First Class Summary

On September 12, 2006, in the class 21L.485, 20th-Century Fiction,
taught by Prof. Thorburn, we resumed our discussion of the poem
"Captain Carpenter" by John Crowe Ransom and discussed the assignment
of the day, the short story "Encounter" by James Joyce.

"Captain Carpenter" served as an introduction to modern fiction.
Indeed, this poem crystallizes many concerns of modern literature, in
particular, (1) the tension between the narrator and the protagonist,
and (2) the paradoxical attitude towards the past.

(1) The narrator passively witnesses the misadventures of Captain
Carpenter, whom he watches helplessly, like a war photographer. This
helplessness contrasts with the omniscience of19th-Century narrators
and foretells the perplexity of 20th-Century narrators. For example,
in Heart of Darkness, the narrator, being the protagonist 20 years
later, can only tell as an outsider the story of his youth.

(2) "Captain Carpenter" satirizes the values of chivalry and shows a
modern world unsuited for heroism. To fully appreciate the poem, the
reader needs to understand the references to past literature. Herein
lies the paradox of modernism, which is dependent on the very past it
wishes to forego.

Prof. Thorburn used "Encounter" to set the tone of the class and make
a point about literature analysis. He started off by reading an
excerpt from Tindall's A Reader's Guide to James Joyce. I was
uncomfortable by how Tindall's interpretation of "Encounter" didn't
match my own. I was even puzzled by how far-fetched his justifications
were. For example, Tindall mines a suppressed pun between the words in
the text "josser" and "pigeon" via Pidgeon English, in which "josser"
means "God", concluding that the story is about religion. I felt
uneasy, wondering whether I should look out for these suppressed puns
and whether they were the source of the notorious difficulty of
reading Joyce. Nobody in the class attempted to support Tindall's
position, and a few students timidly voiced their disagreement. At
this point, Prof. Thorburn theatrically threw out Tindall's book
(already in very poor shape), screaming it was a piece of crap, to the
delight, relief and, of course, surprise, of the students. "You should
never ignore the fascinating surface in favor of the mere depths",
Prof. Thorburn said, quoting another professor. Tindall's analysis was
a case study on what not to do. Interpretation fundamentally must
account for essential aspects of the text (characters, language, plot)
in a plausible description.

Prof. Thorburn continually emphasizes the democratic nature of the
study of literature, in which, potentially, a novice could catch
insights that an expert would miss. In this session, he clearly and
memorably reinforced his point by vigorously dismissing the analysis
of a leading scholar. I look forward to a semester of modern
confusions and interpretation wars.

Response to Conrad

The tone of The Shadow-Line is at once playful and solemn: playful
with words and cultural references, and solemn in its universal
aspiration.

Conrad often juxtaposes a serious assertion and a witty correction.
The opening is an example: "Only the young have such moments. I don't
mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no
moments." Sometimes, the wittiness is not so much in the caveat
itself, than in the way it transforms the prior meaning: "The green
sickness of late youth descended on me and carried me off. Carried me
off that ship, I mean." In the first sentence taken in isolation,
"carried off" has a figurative meaning, which the rectifying sentence
renders more prosaic.

Conrad plays with the expectations of the reader, too. The sentence
"This is not a marriage story." seems to mean that this story is not a
fairy tale. The following sentence immediately contradicts this
reading: "It wasn't so bad as that for me." The imagery of fairy tales
comes back later: "Here I was, invested with a command in the
twinkling of an eye, not in the common course of human affairs, but
more as if by enchantment. I ought to have been lost in astonishment.
But I wasn't. I was very much like people in fairy tales. Nothing ever
astonishes them. When a fully appointed gala coach is produced out of
a pumpkin to take her to a ball, Cinderella does not exclaim. She gets
in quietly and drives away to her high fortune."

As in Heart of Darkness, the narrator of The Shadow-Line is aware of
the limits of language and cognition. Unlike Marlow, he is more
accepting of these limits, and exploits them with humor to lighten the
symbolic gravity of his story, the end of youth.

Response to Kipling

The Man Who Would Be King is as relevant today as it was in the late
19th-century, when Europe was loosening its colonial past. The
ambiguities of the tale are not only due to the ironic voice of the
teller, but also, perhaps, to Kipling's own confusion & ambivalence.

For an aware reader, The Man Who Would Be King, shows the intricate
and subtle game of diplomacy. The teller recognizes a fellow traveler
as part of the same secret society not through any exterior visible
indication but in the double-meanings of their conversation. Kipling's
Jungle Book – at least in the Walt Disney version – plays with
double-meanings too. For example, the passage where the monkey sings
"Obidooo, I wanna be like you" to Mowgli is characteristic of a
colonialist mindset, but also shows the real, though flawed,
fascination of the oppressed for the oppressor.

A similar irony is unfolding today with the information wars and
propaganda of a clash of civilization. Lest we forget,  the
self-proclaimed Mr. Islamic Djihad is US-trained.

Response to Nabokov

With its notes linking to notes, Pale Fire lends itself to browsing
and bookmarking like a website. I stumbled upon the note to "Line 493:
She took her poor young life", which references the note to "Line 550:
debris," which references the note to "Line 12: that crystal land".
They all contradict each other, and we're left deceived. Like in
Ford's tragic The Good Solider, we have to work for the truth, but
here, the truth is a pun.

The notes explain each other as much as they explain the poem, but I'd
have to read them carefully to illustrate my point. Maybe later, I
will study Pale Fire. For now, I am forcing myself not to read it, so
that I can imagine it.

Pale Fire is a great way to end a class on modern fiction. Randomly
flipping through the book, each student will naturally stop at a page
that appeals to his sensibilities. Collectively, we will exemplify
(the slogan of Susan Hockfield's presidential inauguration: Uncommon |
In Common – and) a tenant of modern fiction: the experienced
subjectivities inseparable from a truthful objectivity, like
interpretations emanating from a text.