Last week I ordered the Library of America's collection of Philp Roth's fiction (LOA Philip Roth Page). Now I need to make my way through it!
Book 1 Down: Good Bye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
Commentary, notes and ideas coming soon...
The Suppling Mind
Theory, Books, and Other Varied Musings
Friday, June 21, 2019
Sunday, June 28, 2015
It's been awhile since my last post. My wife and I are getting ready to travel to Serowe, Bostwana for a month to conduct research in the Bessie Head papers at the Khama III Memorial Museum. We are also presenting our findings at MLA 2016. Here's the link to the panel's abstracts:
bessiehead2016.wordpress.com
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Lord Jim (Part 2)
While Marlowe does not spitefully attack Stein about his use
of English, spitefulness does become a factor when Marlow shifts his focus from
the white European Stein’s speech to a half-caste boatman’s use of English
later in the chapter. After saying
his good-byes to Jim, and presenting him with a pistol, Marlow notices Jim has
forgotten to take the pistol’s ammunition with him [1]. Marlow believes Jim needs the gun and
ammunition, so he sets out to catch Jim and return the ammunition to him before
his boat to Patusan sets out.
During this process, Marlow encounters the half-caste boat captain and
participates in a dialogue, about Jim, with him. After listening to the half-caste speak, Marlow describes
his English as, “seem[ing] to be derived from a dictionary compiled by a
lunatic’” after the half-caste informs him that the boat Jim will travel on
will “ascend” the river (238).
Marlow is quick to point out what he considers to be the half-caste’s
horrible diction. There is nothing
funny to Marlow, as there was with Stein’s speech, about the way the half-caste
misuses English words and phrases.
Elsewhere in his conversation with the half-caste, Marlow points out the
boatman’s misuse of the words and phrases: “reverentially,” “irresponsive,”
“resignation to quit,” “propitiated many offertories,” and “plenty too much
enough of Patusan,” among numerous others. Marlow presents these examples of misused English and many
times provides what he believes to be the correct usage the half-caste was
seeking.
While these phrases and words seem to irritate Marlow, a
final phrase the half-caste utters, that Jim was already “in the similitude of
a corpse,” shakes Marlow out of his grammatical condemnations of the
half-cast’s speech (240).
“‘What? What do you say,’” Marlow
asks the half-caste after his comparison of Jim to a corpse, “‘Already like the
body of one deported,’” replies the half-caste (240). In this instance, Marlow is not bothered by the misuse of
the word “deported,” but is struck by the reality of danger that faces Jim in
Patusan. While Marlow initially
condemns the way the half-caste speaks English, he tempers this judgment by
stating that, “The absurd chatter of the half-caste had given more reality to the
miserable dangers of [Jim’s] path than Stein’s careful statements” (240). The half-caste is unable to speak
English well, but he is able to more clearly relate to Marlow the dangerous
“truth” inherent in Jim’s Patusanian undertaking than Stein is with well-spoken
English.
Curiously, chapter twenty-three, a chapter obsessed with the
English language and its representational power, closes with the Latin phrase
“Absit omen.” Absit omen literally
translates into “let the omen be absent,” but according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, a more specific connotation of this phrase is "May no ominous
significance attach to the words.”
Significance for Conrad is still possible through language and texts,
but the possibility of “ominous,” or improper significance, being attached to
words by a dubious user of language (like Stein) or by a reader is a very real
problem. While I do believe Conrad
is questioning the ability of language to present specific meaning in his text,
I do not think he is going as far as later post-structuralist theoreticians
would in presenting the idea that it is impossible for language to present some
sort of “truth.” For Conrad, as
evidenced in the text of Lord Jim and
specifically in Chapter twenty-three of the novel, “truth” can still be found,
but it is much more difficult to arrive at than traditionally believed. The text, through language, can still
point to something out there that is concrete and meaningful, but a writer must
go about presenting what he or she considers to be meaning in new and novel
ways and not rely solely on the ability of a single narrative form to
accomplish this task.
[1] During his leave
taking with Jim, Marlow also observes that Jim is taking the works of
Shakespeare with him to Patusan.
In a longer version of this essay, it would be fruitful to explore in
more depth the place Shakespeare holds in the historical development of the English
language. While Shakespeare is
revered as one of the greatest writers in the English language, it could be
argued that he, like the half-cast boat captain, derived his speech from a
“dictionary compiled by a lunatic.”
The English language was in flux when Shakespeare was penning his plays
and in order to convey the meanings he wanted, Shakespeare coined many of his
own words and phrases.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Looking Into a Lunatic's Dictionary: Lord Jim and the Possibilities of Language Based Representation
Joseph Conrad’s Lord
Jim is a text that interrogates the structure of traditional forms of
narration and the ability narration, or more generally language, has to
represent ideas. Throughout Lord Jim, Conrad places numerous types
of narration in tension with one another in order to show the benefits and
limitations each has in the presentation of the overall story he is attempting
to tell to his readers[1]. Be it through the genres of romance,
oral story telling, or epistle, the intermingling and placement of different forms of narration in
his text allows Conrad to explore the efficacy of language to capture and
present the meaning of particular actions. While this process unfolds over the entirety of the
text of Lord Jim, a microcosm of this
literary technique can be seen in chapter twenty-three of the novel. In this chapter, Conrad places into
tension different manifestations of the English language, including that of a
Native English speaker (Marlow), a European English speaker (Stein), and a
non-Western speaker (the half caste boatman) to interrogate the ability of
language to convey meaning.
Chapter twenty-three of Lord
Jim is a pivotal point in the text in terms of both plot and language
use. In this chapter, the reader
of the novel sees Jim for the last time before he leaves for Patusan and,
effectively, exits the stage of the “civilized” world. Marlow, who has set this action into
motion by introducing Jim to Mr. Stein, narrates Jim’s departure and relates
conversations he has had during this process with Stein, Jim, and a half-caste
boatman who will ferry Jim to the mouth of the river that leads to
Patusan.
At certain junctures in this chapter, Marlow self-consciously
interrupts his narration to comment on the way people use the English
language. “‘Mr. Stein called
[Doramin] “war-comrade.” War-comrade was good. Wasn’t it? And
didn’t Mr. Stein speak English wonderfully well? Said he had learned it in Celebes—of all places! That was awfully funny. Was it not? He did speak with an accent—with a twang—did I notice?’”
(233). Marlow here reveals that
Stein is not a native English speaker and marvels at Stein’s ability to speak
English “wonderfully well” and capture reality with clever diction [2]. By referring to Dormain as a
“war-comrade,” Stein effectively conveys to Marlow that a relationship exists
between the native chief and himself that goes beyond mere acquaintance and
needs no more explanation than a two-word phrase. The term “war-comrade” does not come as a shock to a reader
of Lord Jim, as earlier in the text
Marlow relates Stein’s adventurous past that includes descriptions of battles
Stein participated in with native tribes.
Marlow, however, is not merely relating the relationship
between Dormain and Stein to the listeners of his narration, rather he is
marveling at the power aptly chosen words have to hide truth. Conrad, by having Marlow interrupt his
narration and self-consciously point out Stein’s diction, is challenging his
readers to take a second look at what has just been presented. The phrase “war-comrade” covers a
multitude of sins, particularly the economic advantage Stein is taking of
Dormain. As a businessman, Stein
is not interested in Dormain as a comrade, but rather in the economic gain
Dormain can bring him through his position of power within the Patusan
community. By calling Dormain a
war-comrade Stein presents a picture, of his own creation, to the world that
portrays his relationship with Dormain in a way that includes what he wants to
be seen, “comradery,” but excludes the colonial undertones of this particular
European/Native relationship.
Elsewhere in the chapter, Marlow relates that, “‘Mr. Stein
instructed [Jim] to wait for a month or so, to see whether it was possible for
him to remain, before he began building a new house for himself, so as to avoid
“vain expense.” He did make use of
funny expressions—Stein did. “Vain
expense” was good. . .
. Remain? Why! of course.’” (236).
Stein knows that in order for Jim to survive in Patusan he will have to
construct a house of some kind, but it would be a waste of capital if a house
is built and Jim decides not to stay.
Stein does not want to lose money, so he instructs Jim to wait to build
a house in order to avoid “vain expense.”
Stein could have told Jim not to build to avoid extra expense, but he
chose to modify the word “expense” with the word “vain” that connotes, in an
economic sense, any cost that will not produce a return. The phrase “vain expense” highlights
Stein’s overarching concern with economics and furthers the position that he is
not sending Jim to Patusan because he cares personally for Jim. Looking under the
surface of Stein’s words, a reader can come to the conclusion that Stein sends
Jim to Patusan to protect his trading investments and to aliviate problems
(including factional fighting and the incompetence of Cornelius) that have
brought trade with Patusan to a stand still.
In presenting Stein’s speech, Marlow finds himself in a
tenuous position. While he admires
Stein’s turns of phrases, he also sees them as being “funny.” Funny here can be read as either a term
connoting humor or in, what I believe to be the case, the sense that something
is not right. What is not right
about Stein’s speech is that it hides unpleasant truths Stein wants to cover
up. Marlow seems to recognize the
duplicitous nature of Stein’s speech, but he does not directly question Stein
about the “truth” he sees hidden underneath his aptly constructed phrases. Marlow is unable to directly confront
Stein on this issue because if he pushes too far he may have to come to terms
with unpleasant realities about himself.
Stein, in the text, is representative of both a paternal and cultural
father figure to Marlow. Even
thought Stein is not English, or a native English speaker, he is still a
European and shares with Marlow, as such, a legacy of colonization.
[1] Fredric
Jameson discusses the disparity of narrative technique in Lord Jim and refers to the shifting of narrative forms in the text
as “ruptures” in the novel.
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as
Socially Symbolic Act. New
York: Cornell UP, 1981: 206-280.
[2] The subject
place non-native English speakers had in society and in fictional works is a
topic of great interest to the Polish Conrad who himself learned English as a
non-native language, but chose to present his fictional works in it.
Next time...Lord Jim (Part 2)
Next time...Lord Jim (Part 2)
Friday, March 22, 2013
Roman Jakobson
The primacy of the metaphoric process in the literary schools of Romanticism and symbolism has been repeatedly acknowledge, but it is still insufficiently realized that it is the predominance of metonym which underlies and actually predetermines the so-called realistic trend, which belongs to an intermediary state between the decline of Romanticism and the rise of symbolism and is opposed to both.
--Roman Jakobson
In "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles" (1956), Russian linguist and theoretician Roman Jakobson claims that a polarity exists between the concepts of metaphor and metonym and begins his piece with a discussion of aphasia to show how the language centers which deal with metaphor and metonym in the human mind are indeed separated.
After discussing the polarity that exists between metaphor and metonym, Jakobson further argues that the literary school of Romanticism is tied to metaphor and that of Realism (or Social Realism) is tied to the metonymic, and illustrates his point by evoking Anna Karenina [specifically Tolstoy's focus on A.'s handbag when she suicides] and War and Peace [examining a section where Tolstoy dedicates an overabundance of page space to the description of facial hair]. Aside from references to Russian literature, Jakobson also devotes a few sentences to film and briefly outlines how his "pole" theory is seen in the work of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin.
In concluding, Jakobson points out that the use of metaphor by the artists of Romanticism has received much critical attention, but the similar relationship between realism and metonym has been largely ignored.
Although discussions of metaphor and metonym have become somewhat passe in contemporary literary theoretical discourse, what continues to make "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles" an interesting and important read is the way Jakobson combines literary, linguistic, and medical/scientific discourse in his truly interdisciplinary piece.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Led Zeppelin
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