicable phenomena are internalized as mental problems, and the unreal gets ―repressed,‖ setting off uncanny returns in the future. It is not a coincidence, then, that Freud‘s description of the uncanny in ―The Uncanny‖ resembles that of a phantom, emerging out of unconscious darkness. In Freud‘s schematization, an archaic fantasy or fear, long ago exiled to the unconscious, nonetheless ‗returns to view‘ in a distorted and disguised form; the uncanny is a psychoanalytic term for the return of the ghosts that are evicted to a realm that exceeds theorization. The essay ―The Uncanny‖ displays a wide variety of uncanny figures, all of which intrude on 3 ordinary life, making what was hidden visible. They are uncanny precisely because they subvert the distinction between the real and the unreal, and for the same reason, they are read as symptoms of the fragmented modern subjectivity. Yet the essay ―The Uncanny‖ notoriously fails to elicit an unambiguous definition of the uncanny. According to Hèlene Cixous, Freud‘s mistake in the essay lies in his attempt to substitute the uncanny with the fear of castration in his effort to analyze what is not analyzable by definition. Consequently, Freud reduces the uncanny into a set of controllable referents that are not necessarily relevant. This replacement results in the problematic uncertainty of the essay ―The Uncanny‖ itself (546). Interestingly, Cixous traces fictional devices in ―The Uncanny‖ as the essay attempts to represent the uncanny. In other words, the essay ―The Uncanny‖ itself almost reads like a parable of the Enlightenment. Consequently, Freudian psychoanalysis provides insightful tools in illuminating the fragmentizing impact of the Enlightenment uncanny on human mind. In the following chapters, I first focus on analyzing the characters‘ traumatized psyche in psychoanalytic terms. In the process, it is often discovered that the authors encourage their readers to identify with the troubled selves of the characters in order to let them see that they share the same prejudice or trauma that possess the characters.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Catalogue Pilot Film & Television Productions Ltd
    productions 2020 Catalogue Pilot Film & Television Productions Ltd. is a leading international television production company with an outstanding reputation for producing and distributing innovative factual entertainment, history and travel led programmes. The company was set up by Ian Cross in 1988; and it is now one of the longest established independent production companies under continuous ownership in the United Kingdom. Pilot has produced over 500 hours of multi-genre programming covering subjects as diverse as history, food and sport. Its award winning Globe Trekker series, broadcast in over 20 countries, has a global audience of over 20 million. Pilot Productions has offices in London and Los Angeles. CONTENTS Mission Statement 3 In Production 4 New 6 Tough Series 8 Travelling in the 1970’s 10 Specials 11 Empire Builders 12 Ottomans vs Christians 14 History Specials 18 Historic Walks 20 Metropolis 21 Adventure Golf 22 Great Railway Journeys of Europe 23 The Story Of... Food 24 Bazaar 26 Globe Trekker Seasons 1-5 28 Globe Trekker Seasons 6-11 30 Globe Trekker Seasons 12-17 32 Globe Trekker Specials 34 Globe Trekker Around The World 36 Pilot Globe Guides 38 Destination Guides 40 Other Programmes 41 Short Form Content 42 DVDs and music CDs 44 Study Guides 48 Digital 50 Books 51 Contacts 52 Presenters 53 2 PILOT PRODUCTIONS 2020 MISSION STATEMENT Pilot Productions seeks to inspire and educate its audience by creating powerful television programming. We take pride in respecting and promoting social, environmental and personal change, whilst encouraging others to travel and discover the world. Pilot’s programmes have won more than 50 international awards, including six American Cable Ace awards.
    [Show full text]
  • James Baldwin As a Writer of Short Fiction: an Evaluation
    JAMES BALDWIN AS A WRITER OF SHORT FICTION: AN EVALUATION dayton G. Holloway A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1975 618208 ii Abstract Well known as a brilliant essayist and gifted novelist, James Baldwin has received little critical attention as short story writer. This dissertation analyzes his short fiction, concentrating on character, theme and technique, with some attention to biographical parallels. The first three chapters establish a background for the analysis and criticism sections. Chapter 1 provides a biographi­ cal sketch and places each story in relation to Baldwin's novels, plays and essays. Chapter 2 summarizes the author's theory of fiction and presents his image of the creative writer. Chapter 3 surveys critical opinions to determine Baldwin's reputation as an artist. The survey concludes that the author is a superior essayist, but is uneven as a creator of imaginative literature. Critics, in general, have not judged Baldwin's fiction by his own aesthetic criteria. The next three chapters provide a close thematic analysis of Baldwin's short stories. Chapter 4 discusses "The Rockpile," "The Outing," "Roy's Wound," and "The Death of the Prophet," a Bi 1 dungsroman about the tension and ambivalence between a black minister-father and his sons. In contrast, Chapter 5 treats the theme of affection between white fathers and sons and their ambivalence toward social outcasts—the white homosexual and black demonstrator—in "The Man Child" and "Going to Meet the Man." Chapter 6 explores the theme of escape from the black community and the conseauences of estrangement and identity crises in "Previous Condition," "Sonny's Blues," "Come Out the Wilderness" and "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon." The last chapter attempts to apply Baldwin's aesthetic principles to his short fiction.
    [Show full text]
  • Apocalypse, Time, and Schematic Imagination in Don Delillo's the Body Artist
    Angles New Perspectives on the Anglophone World 4 | 2017 Unstable States, Mutable Conditions Mutability as Counter-Plot: Apocalypse, Time, and Schematic Imagination in Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist Richard Anker Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/1474 DOI: 10.4000/angles.1474 ISSN: 2274-2042 Publisher Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur Electronic reference Richard Anker, « Mutability as Counter-Plot: Apocalypse, Time, and Schematic Imagination in Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist », Angles [Online], 4 | 2017, Online since 01 April 2017, connection on 02 August 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/angles/1474 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ angles.1474 This text was automatically generated on 2 August 2020. Angles. New Perspectives on the Anglophone World is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Mutability as Counter-Plot: Apocalypse, Time, and Schematic Imagination in Do... 1 Mutability as Counter-Plot: Apocalypse, Time, and Schematic Imagination in Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist Richard Anker To name mutability as a principle of order is to come as close as possible to naming the authentic temporal consciousness of the self. Paul de Man, “Time and History in Wordsworth” (94) 1 While the figure of apocalypse comes up frequently in commentaries of Don DeLillo’s fiction, rarely has it been contextualized from the perspective of the modern reception of romantic literature and the critical idiom that this reception has established.
    [Show full text]
  • Cahiers-Papers 53-1
    The Giller Prize (1994–2004) and Scotiabank Giller Prize (2005–2014): A Bibliography Andrew David Irvine* For the price of a meal in this town you can buy all the books. Eat at home and buy the books. Jack Rabinovitch1 Founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch, the Giller Prize was established to honour Rabinovitch’s late wife, the journalist Doris Giller, who had died from cancer a year earlier.2 Since its inception, the prize has served to recognize excellence in Canadian English-language fiction, including both novels and short stories. Initially the award was endowed to provide an annual cash prize of $25,000.3 In 2005, the Giller Prize partnered with Scotiabank to create the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Under the new arrangement, the annual purse doubled in size to $50,000, with $40,000 going to the winner and $2,500 going to each of four additional finalists.4 Beginning in 2008, $50,000 was given to the winner and $5,000 * Andrew Irvine holds the position of Professor and Head of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Errata may be sent to the author at [email protected]. 1 Quoted in Deborah Dundas, “Giller Prize shortlist ‘so good,’ it expands to six,” 6 October 2014, accessed 17 September 2015, www.thestar.com/entertainment/ books/2014/10/06/giller_prize_2014_shortlist_announced.html. 2 “The Giller Prize Story: An Oral History: Part One,” 8 October 2013, accessed 11 November 2014, www.quillandquire.com/awards/2013/10/08/the-giller- prize-story-an-oral-history-part-one; cf.
    [Show full text]
  • The Bounds of Narrative in Don Delillo's Underworld
    humanities Article The Bounds of Narrative in Don DeLillo’s Underworld: Action and the Ecology of Mimêsis Andrew Bowie Hagan Independent Scholar, Atlanta, GA 30309, USA; [email protected] Abstract: The interrelationship of natural and cultural history in Don DeLillo’s Underworld presents an ecology of mimesis. If, as Timothy Morton argues, ecological thought can be understood as a “mesh of interconnection,” DeLillo’s novel studies the interpretation of connection. Underworld situates its action in the Cold War era. DeLillo’s formal techniques examine the tropes of paranoia, containment, excess, and waste peculiar to the history of the Cold War. Parataxis and free-indirect discourse emphasize the contexts of reference in the novel, illustrating how hermeneutics informs the significance of boundaries. DeLillo’s use of parataxis exemplifies the conditions that propose and limit metaphor’s reference to reality, conditions that offer the terms for meaningful action. I utilize Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to demonstrate how Underworld situates the reference to reality in its temporal and narrative condition. The historical situation of the novel’s narrative structure allows DeLillo to interrogate the role of discourse in producing and interpreting connection. Underworld offers layers of significance; the reader’s engagement with the novel’s discourse reaffirms the conditions of a meaningful relationship with reality in the pertinence of a metaphor. Keywords: contemporary fiction; ecocriticism; temporality; reference; metaphor; parataxis; epic; Citation: Hagan, Andrew Bowie. novel; immanence 2021. The Bounds of Narrative in Don DeLillo’s Underworld: Action and the Ecology of Mimêsis. Humanities 10: 40. https://doi.org/10.3390/ 1. Introduction h10010040 Figurative conditions present an ecology in Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel, Underworld.A work of fiction, the novel is grounded in the history and historiography of the Cold War Received: 1 January 2021 era.
    [Show full text]
  • The Postmodern Sacred Course Information
    SUNY Cortland English Department ENG 529: The Postmodern Sacred Course Information: Professor Information: 3 Credit Hours Dr. Marni Gauthier Spring 2011 Phone: 753-2076 Office: Old Main 114E Office Hours: T 1:15-3, R 8:30-9:45 Tues 4:20-6:50 p.m. & by appointment E-mail: through our myRedDragon classroom Required Texts: ¥ Don DeLillo, “The Angel Esmeralda” (1994) ¥ Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988) ¥ Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998) ¥ Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (1992) ¥ *Films: Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut (1993); Contact (1997); The Matrix (1999); The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001): (all on 2-hr reserve in the Library) *NB: Like the written texts, the films are required texts for this course. You are responsible for viewing each film no more than one week prior to our class discussion of it--even if you have previously seen it. This is because each film needs to be fresh in your mind as we refer to it in class--juxtaposing and close reading specific scenes; additionally, you will have assigned papers on the films. If there is interest and/or need, I will arrange on-campus screenings of the films on evenings prior to our class discussions of them; we will discuss this further in class. ¥ Required secondary readings (on e-Reserve at Memorial Library): where citation is absent in the Course Schedule (below), it is listed on the Sign-up Sheet for Oral Presentations. Course Description, Goals and Objectives: The (re)emergence of the sacred in a secular, contemporary world has been variously dubbed the “postmodern sublime”; the “postsecular”; the “postmodern sacred.” This course will map this cultural terrain by exploring several new forms of religiously inflected seeing and being.
    [Show full text]
  • Natural Selection and Coalescent Theory
    Natural Selection and Coalescent Theory John Wakeley Harvard University INTRODUCTION The story of population genetics begins with the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and the tension which followed concerning the nature of inheritance. Today, workers in this field aim to understand the forces that produce and maintain genetic variation within and between species. For this we use the most direct kind of genetic data: DNA sequences, even entire genomes. Our “Great Obsession” with explaining genetic variation (Gillespie, 2004a) can be traced back to Darwin’s recognition that natural selection can occur only if individuals of a species vary, and this variation is heritable. Darwin might have been surprised that the importance of natural selection in shaping variation at the molecular level would be de-emphasized, beginning in the late 1960s, by scientists who readily accepted the fact and importance of his theory (Kimura, 1983). The motivation behind this chapter is the possible demise of this Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, which a growing number of population geneticists feel must follow recent observations of genetic variation within and between species. One hundred fifty years after the publication of the Origin, we are struggling to fully incorporate natural selection into the modern, genealogical models of population genetics. The main goal of this chapter is to present the mathematical models that have been used to describe the effects of positive selective sweeps on genetic variation, as mediated by gene genealogies, or coalescent trees. Background material, comprised of population genetic theory and simulation results, is provided in order to facilitate an understanding of these models.
    [Show full text]
  • Addition to Summer Letter
    May 2020 Dear Student, You are enrolled in Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition for the coming school year. Bowling Green High School has offered this course since 1983. I thought that I would tell you a little bit about the course and what will be expected of you. Please share this letter with your parents or guardians. A.P. Literature and Composition is a year-long class that is taught on a college freshman level. This means that we will read college level texts—often from college anthologies—and we will deal with other materials generally taught in college. You should be advised that some of these texts are sophisticated and contain mature themes and/or advanced levels of difficulty. In this class we will concentrate on refining reading, writing, and critical analysis skills, as well as personal reactions to literature. A.P. Literature is not a survey course or a history of literature course so instead of studying English and world literature chronologically, we will be studying a mix of classic and contemporary pieces of fiction from all eras and from diverse cultures. This gives us an opportunity to develop more than a superficial understanding of literary works and their ideas. Writing is at the heart of this A.P. course, so you will write often in journals, in both personal and researched essays, and in creative responses. You will need to revise your writing. I have found that even good students—like you—need to refine, mature, and improve their writing skills. You will have to work diligently at revising major essays.
    [Show full text]
  • Postwar Media Manifestations and Don Delillo Joshua Adam Boldt Eastern Kentucky University
    Eastern Kentucky University Encompass Online Theses and Dissertations Student Scholarship 2011 Postwar Media Manifestations and Don DeLillo Joshua Adam Boldt Eastern Kentucky University Follow this and additional works at: https://encompass.eku.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Boldt, Joshua Adam, "Postwar Media Manifestations and Don DeLillo" (2011). Online Theses and Dissertations. 09. https://encompass.eku.edu/etd/09 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at Encompass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Online Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Encompass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Postwar Media Manifestations and Don DeLillo By Joshua Boldt Master of Arts Eastern Kentucky University Richmond, Kentucky 2011 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Eastern Kentucky University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May, 2011 Copyright © Joshua Boldt 2011 All rights reserved ii Table of Contents Introduction: The Hyperreal, Hypercommodified American Identity 1 Chapter One: Postwar Advertising, Mass Consumption, and the 14 Construction of the Consumer Identity Chapter Two: News Media and American Complicity 34 Chapter Three: The Art of the Copy: Mechanical Reproductions and 50 Media Simulations Works Cited 68 iii Introduction: The Hyperreal, Hypercommodified American Identity This study examines the relationship between American media, advertising, and the construction of a postwar American identity. American media manifests itself in several different forms, all of which impact the consciousness of the American people, and the postwar rise to power of the advertising industry helped to mold identity in ways that are often not even recognized.
    [Show full text]
  • Harpercollins Books for the First-Year Student
    S t u d e n t Featured Titles • American History and Society • Food, Health, and the Environment • World Issues • Memoir/World Views • Memoir/ American Voices • World Fiction • Fiction • Classic Fiction • Religion • Orientation Resources • Inspiration/Self-Help • Study Resources www.HarperAcademic.com Index View Print Exit Books for t H e f i r s t - Y e A r s t u d e n t • • 1 FEATURED TITLES The Boy Who Harnessed A Pearl In the Storm the Wind How i found My Heart in tHe Middle of tHe Ocean Creating Currents of eleCtriCity and Hope tori Murden McClure William kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer During June 1998, Tori Murden McClure set out to William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, Africa, a row across the Atlantic Ocean by herself in a twenty- country plagued by AIDS and poverty. When, in three-foot plywood boat with no motor or sail. 2002, Malawi experienced their worst famine in 50 Within days she lost all communication with shore, years, fourteen-year-old William was forced to drop ultimately losing updates on the location of the Gulf out of school because his family could not afford the Stream and on the weather. In deep solitude and $80-a-year-tuition. However, he continued to think, perilous conditions, she was nonetheless learn, and dream. Armed with curiosity, determined to prove what one person with a mission determination, and a few old science textbooks he could do. When she was finally brought to her knees discovered in a nearby library, he embarked on a by a series of violent storms that nearly killed her, daring plan to build a windmill that could bring his she had to signal for help and go home in what felt family the electricity only two percent of Malawians like complete disgrace.
    [Show full text]
  • The Drink Tank Sixth Annual Giant Sized [email protected]: James Bacon & Chris Garcia
    The Drink Tank Sixth Annual Giant Sized Annual [email protected] Editors: James Bacon & Chris Garcia A Noise from the Wind Stephen Baxter had got me through the what he’ll be doing. I first heard of Stephen Baxter from Jay night. So, this is the least Giant Giant Sized Crasdan. It was a night like any other, sitting in I remember reading Ring that next Annual of The Drink Tank, but still, I love it! a room with a mostly naked former ballerina afternoon when I should have been at class. I Dedicated to Mr. Stephen Baxter. It won’t cover who was in the middle of what was probably finished it in less than 24 hours and it was such everything, but it’s a look at Baxter’s oevre and her fifth overdose in as many months. This was a blast. I wasn’t the big fan at that moment, the effect he’s had on his readers. I want to what we were dealing with on a daily basis back though I loved the novel. I had to reread it, thank Claire Brialey, M Crasdan, Jay Crasdan, then. SaBean had been at it again, and this time, and then grabbed a copy of Anti-Ice a couple Liam Proven, James Bacon, Rick and Elsa for it was up to me and Jay to clean up the mess. of days later. Perhaps difficult times made Ring everything! I had a blast with this one! Luckily, we were practiced by this point. Bottles into an excellent escape from the moment, and of water, damp washcloths, the 9 and the first something like a month later I got into it again, 1 dialed just in case things took a turn for the and then it hit.
    [Show full text]
  • “On Being a Woman Writer”: Atwood's Canadian and Feminist Contexts
    “On Being a Woman Writer”: Atwood’s Canadian and Feminist Contexts Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson When you begin to write you’re in love with the language, the act of cre- ation, with yourself partly; but as you go on, the writing—if you follow it—will take you places you never intended to go and show you things you would never otherwise have seen. I began as a profoundly apolitical writer, but then I began to do what all novelists and some poets do: I began to describe the world around me. (Atwood, Second Words 15) Margaret Atwood began her writing career at a time when Canadian literature did not have a clearly established canon or identity. In fact, she has been credited with helping to “invent” Canadian literature as a critical concept, both because she herself is a proli¿c poet, novelist and short story writer, but also because she has published books of literary and cultural criticism throughout her long career. As she noted in the early 1970s, “Until recently, reading Canadian literature has been for me and for everyone else who did it a personal interest, since it was not taught, required or even mentioned (except with derision) in the public sphere” (Survival 13). That attitude has clearly changed, not only be- cause of Atwood’s own position as a very important cultural icon, but also because of the preeminence of contemporary Canadian writers on the world literary stage. Atwood’s contemporaries include Alice Mun- ro, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, and Marian Engel, among oth- ers; Joan Barfoot and Michael Ondaatje are only a few years younger than she is.
    [Show full text]