Fantasy and/or Nostalgia
Alright, here's the thing: I have this paper to write, somewhere around 15-20 pages. This is a writing sample for Graduate Programs. It's important that this sample be at least tangiential to my intended area of study. I want to study contemporary lit, but I haven't taken any such classes because there were none such offered at Gonzaga [shakes fist] <--there will be a lot of that.
This paper also has to be very good, because among the other things Gonzaga never offered was a class in Literary Theory and Criticism, which was once obscure but is now, I'm told, absolutely essential. So I don't have that, I'll have to matriculate and take it later, whatever. This paper needs to pop because you could steer a cruise ship through the gaping holes in my resume.
I have to prove, essentially, that I while I lack experience, I have some form of potential.
That said, I need your help.
I've decided to write this paper on Michael Chabon, author of Wonderboys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier an Clay, Summerland, The Final Solution and several collections of short stories. I'm going to write on his use of nostalgia and the fantastic--the interplay thereof, whatever--to weave plausible though outlandish worlds.
If you've read Chabon, I'd like your thoughts. If you haven't read Chabon, you should, immediately. Check that, read him after you help me. Help me by identifying things writen by people I can quote on the topics of nostalgia, either as mental construct or as literary device; Fantasy, again as mental construct or as literary device; and/or how the two relate to each other. It can be anything from psychoanalysis to a study of Aesop's fables, if you think it's relevant, send 'er my way.
Chabon is a fantastically florid and engaging writer, and I have a stack of reviews and criticism that make a point of noting this in relation to his nostalgia for his subjects, and his subjects' nostalgia for their world and their recollections. People also note the aspects of the fantastic within his work, whether it's the straight up fantasy of Summerland, the humbolt-haze and genderbending of Wonderboys, or Kavalier and Clay's comic superheros and the Golem of Prague.
But no one has looked at the two in relation to each other informing his work as a whole.
15 pages, on that. Let's get to work. And if you do a good job, I'll write a review of Blade Trinity. Incentive.
Thanks
posted by Luke @ 12:29 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Okay, I'm just shooting from the hip here, but I have a few things. First, I should mention that I've only read Kavalier and Clay. More specifically, I've only read the first 400 or so pages (Just so we're all on the same page here, if anything revelatory from the last 250 pages of that book leaks its way into these comments, I'm going to be cracking open heads with bricks.). My schedule has been tight, so I've working on the book for a couple months (months!) now, but have yet to complete it. With any luck, I'll finish it next week after finals so I don't have to bring it to Spokane.
Fantasy, again as mental construct or as literary device; and/or how the two relate to each other.I'm not sure if this exactly fits, but what jumped out at me when I read your prompt was the scene where the Saboteur tries to kill Joe (doing his magic act as the Amazing Kavalieri) with the trident pipe bomb.
When the story for the Escapist and Luna Moth are given in the book, they're written as separate chapters (as in, separate from rest the story) -- injected between chapters in the main story. The writing in these chapters is different than the writing in the rest of the book in a number of different ways (tone, voice, etc). Even though these chapters are not written comic book-style and they (the chapters) are definitely not meant to be dialogue exchanges (as in, a pitch from Sammy to someone else), I'm pretty sure that they're supposed to be Sammy's writing. In any case, the changes in tone jump out at the reader and say, this is different. This is, in some way, fantastic. In any case, the only other place that the same change in writing is affected is the chapter where the Saboteur tries to take Joe out. You'll have to look at the book again to get exactly what I mean. I don't really know if Chabon was trying to get at something larger (I suspect, rather, that it was just an interesting way to write the chapter), but it's something worth looking at.
As far as nostalgia goes, the whole book seems to be an attempt to evoke nostalgia for the golden age of comics, but, specifically, there are the short chapters that are written like a history book (or, more precisely, like the type of tome a comics enthusiast would read to remember the golden age or even learn about it for the first time) where Chabon writes about things as though he is writing about a shared cultural experience. That is, he, through language and iconography, forces a feeling of nostalgia on you, even though the events are entirely a construct of his imagination.
For instance, the use of real life personages (Orson Wells, Dali, etc) gives the story a little bit more historical pull. The average person doesn't know much about these people (and the book doesn't offer much new information), but what Chabon tells us sounds about right, and puts our mind in the right timeframe. Christ, I practically imagine the book in black and white when I read it just because of the (false) context the writing feeds my brain.
Another thing that is, perhaps, more subtle, is how Chabon uses reverence in his characters to evoke nostalgia. For example, the way the characters think about the Empire State building -- it's newfangled-ness, it's tallest building-ness -- and, to a lesser extent, the fair (was it a World's fair? I don't remember). At some point, people were awed by big-ass buildings and they thought that the fair was something really special. The fact that Kavalier and Clay revolves around the Empire State Building (Empire city, Empire comics, eventually moving the offices to the Empire State Building, and so on) just serves to provide context for that awe and make us realize that the levels of wonder and reverence he describes would correspond to, say, the late thirties and early fourties (this doesn't happen with laser-guided accuracy, either. Those feelings get you in the timeframe ballpark, setting the feeling more than anything else, and then real life historical events provide a tight window for the story). He piggy-backs on our sense of nostalgia for the actual past to create a sense of nostalgia for his fictional past.
Anyway, those are my first impressions. Let us know what else you're thinking about.
--Mike Sheffler
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable cone of ignorance
OK, there's this idea brewing in my head that, rather than try to flesh it out and articulate it, I'll spew the elements and let you have at it. I don't even know if I'm contextually in the ballpark here, this is not my field by any stretch of the imagination. (get it?)
Alright, my simple observation is that fantasy is a literary construct of "reality", a construct that pushes or even exceeds the bounds of physical reality that we conceivably might experience in our every day lives. Especially in comic-book sense. What struck me is that "nostalgia" is the same. It's our later construct of earlier reality. Both contain elements and allusions to real things, events, people, etc, but both are in any case, malformed versions of reality. They both might dismiss one reality and lean on an element that is/was never actually true in the subject setting. Nostalgia, as a mental happenstance, is simply more unintentional in this regard.
As a literary device, to nest one within the other could create whole sets of nearly believable absurdities that open the doors for questioning views, values, assumptions,,,,,
Alright, gobbledygook, it's all yours now.
I guess I'd second Don's sentiment of nostalgia being the fantasy of the past. Some insight from an unlikely source: Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. That's from 'Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen.' The advice part isn't so important as the idea of 'fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.' Of course we try to minimize the impact of all the negative shit on our memories. But, usually, the creation of nostalgia is sort of an organic process. What's interesting about Chabon is the manner in which he is able to quickly synthesize this process.
--Mike Sheffler
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable cone of ignorance
That's all too high brow for me. I'm just a lowly High School English teacher, but I have read Kavalier and Clay. My current thing is alter egos and you can check out my blog at cathykooy.typepad.com--the home of alter ego therapy. But I was thinking that the two main characters are alter egos for each other. See how you can spin that. They each want to be what the other is. A fantasy.
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