ENGL219 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Conceptual Blending, Warp Drive, Gossip Columnist
23 Aug 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ENGL219
• Is Egan evoking or parodying concerns about the future of literature? Perhaps commenting on
the public hysteria of technology and dissolution of literature to other media forms
• “The internet is merely the latest of the competitors that print culture has been pitted against
since the late 19th C. Threats to the book’s presumed dominion over the hearts and minds
of Americans have arisen at every technological turn — or so the rampant public discourse
of print’s obsolescence have led one to believe” — Katherine Fitzgerald
• Offering new ways of telling a story that could previously not be comprehended
❖ Novel or Short Story Collection?
• “If I had been telling myself I was writing a novel I couldn’t have done the damn thing. I would
have had to just stop because I knew this did not meet even my own definitions of what a novel
is, in terms of providing some kind of centrality. I wanted to avoid centrality. I wanted polyphony.
I wanted a lateral feeling, not a forward feel in. My ground rules were: every piece has to be very
different from a different POV. I actually tried to break that rule later; if you make a rule then you
also should break it!” — Egan
• Protagonist could be Sasha — but we only receive 1 chapter
• Consider the ways in which we get to know Sasha — through thoughts of others
• Challenges what a novel should be — goes back and forward in time
• Refuses to act on meaning of assumptions of what a novel should be
• Do you read it as a novel or connected series of short stories? What are the implications of this?
• Is it satisfying as a novel?
• The reader has to fill in the gaps to make sense of the novel.
• Each chapter is different in terms of both focaliser and style: mash up of forms of genres
• Stories move back and forth in time
• What unites these stories? — characters are connected, what else? What themes and ideas link
these novels?
❖ Plot vs Characterisation
• “By forgo in omniscient, all-explaining narration, Egan seems to get a deeper interiority. Any by
rapidly shifting scene and voice… she saves herself, and hr reader, the tedious tasks of scene-
setting and plot advancement… able to reveal the death by a thousand cuts that time inflicts
on her characters”
- Sees novel not so much concerned with plot, but the characterisation
- Sets up a plot vs characterisation idea
- By choosing to forgo the ply on plot, can focus on characterisation
- Looking at what is there as opposed to what isn’t there (vice versa)
❖ Conventional Narratives
• Each chapter is quite conventionally written e.g. regular 3rd person narration, or 1st person.
Also uses 2nd person narration.
• Other chapters function as parodies (of celebrity journalism for instance, as in “Forty-Minute
Lunch”), or as recognisable pieces of genre writing (dystopia, as in ‘Pure Language’).
• Genre blending occurs at level of structure not character/style
• Experimentation on the level of structure rather than style?
• Lies in its organisation, not how it is written in and of itself
• What is more conventional about the novel?
!19 of !41
Document Summary
Novel or short story collection: if i had been telling myself i was writing a novel i couldn"t have done the damn thing. I would have had to just stop because i knew this did not meet even my own definitions of what a novel is, in terms of providing some kind of centrality. I wanted a lateral feeling, not a forward feel in. My ground rules were: every piece has to be very different from a different pov. Plot vs characterisation: by forgo in omniscient, all-explaining narration, egan seems to get a deeper interiority. Any by rapidly shifting scene and voice she saves herself, and hr reader, the tedious tasks of scene- setting and plot advancement able to reveal the death by a thousand cuts that time inflicts on her characters . Sees novel not so much concerned with plot, but the characterisation. Sets up a plot vs characterisation idea.
