Principles of Literary Study: Fiction principles-s14.blogs.rutgers.edu

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1 Principles of Literary Study: Fiction principles-s14blogsrutgersedu Prof Andrew Goldstone Office hours today: 3 5 pm in Murray 031 Monday, April 28, 2014 Gibson (2)

2 exam Short answer 50% Eight paragraph-long answers, requiring you to cite examples from the reading Some choice Key terms and concepts, short interpretive questions, and passage identification Updated principles list online soon Not to be memorized Essay 50% Choice of two questions Will require you to cite and specifically discuss at least three readings

3 exercises check Sakai for past exercises half-credit for make-ups by Monday Gibson exercise due this Thursday

4 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant

5 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory

6 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory dispute a thesis

7 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory dispute a thesis extend an interpretation

8 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory dispute a thesis extend an interpretation

9 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory dispute a thesis extend an interpretation Gibson s future

10 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory dispute a thesis extend an interpretation Gibson s future looks backwards as well as forwards

11 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory dispute a thesis extend an interpretation Gibson s future looks backwards as well as forwards tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress

12 review the scholarly conversation: being relevant apply a theory dispute a thesis extend an interpretation Gibson s future looks backwards as well as forwards tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to technological transformation do they suggest?

13 the future, cont a future that is recognizably and painstakingly drawn from the modern condition (Bruce Sterling, Preface to William Gibson, Burning Chrome)

14 the future, cont a future that is recognizably and painstakingly drawn from the modern condition (Bruce Sterling, Preface to William Gibson, Burning Chrome) I told you so You damned fools They are the italics of the perpetually impatient and somehow perpetually unworldly futurist, seeing his model going terminally wrong in the hands of the less clever, the less evolved And they are with us today, though I ve long since learned to run shy of science fiction that employs them William Gibson, Time Machine Cuba, in Distrust That Particular Flavor (New York: Putnam, 2012), 207 8

15 the future past The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel (3)

16 genre redux Discussion Are we allowed to read this kind of book in this kind of class?

17 genre system Just as genres form a horizon of expectations against which any text is read, so are they themselves subsumed within a broader horizon formed by a period s system of genres (Frow, Genre, 70) Principle 1233 Viewed synchronically, genres form a system structured by, among other things, hierarchy in symbolic and economic terms Principle 1234 A given genre system does not necessarily look the same to all participants, in its own time or later Principle 1235 Literary scholars both use and remake genre systems in their own work

18 Figure: Science Wonder Stories no 1, 1929, from philspcom Science Fiction Studies (1973 )

19 wasn t this in The Matrix?

20 wasn t this in The Matrix? Whatever of my work may be there, it seems to me to have gotten there by exactly the kind of creative cultural osmosis I ve always depended on myself If there s Neuromancer in The Matrix, there s The Stars My Destination and Dhalgren in Neuromancer, and much else besides, down to and including actual bits of embarrassingly undigested gristle And while I was drawing directly from those originals, and many others, the makers of The Matrix were drawing through a pre-existing cyberpunk esthetic, which constituted as much of a found object, for them, as science fiction did for me When I began to write Neuromancer, there was no cyberpunk The Matrix is arguably the ultimate cyberpunk artifact ( The Matrix: Fair Cop, 2003, williamgibsonblogblogspotcom)

21 cyberspace Cyberspace A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America (51 52) This was it This was what he was, who he was, his being He forgot to eat (59) Discussion What does this description do? What is cyberspace supposed to be like, and why does it matter?

22 the sensorium link The abrupt jolt into other flesh Matrix gone, a wave of sound and color She was moving through a crowded street, past stalls vending discount software, prices feltpenned on sheets of plastic, fragments of music from countless speakers Smells of urine, free monomers, perfume, patties of frying krill For a few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her body (56)

23 next Neuromancer to chap 16 commonplace Gibson exercise by Thursday noon

24 course evaluations with my thanks