Reading Log III

Blood Pressure. Big Picture. Boiling Point. British Petroleum.

This Week:
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
"False Documents” by E.L. Doctorow
Athens, Still Remains by Jaques Derrida
"Copy, Archive, and Signature: A Conversation on Photography”
Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee
Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
August, Osage County by Tracy Letts

A commonality among Straight White Men, Appropriate, and August, Osage County is that each play ends with an extended monologue (or scene) with the conclusion “America is/has always been Dead” usually by way of “the family system is Dead.” These plays all premiered about ten years ago; it makes me wonder where the “American Drama” ought to go now, figuratively, us having already pronounced and examined the country’s death. I know it’s not a new conclusion or examination, so maybe we just need to continue to say it in different and funny ways. Maybe there’s some new brilliant conclusion to be made about its after-life or the landscape of impotence or something. In my Barthes/Derrida seminar, we talked a lot about Derrida’s relationship to the concept of “frame” which nicely collided with these plays, which all, with varying levels of conspicuousness, contain their Perfect Drama in a frame. (To what extent is August Osage, County a parody?) Derrida’s all about the frame being a part of the picture and not a part of the picture and also impossible to remove from the picture. Straight White Men features the Silenus story, which was also raised during our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow. The story goes that King Midas captures Silenus, a satyr-esq deity with the gift of prophecy, and asks him what the best thing for humanity is. Silenus tells him the best thing is if we had never been born and the second best thing is to die as soon as possible. (Woof.) It came up in Gravity’s Rainbow in relation to The Birth of Tragedy, which was in turn brought up because of the Apollonian/Dionysian connection to the Phoebus Cartel. We read Gravity’s Rainbow against Mrs. Dalloway in class and that raised a question of why WWI generated “trauma literature” and WWII generated “paranoia literature.” (Which is really the modernist vs. post-modernist question.) I am still thinking about it. I do think technology has something to do with it, and dissemination of information. I think in 2024 we’re back in an era of “trauma literature” but also seem to be soon leaving said era. A sharp, contextualizing edge is creeping in. Even the deeply feeling are beginning to feel deeply through four expanded windows of conceit. I prefer paranoia to trauma, but probably it’s worse for us spiritually. I embarrassed myself in class trying to make a connection between the Pilgrim’s Progress motif in Gravity’s Rainbow and the name of the main character in Pynchon’s V., Billy Pilgrim. Only Billy Pilgrim isn’t the main character of V., he’s the main character of Slaughterhouse Five. Benny Profane is the main character of V. I was going to end with a joke about finding meaning in the initials BP, but it’s written itself before I could. Earlier this week, I was trying to think about times in my life that I’ve fallen for misinformation or propaganda. The primary example that came to mind was the PR campaign after the BP Oil Spill. In my defense, I was in elementary school, but when I think of that awful crime/tragedy/disaster I immediately see ducks being washed with soap.

Next Week:
Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca
Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade
"Must We Burn Sade?” by Simone de Beauvoir
“Great, Glowing Vault” by Paul Celan
”Breathturn Into Timestead” by Paul Celan
"Circumfession” by Jaques Derrida
“Rams: Uninterrupted Dialogue—Between Two Infinities, the Poem” by Jaques Derrida