AS AM 158 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Metafiction, Typewriter, Adrian Tomine
As Am 158
5/22/18
Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice by
Nam Le
• Opening page (writing, fathers) → Fathers and Sons → On
writer's block → Ethnic Literature → Father’s story → Father
reads → Burns. Why?
• Metafiction: story about story-writing
• Realism- postmodernism
• Opening page: father disrupts son from dream/writing
• Father and Sons: don’t have a good relationship, don’t know one
another- fairly normal (both desire his approval & are also angry
at things they dis/approve of)
• Universalism: write about themes [title] - one option to get rid of
writer’s block (p. 10)
• Nam Le (character & author- not same): writer (going to best
school for writing)
• On writer’s block: not about what to write but how to put it on
paper; typewriter hurts him in the end (only way his paper gets
destroyed); breaking writer’s block by writing ethnic literature
• Ethnic Literature: use one’s experiences to create narrative- one
option to get rid of writer’s block (p. 9)
• Ethnic story: satisfies ethnic literature & father and sons- writes
ethnic & father’s story about My Lai Massacre → dad is upset bc
wasn’t consulted by son to write story; doesn’t want his suffering
to be the theme that will propel his son’s career (trivializes
experience and won’t make him a success forever)
• Father reads and burns: cleansing, father thought the only want
to honor it is to burn it; burns it bc wants to burn ethnic story
• Subverted Elliott’s argument
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