Reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics made me think about the act of reading, the way of reading, myself as a reader, the other readers that inhabit the world, who is reading this novel, and the reading the author has already done in order to write this novel. Just to begin.
I believe this novel is what they call an “academic novel” as in, it is done in an academic style that appeals to academic readers. I like to think of myself as an ‘academic’ if for no other reason than I have been studying for years now to learn to read appropriately/correctly/intelligently/efficiently, and whatever other goals an English degree aspires to in terms of reading. But, this book is more than a little saturated with references to texts real and fictional. The references to books or stories I had read truly enhanced the reading experience, because it added a richness and added depth to the fairly light coming-of-age story. The obviously author-engineered references (such as “see “Martian 14,” Profiling Little Green Men: Sketches of Aliens from Eyewitness Accounts, Diller, 1989, p. 115″) (p 154) could have been left out. Because, as one reviewer noted, “Much of it was dense academic blathering–in character, to be sure, but still very annoying to read.” (from Amazon book reviews)
Why did Pessl need seven citations per page? What did they bring to the book that it would not have had without it? And, what does the average (non-English Major, normal individual not asking these questions) reader do with this format?
In academia, the citation is meant to bring authority to an individual’s argument. I like to think of it as the pieces of different puzzles that the academic writer collects and fits carefully together to create a new, (hopefully) beautiful puzzle. But, if not all of the references are referencing actual work, it begins to break down the authority of that practice. In many ways, this fictional work seems to be mocking the tradition of the academic citation.
And what about the reader that has read few of the remaining ‘real’ references? From the reviews that I have read online, the citations seem to only get in the way. The same reviewer as I mentioned above faults the author for her intense use of metaphors and clever references. She writes:
But much as I love the TV show “Lost,” but have no interest in the ongoing “Lost Experience” on the web, I am resigned to accepting that I may never unravel the knot that still lies at the heart of “Special Topics in Calamity Physics.” Writing a master’s thesis on Nabokov would be a good place to start, but I think we’d all agree that’s asking a great deal of one’s readers.
Certainly readers cannot be expected to undergo an intense English education or to write a thesis on Nabokov, so is this then a novel designed specifically for the ‘trained’ reader? That theory breaks down as well, since the book is not teeming with as much traditional “literary value” that would endear it to generations of readers.
I haven’t figured this out. I have figured out that Pessl’s novel is different from the ‘average’ novel, be it academic or mass-market. But I haven’t figured out what audience it is so well suited for. Perhaps that indicates my belief that the future of the novel involves drastic polarization between the ‘literary’ novel and the ‘popular’ novel. Yet, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a NY Times Bestselling book. Boy, I can’t wait to get to class and hear what everyone else has to say.
Side Note: Pessl has a website designed a la J.K. Rowling and Dawson’s Desktop-obnoxious, but the most obnoxious of all- the ’spoiler’ is designed to look like a cliff notes booklet, but all it says inside is “in life there are no shortcuts” It seems strangely arrogant to me, because I’m not sure that there is as much depth to the novel as many presume, but, in the mode of postmodern fiction, it is not what the novel says, but what it does, that the interest lies.
Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. “Three Discourses on the Age of Television.” The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP, 2006. 11-57. Also available online.
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The Novel is Dead. Long Live the Novel.
Anxiety of Obsolescence- the apprehension expressed over the possibility of a cultural or social item becoming redundant, usually because it has been made so by a new technology
Fitzpatrick’s Response- Things with cultural value never become obsolete, instead, they find a particular niche from which to operate.
Fitzpatrick’s Position: Instead of developing further anxiety over the purported death of the novel (which has been said to be dying since shortly after it began), critics should “consider what the messenger…might stand to gain from the proliferation of the message” (p 16)
Postmodernism and the Novel- without a doubt, critics have long feared the death of the novel, and what it will mean for society. However, those who have studied the evolution of the novel have found that:
“the novel continues to matter, though in a mode more cultural than literary” (17)
“the novel is not dying but democratizing” (17)
more skeptical critics find that “the modern novel represents a devolution of the literary into the sociological” (17)
The Postmodern Novel-what is often represented in the postmodern novel is an intrinsic anxiety over the future role of the critic, as a part of the anxiety over the future role of the novel. Often, anxiety over the technological obsolescence of an item is standing in for the fear of cultural and social obsolescence
in their discourse on the death of the novel, postmodern writers are concerned about how new technologies will dehumanize (‘the machine‘), about the interplay between illusion and ideology (‘the spectacle‘), and anxiety over the potential loss of the individual (‘the network‘)
the machine- concepts of humans as forms of machines replace Romantic concepts of humans as ‘natural’
the spectacle- fear that new technology would blur boundaries between the real and the fictitious, causing viewers to believe something that is not true, making it, in effect, a lie
the network- fear about the growing inter-connectedness of society that would force the individual to become dominated by the mass
postmodern novels write the critic and academic’s anxiety of obsolescence, however, the writing about what happens when writing becomes irrelevant is still writing; it continues in the same tradition that they are writing about the end of
“By depicting the genre as an endangered species, critics and novelists alike have built a protected space around the novel- and, not incidentally, the novelist” (26)
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Responses to Fitzpatrick
Fitzpatrick has been commended for her production of a book that is “particularly relevant to the historical and cultural moment” (Taylor). But, even more than the concepts in the book itself, the presentation of Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s The Anxiety of Obsolescence has inspired a great deal of discussion in academic communities about the future of academic publishing. Other than bound print form, Fitzpatrick’s book can also be accessed and searched online at her website (though the book is not presented in its entirety), as well as through Google Book Search, and she continues to engage with the book and her ideas in her blog, especially in some of her now-archived posts.
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The Anxiety of Obsolescence and Special Topics in Calamity Physicsby Marisha Pessl
Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics is teeming with the anxiety of obsolescence experienced by the academic crowd. Blue’s father asserts the cultural value of his employment when he says:
Is there anything more glorious than a professor?… a professor is the only person on earth with the power to put a veritable frame around life…. He organizes the unorganizable. Nimbly partitions it into modern and postmodern, renaissance, baroque, primitivism, imperialism and so on….Scaffolding to which we may cling! Even if it isarbitrary, without it, we’re lost (Pessl 12)
Despite this assertion of his value, he seems to drift through life after his wife’s death, taking unimpressive jobs and creating uninspiring research. Yet, he continues to drill Blue in the importance of academic success, as if without being the top performer in the world of formal education, she will be nothing.
Blue’s position in the novel is particularly interesting, as well. She generally follows her father’s instructions on the importance and way to be a great, memorable individual, though she admits that often what her father wanted for her often imposed itself on what she wanted for herself without consulting her personally. When Blue begins spending time with the Bluebloods, she begins to behave in (non-academic) ways she would never have thought of behaving previously. She notes:
Naturally, if Dad knew about my attitude, he would’ve called it “stomach-turning conformity,” maybe even “a disgrace to the Van Meers”…. Yet I saw it as thrilling, Romantic, if I allowed the current to take me along the “willowy hills and fields,” or wherever it wanted, regardless of the consequences (see “The Lady of Shalott,” Tennyson, 1842). (Pessl 153)
This passage is quite appropriate for Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s reading of the function of postmodern literature, because while Blue is talking about how much she enjoys being able to “not think anything but shrill girlish expressions,” she is reflecting upon it in a rather academic way, the very academia she is claiming to be forgoing.
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More
Movies: Being John Malkovich and Stranger than Fiction
Both of these films express the anxiety of obsolescence, and investigate the ways in which fears of the mechanization of the human, the confusion of reality and fiction, and the impact of living in a fully networked environment.
Since Eric already did a reading of Being John Malkovich, let’s look a little more closely at Stranger than Fiction. The premise of the film is that Harold Crick, a quiet IRS employee, one day begins to hear a woman narrating every aspect of his life. The narrator turns out to be a British writer, struggling to finish her novel, starring the protagonist Harold Crick, in order to avoid becoming obsolete as a writer. Unsure what to do, Crick visits a psychologist, and then a literary expert in an attempt to understand the situation that he is in. Played by Dustin Hoffman, the literary expert decides that Crick is stuck in a tragedy, and the only way he can save himself is to make the story into more of a comedy by falling unexpectedly in love.
Here is a clip of the beginning of the film:
Note how Harold Crick has become very much like a machine, his entire life revolving around the correct computations of numbers and routine activities, an essential fear postmodernists often express. What the film does, as well, is transgress the lines of reality, because Harold Crick is represented as a real man living an independent life, but he is also a created character designed by a novelist. Crick is trapped in a battle between his own control of his destiny and the power of the novelist to fit him into the formula of a traditional tragic plot.
Not Just Academia
An aspect that Fitzpatrick does not delve into in her article (and I think in the book as a whole) is the fact that the anxiety of obsolescence applies to other fields outside of literature, and to individuals outside of academia. Throughout history, the farmer (or the agricultural worker) has had to contend with his or her position in a world where technology has repeatedly made the individual more and more obsolete. First there was the iron hoe, then the horse-driven plow, a bit later the tractor, then all of the myriad engine-powered articles of farming equipment. This is a battle that continues today. In this article from the NY Times, there is anxiety over the effect that increased biotechnology will have on the individual farmer.
However, it is important to note, as I think Fitzpatrick would have, had she investigated the topic, that despite the constant anxiety of obsolescence experienced by farmers for many centuries, farming still exists, and it is still an important part of society around the world.
In short, there has always been anxiety about the future of any object that appears threatened by an emerging technology, but those objects generally are never forced into obsolescence.
