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ENGLISH 429B: Mid-Twentieth Century American Fiction, :closed_book: Book…

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        Oedipa reflects on this painting and equates its contents to her own situation
        
        Like the women in the tower, Oedipa is trapped in an monotonous life as a housewife. She wants nothing more than to escape "the confinement of that tower".
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        "Hinckle Von Hampton resembles the 4th Horseman of the Apocalypse as depicted in a strange painting by William Blake: a grey-bearded figure of whom it was written: "Behold, pale horse and its rider's name was Death and Hades followed him..."" (p.55)
        
        This painting is a depiction of a figure (Death) from the opening of the sixth chapter of the Book of Revelation. Death and Hades are given to these figures to kill the beings of the earth "with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." (6:8)
        
        From this description, Von Hampton is made out to be the villain of this novel from the very start, representing the monolithic ethos of the West.
  - - - Louis Armstrong
        
        :closed_book: Invisible Man: Similar structures between Louis' musical style and the narrator's life
        
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        Louis Armstrong demonstrated great artistry as an improviser, altering the melodies and lyrics of a song in his solos in the most unpredictable ways. As a result, each one of his performances was unique
        
        Similar to Louis' musical structure, the structure of the narrator's life is also unpredictable
        
        The narrator equates his invisibility to unpredictability and suggests that its the unpredictable that provides a sort of meaning making in his life (see quote above)
        
        :speech_balloon: "Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around. That’s what you hear vaguely in Louis’ music" (Ellison 8).
        
        :speech_balloon: "I must come out, I must emerge. And there's still a conflict within me. With Louis Armstrong one half of me says, "Open the window and let the foul air out," while the other half says, "It was good green corn before the harvest." Of course Louis was kidding, he wouldn’t have thrown old Bad Air out, because it would have broken up the music and the dance, when it was the good music that came from the bell of old Bad Air’ horn that counted. Old Bad Aid is still around with his music and his dancing and his diversity, and I'll be up and around with mine" (Ellison 581).
        
        The narrator acknowledges and admires Louis' method of powering through the "Bad Air" to find the proper melody of a jazz song
        
        The narrator makes his own vow to do the same in his life. He will embrace the bad situations as they appear and try to improvise himself to make his own metaphorical "good music"
        
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        One of the most influential jazz artists of all time
        
        makes appearances in both Invisible Man and Mumbo Jumbo
        
        :closed_book: Mumbo Jumbo: Louis' real life experiences blends in with the narrative of "Jes Grew"
        
        :speech_balloon: "Once the band starts, everybody starts swaying from one side of the street to the other, especially those who drop in and follow the ones who have been to the funeral. These people are known as 'the second line', and the may be anyone passing along the street who wants to hear the music. The spirit hits them and they follow"** (My italics)" (Reed 7)
        
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        Reed integrates this autobiographical quote from Louis Armstrong, knowing that his readers will understand its reference to marching bands that often played at funerals in African American communities
        
        He adds his own italics to emphasize and confirm the fact that the 'spirit' of "Jes Grew" is a very real life concept that occurs not just in Mumbo Jumbo
    - - :speech_balloon: "Hymn
        High above the L.A. freeways,
        And the traffic's whine,
        Stands the well-known Galactronics
        Branch of Yoyodyne.
        To the end, we swear undying
        Loyalty to you,
        Pink pavilions bravely shining,
        Palm trees tall and true" (Pynchon 76).
        :pencil2: - Pynchon's corporate hymn of the Yoyodyne employees contributes to one of the many ways in which satire and humour are integrated into the book
        
        This particular song satirizes the false sense of belonging that corporate management tends to give to their employees.
      - :pencil2: Pynchon uses The Paranoids to mock the hippie and punk culture of the 1960's as well as amusingly point to the paranoia that Oedipa experiences throughout the book
        
        :speech_balloon: "What chance has a lonely surfer boy
        For the love of a surfer chick,
        With all these Humber Humbert cats
        Coming on so big and sick?
        For me, my baby was a woman.
        For him she's just another nymphet" (Pynchon 142)
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        In the opening line of Serge's Song, Pynchon makes a reference to Nabokov's Lolita and provides some of the earlier usage of the term "nymphet" entering the literary canon
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        Oedipa finds herself at a play called The Courier's Tragedy, which ends up having many paralells with events in Oedipa's life
        
        Pynchon intentionally makes the play seem meaningful, but it only further obscures things for Oedipa (this obscuring happens more and more frequently as Oedipa's obsession with Tristero grows stronger
        
        Overall, Pynchon includes this play to reflect the book's main plot and quicken its pace.
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        The character of Clare Quilty is more subtle in his devotion to Dolores (A.K.A Lolita).
        
        He weaves himself into Dolores' life starting as a picture on her wall, following her and Humbert Humbert on the road, writing the school play that she stars in, successfully stealing her away (along with her heart), and then being murdered by Humber Humbert.
  - - - :pencil2: Humbert Humbert considers himself to be more of a poet than a pedophile. His art form is found in the beautiful language he produces to cover up his vile pedophilic interests and acts. He mesmerizes his jury with overly-descriptive, ornate words: :speech_balloon: "Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. [...] Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill” (Nabokov 87).
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        Genly Ai creates his own form of literature in the report he compiles to bring back to the Ekumen
        
        He acknowledges that his report is told as a story with more than one voice. The entirety of LHOD is a collection of field notes, reports, personal journal entries, as well as Gethenian myths and legends
        
        :speech_balloon: The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story” (Le Guin 1).
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        Throughout LHOD, Le Guin reinforces the ties of language and culture as shown in Genly Ai’s cultural exploration of Gethen
        
        Le Guin creates a juxtaposition of outsider and insider perspectives to shed light on the idea that cultural connections to language can influence the way one thinks (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)
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        Despite having a seemingly negative personality, Dr. Tamkin always seems to communicate positive ideas, many in the form of grand stories and trustworthy advice
        
        Tommy Wilhelm's infatuation with Tamkin's tales and wise words eventually turns towards suspicion and mistrust, yet he can't seem to help but follow Tamkin. Tamkin's way of conveying himself is an art in itself.
        
        In his most-likely deceptions, Wilhelm still seems to take away a number of redeeming ideas and genuine values that make him a more free and self-aware individual at the end of the book
  - - - :closed_book: Mumbo Jumbo: the Harlem Renaissance is the backdrop for Ishmael Reed's gathering of cultural, religious, historic, and race relations.
        
        :speech_balloon: “So don't ask me how to catch Jes Grew. Ask Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, your musicians, ask them how to catch it. Ask those people who be shaking their tambourines impervious of the ridicule they receive from Black and White Atonists, Europe the ghost rattling its chains down the deserted halls of their brains.” (Reed 152)
        
        Reed's entire novel celebrates African American culture of the Harlem Renaissance and personifies it with his continuous demonstrations of "Jes Grew"
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        During this period, artists such as writers and painters were often indebted to white benefactors
        
        This patron-artist relationship, which was mostly financial, resulted in works of black artists beings materialistically bound to white
      - :closed_book: Mumbo Jumbo: Hinckle Von Vampton = Carl Van Vechten
        
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        Reed's character Hinckle Von Vampton is based on white patron, writer and photographer, Carl Van Vechten
        
        Van Vechten was a big supporter and admirer of the black culture and artists that arose from the Harlem Renaissance
        
        Some of his most notable projects include portraits of his friends and acquaintances who were famous figures of the Harlem Renaissance. His subjects included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Horace Pippin, Bessie Smith, Alain Locke, etc.
        
        His overall association with the movement ended up causing a great amount of controversy, particularly in his book on Harlem titled N** Heaven. Some of his most notable critics included W.E.B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison
        
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        Ishmael Reed appears to critique Von Vechten's involvement with the Harlem Renaissance by depicting him as a character whose interests in black culture appear inauthentic and inattentive.
        
        A particular moment that encapsulates Reed's attitude towards Von Vichten is when Von Vamptom tries to recruit poet Nathan Brown as his Talking Android: :speech_balloon: ""All Coons Look Alike to Me," mutters Nathan Brown vacantly [...] What was that? I think that when people like you, Mr. Von Vampton, say "The Negro Experience" you are saying that all Negroes experience the world the same way. In that way you can isolate the misfits who would propel them into penetrating the ceiling of this bind you and your assistants have established in this country. The ceiling above which no slave would be allowed to penetrate without stirring the kept bloodhounds" (Reed 117).
    - - :pencil2: Chronologically, one of the most prominent moments in history for African American culture was followed by a book that coped with the fading of African American power, a virtual invisibility of sorts
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        Isolation is also a form of punishment for the Gethenian prisoners. Not only are they isolated from the rest of society, they are forcefully isolated from their natural sexual identities (given drugs to subdue/bypass the phase of Kemmer).
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        Genly and Estraven are isolated from the rest of the world as they trek across the snowy terrain to sneak back into Karhide
        
        The two beings begin their journey feeling isolated from one another (on an account of their miscommunication) but they end up bonding in their isolation: :speech_balloon: "up here on the Ice each of us is singular, isolate, I as cut off from those like me, from my society and its rules, as he from his. There is no world full of other Gethenians here to explain and support my existence. We are equals at last, equal, alien, alone. [...] After a while he too came to speak of isolation, of loneliness" (Le Guin 250-251).
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        Upon deciding to take on the role as executor of Inverarity’s will, Oedipa finds herself in San Narciso. In this town, she is reborn into a new existence, first taking a new lover and eventually taking on a detective-like role. What begins as a newfound independence slowly changes back into isolation with a number of notable events affecting those around her. Her husband has been overtaken by LSD, her therapist (Dr. Hilarious) has gone mad, her lover has eloped, the director of the Courier’s Tragedy has committed suicide, Emory Bortz ignores his own wife and kids, etc.
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        Oedipa encounters an entire group of self-identified isolates who share a common goal to "get to where you don’t need [love]. (Pynchon 107)
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        Wilhelm exists in the capitalistic, post-World War Two society of New York This society is heavily based on the forces of materialism with a disregard for humans. In his lack of money and success, Wilhelm is ultimately alientated from society
        
        Wilhelm's father, Dr. Adler, is a prime example of a member of this society as he is transfixed on money and views his son as a failure for his lack of money
        
        Wilhelm's desire to have material success forces his distancing from reality. He wants to be an actor despite the risk and familial disapproval.
        
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        "He was to be freed from the anxious and narrow life of the average" (Bellow 19).
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        Humbert Humbert’s worldview is entirely related to himself, leaving him isolated from any form of external reality. This lack of external reality prevents him from seeing his wrongdoings, including his kidnapping and infliction of sexual abuse of a minor
        
        His solipsism leads him to think that the events of his life are acts of fate
        
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        Humbert Humbert intentionally isolates himself and Dolores from the rest of society to serve to his fantasy of living in a world only with his Lolita
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        Jes Grew, the expression of African American culture is isolated from African Americans (dehumanization and treated as a sort of disease that infects people
        
        Isolation is often used in a medical way in this book to describe the "cases" of Jes Grew: :speech_balloon: “800 CASES REPORTED SINCE LAST NIGHT WHICH WERE IMMEDIATELY ISOLATED IN HASTILY BUILT Y.M.C.A” (Reed 32)
      - :speech_balloon: “In that way you can isolate the misfits who would propel them into penetrating the ceiling of this bind you and your assistants have established in this country” (Reed 117)
        
        Reed’s commentary on how white culture often tries to repress, diminish, and exterminate African American culture
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        In search for a strategy to escape the prejudiced system that oppresses him, the narrator winds up on a long-winded journey of self-discovery
        
        The narrator encounters many characters who are all deeply stubborn in the solutions they think are right.
        -- Grandfather thinks the solution lies in total agreeance and adherence to white power
        -- Headmaster thinks the solution is modeling one’s behaviour on white people who have gained power in order to gain power
        -- Ras the Exhorter thinks the solution is the destruction of white people will open up a path to freedom
        
        Every time the narrator tries to follow in their paths, he loses sense of his identity and beliefs, further preventing his escape from the system
        
        The narrator eventually finds that his own solution lies in isolation.
        
        :speech_balloon: " I was pulled this way and that for longer than i can remember and my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. So after years of trying to adopt the opinion of others, I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man" (Ellison 573).
        
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        The narrator's isolation allows him to escape prejudice and even subtly rebel against it as he lives rent-free in "the basement of a building rented strictly whites (Ellison 5)
        
        The narrator finally comes to terms with his identity and beliefs: He is an invisible man
        
        This discovery allows him to move forward
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        In Humbert Humbert's conquest to ultimately end up with Lolita he reveals his true feelings towards women who don't fall under the nymphet category
        
        He only recognizes the ways women can serve him (home-cooked meals, sex, a way to hide his pedophilia)
        
        He thinks women only care about money and good looks. In this belief, he thinks that because he has these two assets, he can have any woman we wants "at the snap of [his] fingers" (Nabokov 25)
        
        His descriptions of women, including Lolita are typically physical. If he describes any part of a woman's personality, it is typically belittling
        -- :speech_balloon: He described his wife Valeria as
        "a large, puffy, short-legged, big-breasted and practically brainless baba" (Nabokov 26)
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        When Humbert eventually finds his opportunity to fulfill his pedophilic desires with Lolita, he takes possession of her legally and literally
        
        He essentially takes away Dolores' identity (strips her of her name, removes her attachments to family, limits her time with friends, limits her overall scope of the world (he wants to be the only one in her world)
        
        His overall treatment of Lolita is not different than his treatment of other women in the end. He sees her only for her looks (particularly her youth), he rarely talks of her personality unless its about her immaturity, she only exists in his life to fulfill his desires.
        
        :speech_balloon: The word “forever” referred only to my own passion to the eternal Lolita as reflected in my blood. The Lolita whose iliac crests had not yet flared, the Lolita that today I could touch and smell and hear and see… (Nabokov 65)
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        Genly Ai is ignorant in the way he defaults to the "he" pronoun whenever he describes genderless Gethenians
        
        his misgendering is not at all accidental because he has studied/been around Gethenians for an extended period of time
        
        he forces his own assumptions of gender upon the Gethenians, with a refusal to acknowledge that they don't assume a gender: :speech_balloon: I was still far from being able to see the people of the planet through their own eyes. I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own” (Le Guin 12)
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        In the times Genly describes the female characteristics of the Gethenians, his choice of language is most often pejorative
        
        His choice in characteristics are typically related to women being angry, fat, prying, and dumb
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        Tommy Wilhelm has a deep contempt for his wife (Margaret)
        
        He makes Margaret out to be a monster with his prejudiced descriptions of her:
        -- :speech_balloon: "Her instinct told her that his was her opportunity, and she was giving him the works" (Bellow 27)
        -- :speech_balloon: [S]he hates me. I feel that she's strangling me. I can't catch my breath. She just has fixed on herself to kill me. She can do it at a long distance. One of these days I'll be struck down by suffocation or apoplexy because of her. I just can't catch my breath" (Bellow 45)
        
        :speech_balloon: He blames his filthy living conditions on not having "to look after [his] things" (Bellow 33)
        
        Tommy takes no blame for his failed marriage despite marrying Margaret after deciding not to, cheating on her, and wanting to divorce her/leaver to her raise two kids by herself
        -- :speech_balloon: "He had made up his mind not to marry his wife, but ran off and got married" (Bellow 19)
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        A reason for his destructive attitude towards his wife most likely comes from the misogynists that he interacts with
        
        Dr. Tamkin reassures Tommy that people are always jealous of a man who leaves his wife
        -- :speech_balloon: "I want you to see how some people free themselves from morbid guilt feelings and follow their instincts. Innately, the female knows how to cripple by sickening a man with guilt. [...] and she sends her curse to make a fellow impotent" (Bellow 93)
        
        Rappaport has two families. When he gets sick of one family or wife, he goes to the other
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        One of the aspects of Le Guin's world-building technique in her book is the integration of genderless aspects of her fictional alien characters
        
        Gethenians are genderless beings who only assume a sexual identity during the phase of kemmer
        
        Genly Ai (who automatically represents the human reader) is immersed in a society with this new mode of being. Readers must hear his insider perspectives as well as other Gethenian perspectives and confront the ambiguity of gender
        
        In this world-building choice, Le Guin both critiques and sparks discussion around the materialization of an entirely new world and mode of social exchange (finally! a book that doesn't heavily enforce a gender binary!)
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        Oedipa Maas, who happens to be the only female protagonist in the books of ENGL429B, shows a fluidity in her ability to adhere to/defy the traditional roles of her female gender
        
        Oedipa's character is first introduced as a woman who fulfills her gender role of a 1960's housewife. She adheres to her monotonous wifely duties of gardening, grocery shopping, mixing drinks, making dinner, and tending to her husband's before asking for his help on how she is to carry out her role as executor of her dead ex-boyfriend's will
        
        When Oedipa decides to fulfill her ex-boyfriend's request, her housewife role transforms into that of a more independent/curious woman
        
        She immediately cheats on her husband by sleeping with a new man (sexual independence)
        
        She also takes on a detective role (typically occupied by men). In this role, more parts of Oedipa's true personality come out. Her curiosity, anxiety, and intelligence are more visible than when she was a simple housewife.
        
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        In integrating the image of Rapunzel at the top of the tower, Pynchon indicates Oedipa's desire to escape from her marginalized identity as a woman in a male-dominated society
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        In his inclusion of the Haitian icons of Erzulie/Loas, Reed challenges and sparks discussion over the representation of African American women in a white, seemingly patriarchal society
        
        This inclusion bears a connection to women's colonial Haitian roots (and overall culture as African Americans)
        
        :speech_balloon: "Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker are 2 aspects of Erzulie.)" (Reed 162)