Prompt #4: farts and sucking stones

How does Beckett deconstruct the traditional form of the novel? Please give specific examples. Can you think of other novels you've read that do this?

Prompt #3

How does Faulkner manipulate the form of "the novel" to express some of the ideas about truth that Derrida talks about is his lecture, "Structure, Sign and Play..."? How would you describe "truth" as a concept in As I Lay Dying?

Prompt #2: Icebergs

Excellent job on your posts so far, pomos!!

In Hemingway's memoir, A Moveable Feast, he writes that the "iceberg theory" is a "theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood." Find a quote/short passage from the second half of The Sun Also Rises and share it, and then explain how the passage makes you, the reader, feel as if something important is stirring underneath the surface that is not expressed by Hemingway. Are you able to put this murky feeling into words? What is really going on in this passage you picked that Hemingway won't say?

Prompt One Response

Context of "The Sun Also Rises" in the post-WWI "lost generation" has led to my examinations toward a historical context. Perhaps that is why I view the novel in regards to what Bell writes about Modernism and history. One case that stuck to me is when Bill tries to explain history as all leading back to sex (Hemingway 121). This assertion can be seen as "an affirmation of values[...] a form of historical motivation" (Bell 15). Bill's own desire to wash away pains in his life with his fast Jazz-age lifestyle informs his view of history which, in turn, justifies his actions.

The very acts of escape that the characters take, their struggles in subtext, all adhere to the modernist idea of "recognition of the self-grounding character of the human world is the truest meaning of the modernist use of myth. Myth could be many things, including nostalgia for a lost unity, a fascistic regression [...]" (Bell 14). The novel explores the characters as all hiding in a new lifestyle separate from the pain of their former selves. It is an inward look at the characters underneath the subtext of their disguises. Not only do they create their own facades though, they live within the shadow of other disguises. The very novel opens with Jake Barnes describing Robert Cohen as a boxer. While he is quick to add "Do not think that I am very much impressed with that title" (Hemingway 11)it still creates an impression of Robert Cohen long before we even learn who the narrator is. This is, in part, by describing Cohen's own beginnings in the first few pages and building a narrative of him. While Jake does thoroughly describe what he knows, we are given a subjective look at Robert from Jake's eyes and are thus initiated from the start into the tangle of myth and subjective gossip amongst the wealthy expatriates.

Another Prompt One Response

I found it more difficult to connect pieces of The Sun Also Rises to the latter portion of Michael Bell's article, perhaps because this is only a first reading of each text. The point that held most resonance for me was when Bell wrote about great works of modern literature using "...realist representation, indeed they often use it consummately, yet with an X ray awareness of its constructed, or purely human, character." (p.12) We haven't covered yet precisely what "tip of the iceberg" means as a writing style, but the skeleton of a concept the phrase creates in my mind fits Hemingway's style perfectly. He writes solely what happens, what is thought. He doesn't try to go above the characters' heads and introduce ideas using outside means. Any idea you take from Hemingway comes from your own inference as to why his character feels this way or does that, but he is knowingly setting up ideas for you to grasp. At the very least he spins specific scenarios such that the cliff is created for you to jump off of in taking greater thematic ideas from his work. He thoroughly seems to believe that no idea can exist outside "...a scale of human reference," as Bell puts it. (p.12)

By this logic, anything you read contains not only the physical interactions of the characters but also what you create from it in the form of ideas.

--Chelsea

Prompt 1 Response

There are many themes and styles that I read in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway that seem to agree with topics covered in Michael Bell’s article on the metaphysics of modernism.

I will start with one of the more easily identifiable themes that I found: the liberation of the characters. In Michael Bell’s article he talks about “the colonial ‘other’ [being] linked to sexual repression.” The Sun Also Rises is full of sexual repression. First of all the narrator is impotent. From as far into the novel as I have read (only half-way at this stage) I cannot say it if is ever revealed exactly how the narrator has come to be impotent, but it is mentioned at least twice in the first half of the novel. The second time is the clearer of the two. The narrator admits it openly: “I was afraid he thought he had hurt me with that crack about being impotent” (Hemingway, 120). This explains a lot about the narrator’s relationship with Brett, and why it is hard for him to consummate it. It also identifies one of the conflicts of the story. Here the narrator is, in love with Brett, but she cannot stand for him to touch her: “‘Don’t touch me,’ she said. ‘Please don’t touch me’” (Hemingway, 33). She says she loves him, and he seems to genuinely love her, but the narrator is foolishly naïve. His jealousy is well deserved when he finds out that Brett went to Sans Sebastian with Robert Cohn. She leaves right after telling him that she cannot go anywhere with him, that she’d be a bore. The narrator’s impotence has limited him. At the same time, he knows that traveling to another country will not liberate his inner troubles. When Robert Cohn asks the narrator to go to South America with him, the narrator says: “‘Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another’” (Hemingway, 19). Hemingway opens the story with this concept of liberation and sexual repression.

Michael Bell also talks about art as a means of reaching the “Truth,” particularly literature. He talks about the study and formation of language within literature is the journey of modernist literature. In The Sun Also Rises there are some facts that seem to stand out: narrator’s closest friends (including the narrator himself) seem to be writers in some fashion. Bill, Robert, even Frances are all writers (Bill and Robert with book(s) published). Robert seems to get all his ideas from books. His great South American adventure is said to be informed by a book, the narrator even suggests, “‘That’s because you never read a book about it. Go on and read a book all full of love affairs with the beautiful shiny black princesses’” (Hemingway, 18), in an attempt to get Robert interested in some other place. The over-arching facts of the book seem to reflect the narrator’s acknowledgement of modernist ideals about literature and language. Hemingway even writes the story in a peculiarly minimalist way. There are long sections of un-attributed, or sparsely attributed, dialogue (example: pages 22-24). It makes the reader have to dig in and pay attention to the subtle differences in speech between the characters. Later in a scene between the narrator, Brett, and the Count, one has to navigate several lines back and forth that go un-attributed. But identifiers do exist, where the Count uses “Mr. Barnes” or “my dear” to identify who he is talking to, or about. It isn’t something terribly difficult to navigate; just something to pay attention to in that most of the first part of the book is dialogue. Hemingway also uses little narration as a general rule. There are times when he gets a bit heavy on the inner workings of his narrator, but for the most part the things the reader learns come from dialogue between characters. Michael Bell talks about two rival linguistic “turns” that developed during the modernist decades. Hemingway seems to utilize the second of these “turns.” The heavy dialogue offers the most accurate insight into the group dynamics of the characters. The narrator most easily biases the narration, while his recounting of dialogue can more easily be believed as “Truth.”

All in all there seem to be modernist reflections to be argued within The Sun Also Rises. I have only made a brief, scattered account pre and formal lecture to help solidify my understanding of Michael Bell’s article. Enjoy.

~ET

Prompt #1

I said I would post prompts on Sundays... but since Tuesday is Monday, I guess Monday can be Sunday too, right??

Prompt for blogging:

After reading Michael Bell's article on the metaphysics of modernism, how do you read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises as a modernist text? What formal, stylistic, thematic or linguistic features of this novel seem "modernist" to you? Cite examples from the novel to back up your argument.