Modes of the Fantastic

Selected Essays from the Twelfth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

Edited by ROBERT A. LATHAM and ROBERT A. COLLINS

Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Number 66 C.W. SULLIVAN III, Series Adviser

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Contents

Prefatory Note xiii Introduction xv /. POLITICS Brian Attebery The Politics (If Any) of Fantasy 1 Joseph Andriano The Masks of Godel: Math and Myth in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow 14 Jesse T. Airaudi Fantasia for Sewercovers and Drainpipes: T. S. Eliot, Abram Tertz, and the Surreal Quest for pravda 21

//. TECHNIQUE Robert A. Latham Collage as Critique and Invention in the Fiction of William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker 29 Pierrette Frickey Louis Aragon: The Fantastic in Collage and Poetry 38 Claire Sponsler William Gibson and the Death of Cyberpunk 47 Nicole Buffard-O'Shea Boris Vian and the Literary Grotesque: The Animated Objects 56 Catherine Merrill Defining the Fantastic Grotesque: Nathanael West's , The Dream Life ofBalso Snell 64 Contents Modes of the Fantastic

III. RACE AND GENDER John Gruesser Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood: Creating an Afrocentric Fantasy for a Black Middle Class Audience 74 Margaret Elphinstone Contemporary Feminist Fantasy in the Scottish Literary Tradition 84 Deborah Wills The Madwoman in the Matrix: Joanna Russ's The Two of Them and the Psychiatric Postmodern 93 Tarya Malkki The Marriage Metaphor in the Works of Ursula K. Le Guin 100 Leonard A. Cheever Fantasies of Sexual Hell: Manuel Puig's Pubis Angelical and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale 110 Lee B. Jennings Woman as Reality-Demarcator in Three Tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann 122

IV. NATURE Edith Borchardt The "Astralis"-poem by Novalis as Creation Myth 129 Juliette Gilman Shades of the Fantastic: The Forest in Jacques Cazotte's "Aventure du pelerin" and George Sand's La Mare au diable 137 David Castriota Fantasy and Metonymy in the Ancient Near Eastern Imagery of the Sacred Tree 143 Modes of the Fantastic Contents

Frederick M. Burelbach Totemic Animals in Some Shakespeare Plays 155 Randall Rhodes Death in Natures Mortes: Vanitas in French Still Lifes of the Seventeenth Century 161

V. RELIGION Brian W. Aldiss One Hump or Two? 173 Bernadette Bosky Charles Williams: Occult Fantasies/Occult Fact 176 Lillian M. Heldreth The Mercy of the Torturer: The Paradox of Compassion in Gene Wolfe's World of the New Sun 186

VI. RE-VISIONS Scott Michaelsen Twain's The American Claimant and the Figure of Frankenstein: A Reading in Rhetorical Hermeneutics 195 Donald E. Palumbo The Politics of Entropy: Revolution vs. Evolution in George Pal's 1960 Film Version of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine 204 Mary Pharr Different Shops of Horrors: From Roger Corman's Cult Classic to Frank Oz's Mainstream Musical 212

Index 221 About the Contributors 230

xi