Me and Miss Mandible - The Narrator
Are we frightened of the "fantastic" literary text? Is there something inherently threatening about a work like Barthelme's "Me and Miss Mandible," something obtrusive which, as we read, forces us away from the text? A pronounced feeling of uneasiness seems to mark our reception of Barthelme, a range of anxiety expressed mainly in our responses to the story's narrator. Questions concerning his reliability and authenticity, and why Barthelme chooses to construct him in the manner he does become paramount, serving as pivotal gauges from which we read and critique his character. However, in establishing such gauges we retard our entrance into the "fantastic," reducing the elements of Barthelme's fiction to mere "realist" side effect: by-products of a normative writing model. How "Me and Miss Mandible" differs, in its narrative structure and character development, from works by O'Connor, Chopin, and Gordimer is perhaps the more pertinent issue when we discuss our responses to the story and its narrator. Reading Barthelme requires new strategies and fresh gauges; a New Critical approach, like the one used with O'Connor's Julian, can only lead to more anxiety and a dwarfed understanding of the text's indeterminant nature and its capactiy to destabilize and resituate not only the reader's, but its own functioning cultural context.
Before examining Barthelme's destabilizing/stabilizing dynamic, we must first acquaint ourselves with those stylistic features and textual devices he uses which set him apart from "realist" or "naturalist" writers. Barthelme, as noted by Lance Olson in his article "Slumgullions, or Some Notes toward Trying to Introduce Donald Bart...
... middle of paper ...
... and what we can do to dispel anxiety and confusion in our interpretive communities. As to the state of the narrator in our ongoing critical discussion, he remains lost, comfortably irretreivable. Whereas we may be temporarily stabilized, he somehow stays outside the discussion, drifting. I suggest we leave him there.
Works Cited
Barthelme, Donald, Sixty Stories. New York: Penguin, 1993
Calinescu, Matei, "Modernism and Ideology." Modernism: Challenges and Perspectives. Ed. Monique Chefdor, Chicago: U of Illinois Press,1986
Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1983
Graff, Gerald, "Disliking Books at an Early Age." Falling Into Theory. Ed. David H. Richter, Boston: Bedford, 1994. 36-43
Olson, Lance, "Slumgullions, Or Some Notes toward Trying to Introduce Donald Barthelme." Critical Inquiry, 1989, v14
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
From the beginning of cinema as an art form to cinema today, film has evolved and developed drastically. Each era of film from the Silent Film to the French New Wave was influenced by prior film generations and influenced those films that came after it. The era of Silent Film was very basic as it emerged when motion pictures had only begun. Across the sea, the age of German Expressionism, a film genre with features of the Silent Film era which conveyed the German people's struggle after World War I had started. Afterwards, the Studio Era surfaced and portrayed larger than life heroes in narratives with the gloss of a storybook. During the Studio Era, films like these were produced quickly because of success and began to appear mass produced
Abrams, MH, et al. Eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Abrams, M.H. and Greenblatt, Stephen eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
Antti Lehelma. "A Short Guide For Pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela." 1 June 1999. Online Posting.
The 18th century has marked the commencement of the innovation of cinematography. The invention of cinema owes its existence to a few investors and scientists who are broadly known for laying down its foundation. Among those pioneers are the Lumiere brothers who were some of the earliest contributors to cinema, inventing the first real film camera called the "cinematographe", which effectively functioned as a camera, projector and printer all in one (Barnauw, 1993:6). Thus giving rise to the art of film making. Initially, in the early years of cinema since there was no developed structure [or language] to tell cinematic stories, the early Lumiere brother?s films such as Workers leaving the Lumiere factory (1895) and The Arrival of a Train at the Station (1895), were composed of a single shot, no camera movement and only one continuous action from beginning to end (Obalil, 2007).
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
With the discovery of techniques such as continuous editing, multiple camera angles, montage editing, and more, silent filmmaking developed from simple minute-long films to some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring films that have ever been created—in only a few decades. In Visions of Light, someone alluded that if the invention of sound had come along a mere ten years later, visual storytelling would be years ahead of what it is today. This statement rings true. When looking at the immense amount of progress that was made during the silent era of films, one must consider where the art of film has been, where it is, and where it is
Films were blossoming during the “Roaring twenties.” At the beginning of the decade, films were created mostly in Hollywood and West Coast, but as well as in Arizona and New Jersey. Most people do not know that the greatest output of films was between 1920 and 1930 and was 800 films per year. Nowadays, people consider big output of 500 films per year. The film business was a huge one because the capital investments were over $2 billion. At the end of the decade there were 20 studios in Hollywood and the interest in films was greater then ever.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition Volume1. Ed. M.H.Abrams. New York: W.W.Norton and Company, Inc., 1993.
The new innovations and changes to American life in the 20th century critically impacted the time and place of the 1920's movie industry explosion. New technology like automobiles and radios would help adapt Americans to the future movie industry and put them in the position to connect and travel like never before. The ability to have faster transportation to public places and easily maintain connection between people prepared the movie industry for the push that it would soon experience.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.