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So... PoMo Still a Go?

Whoo, funny.

I want to know how your readings are coming. For those of you wishing to read both books, I would suggest planning to finish one by Tuesday and reading the other at your leisure another time. We will discuss both, but it is really important that you have detailed reading journals for your book. This will make writing essays that much faster/easier, and when we begin to incorporate articles and such into one paper, it will be better to glance over notes rather than flipping through pages when going for synthesis.

Regarding Karen's comment about the Circle: If anyone wants to see a movie there then bring back a synopsis for the class and thoughts on the movie itself, I'd be happy to send some extra credit his or her way, provided the comments pertain to what we are discussing in class. I'm just sayin'.

One final thought on the reading journals:
If you are reading Never Let Me Go, look for references to duplication, creation, originality, cloning, and what it means to be human. These are all over the book, and will help you significantly with your essay next week.

If you are reading White Noise, look for references to pop culture (not passing references, but overt "college studies" references), consumerism, class systems, cliques, simulations, jargon, reality, hyper-reality, simulacra, and social images. These too, are all over the book and will help you next week.

Any questions? Post them here.

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Responses to ... So... PoMo Still a Go?
Anonymous said... September 2, 2007 at 6:16 PM

Oh. I guess I should've read this entry first, and posted my White Noise comment here. The one in the post above.

Reiterating (in case you're too lazy to go read the whole comment) I just don't really see what you want us to see. Instead, I see the book as a whole with like weird quotes from Heinrich and Murray thrown in that are really philosophical, and pertain to this aspect of life that gets overlooked. But I guess the example s of pop culture, consumerism, etc don't pop out at me like they do for you, and it's frustrating. It's like Delillo wants me to see it, but I don't.

Whatever. You understand, I think, and I hope I'm not alone.

fdshjfdh.

-Karen "holy crap" vonMoses

JStallings said... September 2, 2007 at 7:37 PM

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm "trying" to get you to see anything. This is an excellent example of postmodern literature, but I don't need you guys to understand the ridiculous complexities of postmodernism. I merely want each of you to understand how these books comment on real life.
Because this is a rhetoric class, I want each of you to examine the arguments that the authors make, and how they apply to the non-fiction arguments currently being discussed.

Anonymous said... September 3, 2007 at 5:09 PM

I read both replies to my comments, and thank-you for replying. I don't think you're shoving anything down my throat, I just feel like you see a lot more in this book than I do right now, and I feel stupid.

:P

JStallings said... September 3, 2007 at 5:27 PM

Don't get frustrated. We've only just started discussing these novels, and I think once we all put our heads together we can come up with something. This is a slippery book because it is an ironic (or maybe not) social commentary on contemporary life. We aren't looking back at the previous generation in this book, but at ourselves. What we need to decide is whether he is being serious or not, and whether what he says is accurate. Long reply. We'll talk about it in class tomorrow.

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