EN3232'week11'jones

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EN3232.week11.jones

• 31 October 2006

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The DeLillo quotation..

• There are so many temptations for American
  writers to become part of the system and part of
  the structure that now, more than ever, we have
  to resist. American writers ought to stand and
  live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
• temptations
• structure
• resistance and margins
• being dangerous

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the prophetic notion of the writer

• self
• resistance speak truth to power, beware
  corrupting rewards
• be dangerous deconstruct the primacy of the
  central
• affirm a truer/better value against social
  convention encourage resistance to social codes

• society, structure
• temptation to do other than resist, eg buy into
  the system (think of GH), take a university job!
• merely amuse confirm the marginal as such
• affirm predominant social morality and values
  consider difference to be social or psychological
  immaturity

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Cornel West and the Prophetic

• West, author of books like Democracy Matters,
  Race Matters, and The American Evasion of
  Philosophy
• Also in the Matrix movies!
• Reinvents Old Testament/ Christian notions of the
  prophetic address for postmodern times
• --NOT about telling the future
• moral witness, rather, conditioned by values
  deeper and more vital (ultimately?) than the
  market
• draws on romance of old testament prophet as
  OUTSIDER, eccentric, crazy-wise-man

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Yossarian as Prophet

• runs away from trouble, like Jonah
• accepts responsibility, like Jonah
• swallowed up by system and undergoes symbolic
  death and rebirth (think of Yossarian in hospital
  bed) like Jonah
• Eccentric behavior nakedness, odd speech. CF
  Ezekiel in Old Testament. Nakedness as form of
  symbolic expression. In tree, in line-up.

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Class problem

• We are going to work with the idea of the
  prophetic writer.
• Please get into groups of 3-4, but do NOT get
  into the same old groups. Move aroundplease try
  for an alternative corner of the room.
• Take one of the following questions, your choice.
  Answer in terms of Jones storiesyour choice
  what moments. Pick the BEST page, paragraph,
  sentence, and/or Image to answer the question.
  The smaller the better.

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Is Jones a prophetic writer?

• Does he subvert/ deconstruct the binaristic
  division of center and margins?
• Is the truth-speaker in danger of succumbing to
  temptations to buy into the system, as is
  Yossarian late in C-22?
• Are the losers of his fictional world really
  winners, insofar as they succeed in protecting a
  goal or value against temptations toward
  betrayal?

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Break (15 minutes)
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The Prophet of Sinews Ezekiel

• EzekielChapter 37
• 1
• 1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he led
  me out in the spirit of the LORD and set me in
  the center of the plain, which was now filled
  with bones.
• 2
• He made me walk among them in every direction so
  that I saw how many they were on the surface of
  the plain. How dry they were!
• 3
• He asked me Son of man, can these bones come to
  life? "Lord GOD," I answered, "you alone know
  that."
• 4
• Then he said to me Prophesy over these bones,
  and say to them Dry bones, hear the word of the
  LORD!
• 5
• Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones See! I
  will bring spirit into you, that you may come to
  life.
• 6
• I will put sinews upon you, make flesh grow over
  you, cover you with skin, and put spirit in you
  so that you may come to life and know that I am
  the LORD.
• 7
• I prophesied as I had been told, and even as I
  was prophesying I heard a noise it was a
  rattling as the bones came together, bone joining
  bone.
• 8
• I saw the sinews and the flesh come upon them,
  and the skin cover them, but there was no spirit
  in them.

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adding sinews in relation to prophecy

• What does it achieve? Novels are not made to
  achieve things. A novel asserts nothing it
  provides a framework for thinking about things. I
  suppose we're in the education business. But as
  for stiffening sinews, no, I don't think you can
  ask writers to do that.
• First, understand. Second, take your own
  position. do you AGREE with Amis?
• the question becomes is the writer an
  educatoror a prophet? If we do not develop
  these terms beyond superficial (denotative)
  definitions, we get nowhere.

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Sowhat are sinews?

• What do bones and sinews mean in Ezekiel?
• What does adding sinews mean in the context of
  Amis quotation?
• Groups does the average Jones story stiffen
  sinews?
• Provide 1-2 examples

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Happy Halloween

• a celebration of the dead, an imaginative
  recuperation or redemption of loss
• In part Halloween, in that it invites us to
  imagine the dead as walking spirits, is a denial
  of death
• In part such cultural rituals explore Life and
  Death as a continuum rather than as binary
  opposites.
• Where in Jones stories, can you find
  death-in-life in a way that affirms vitality?