Isabel Allende’s landmark
House of the Spirits, which follows
four generations of the Trueba family throughout political conflict in Chile,was published 30 years ago. The
novel is notably characterized by its magical realism—the blending of the
magical and paranormal with reality—and was awarded Chile’s Paranorma
Literario award.
Here are 5 magical
realist texts that sit alongside House of the Spirits within the literary genre:
1. Cellophane by Marie Arana
Published
in 2006, Cellophane echoes
many of the themes and character development in House of the Spirits. Fans of Allende would adore Arana.
2. Dust Tracks on a
Road by Zora Neale Hurston
Though
this is Hurston’s memoir, her detailed accounts of her childhood stories and
imaginations—from the elaborate saga of Miss Corn-Cob and Mr. Sweet Smell to
the alligator man—as well as her real-life visions evoke magical realist
imagery.
3. Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
With
influences from classical mythology and African American folklore, this novel
takes place on the island of Willow Springs off the coast of Georgia and
records the magical story of Mama Day, her family, and her encounter with dark
magic.
4. Like Water For
Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Esquivel
mingles the domestic sphere with the supernatural in her famous novel about
Tita and her mystical cooking that challenges conventions of tradition.
5. One Hundred Years
of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia
Marquez
One
of the most defining and most often cited magical realism texts, the novel
follows the Buendîa family and the crossing between dream, invented, and real
worlds.
I remember when this
August 2004 Economist issue arrived at my family’s home. My brother was
visiting from New York where he was at Columbia’s School of Journalism, and he
and my father told me to remember the cover image because it represented the
future of journalism. For some reason, the ransom note-inspired cover stuck in
my memory and I have realized over and over that it speaks a truth still
relevant today.
What has changed in
journalism and other printed material since 2004?
The development of a new
genre of literature. Regardless of one’s opinion about print vs. digital
material, the reality is that digital media has become a genre all its own
within the literary tradition complete with its own digital archive.
What makes online
literature and journalism its own genre is complex, from the immediacy of
publication and reception to the physical manifestation it takes on desktops,
iPhones, and iPads. One notable characteristic of the genre is the new sense of
time and space. Digital literary material is often shorter and is marked by
straightforward diction and the use of imagery to invoke something in fewer
words. The scale has also shifted within this new genre, with more information
available in a shorter amount of time in a larger level of accessibility than
print material. In this way, digital literary material facilitates
transnational communication and the development of globalized online
communities and discourse (see the Arab Spring).
Other aspects of the
genre include the use of external links,
which function as a type of digital embedded narrative in which there is a
story within a story. An article’s external link amplifies the material in the
original text, creating a cross-disciplinary frame within a frame. It also
facilitates communication between writers and publications, creating an online
community and forum.
Finally, the digital
literary genre’s most notable quality: the digital soapbox. Online literature
is often unmediated and is an available location for multiple voices as once.
Our confession culture means that people often find self-authenticity through
voice, and the internet is an immediately accessible publication space. Because
of this, secret hobbies and quirks are transformed into public art forms and
online forums, cultivating subcultures that transcend geographic and social
boundaries. The digital soapbox is perhaps the most defining aspect of the
digital literary genre that most characterizes the archive and distinguishes it
from print material, providing a product unique to online materials.
The charm of receiving clippings you could
send through email—funny police blotters from my mother and
E.E. Cummings poems from my longtime pen pal—as well as things you
cannot—New England fall leaves from my grandmother.
The joy of seeing the sender’s handwriting
and scratched out mistakes
Within a postmodern
theoretical framework, there are no absolute truths because truth is considered
a social construct based on historical moments and cultural contexts. According
to this logic, everything we know is based on the social context in which we
live. Currently, academic disciples from ethnic studies to philosophy to art
are influenced by postmodern theory.
In postmodern literary
theory, the traditional interpretation maintains an incompatibility between
religion and literature based on the theory’s dismantling of universals and
absolute truths. Since religion claims to have dogmas and doctrines, it is at
odds with postmodernism.
Yet in the academy and in
the real world, spirituality remains ever-present. In spite of the rise of
secularism, publicity on disagreements with the Catholic Church, and the
replacement of Genesis with evolution, theological concerns and mystical experiences
continue to be relevant and to have significance for many people.
In the late twentieth
century and early twenty-first, theorists observed a reemergence of existential
and spiritual questions in American literature, marking a transition that continues
today. This return of theological dialogue within literary works disrupts the
assumed incompatibility between religion and literature and marks fiction and
nonfiction as a location for exploring spiritual themes. The rise of religious
discourse in literature suggests that either traditional interpretations of
postmodernism have significant shortcomings insofar as they do not account for
religious questions or that there is a shift within the theory in which there
is a renewed interest in religious themes within postmodernity. In the latter,
postmodernism could provide tools for religious questions regarding faith,
institution, and truth.
There are many literary
texts within this movement that engage in religious and existential dialogues within postmodern frameworks. Some
authors who have been credited as postmodernists writing about religious themes
include Toni Morrison, Allen Ginsberg, Don DeLillo, and bell hooks, to name a
few. These writers are informed by postmodern concepts of race, gender,
existentialism, and subjectivity and apply them to religious issues. This
movement within the literary tradition to incorporate religious topics and
themes in a postmodern era suggests excluding religious dialogue ignores the
religious and existential impulse and the influence of religious traditions on
culture and history.
Within the creative genre
of literature, a postmodern theoretical framework can provide tools that help
construct a critique of traditional ideas of God in search of existential
meaning beyond human institutions. By utilizing the postmodern idea of
decentering universals, literary works can create a new dialogue about religion
and religious traditions that participates in a theoretical, literary, and
cultural transition in the second half of the twentieth century.
Theorists who have
contributed to this conversation include the oft-credited founder of
postmodernism, Jacques Derrida (pictured), whose “theological turn” in Acts of Religion explored religious questions regarding truth and
the aporia between the empirical and the transcendental. Additionally, Pericles
Lewis suggests in Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel that literature began replacing institutional
religion in the middle of the twentieth century by reimagining religion and
abstracting spiritual truths from tradition. Amy Hungerford argues that in a
pluralist and postmodern era, meaninglessness is resolved in literature. She
borrows Graham Ward’s phrase “postmodern theology” to suggest that
characteristics of the theory can be valuably applied to religion in literature
in order to revise dominant religious paradigms. Feminist theologians and third
wave feminists who are informed by postmodernism, from Mary McClintock
Fulkerson to Luce Irigaray, pioneer the reimagination of traditional
patriarchal religion and disrupt assumed religious universals of God the Father
and the masculine trinity.
These historical, cultural, and literary
conversations leave two questions. First, what is the future of postmodernism
given its problematic stance on religion? And second, what is the future of
religion, given the persuading postmodern
I am not a hipster. I do
not wear large horn-rimmed glasses and too much American Apparel, ride a Fixie, or exclusively drink
coffee at Intelligentsia.
I am, however,
sympathetic to (what I think) the hipster message is. According to Urban
Dictionary, “Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's
and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive
politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and
witty banter.” For me, the hipster cause questions the universality of mass
consumer culture, appreciates intellectualism, and, most notably, engages in a
nostalgia that honors a culture very distant from our tech-savvy, immediately
available information-filled 21st century. A lot has happened in the
past 30 years: the internet happened, small farm culture has been replaced with
GMOs, and people’s identities have been summed up on their Facebooks, Twitters,
and a Google search. While these advances have their amazing benefits, they
have also altered culture in more ways than we could know in the midst of this
historical moment. There are constant elegies for local grocery stores,
lamentations of the hardcopy book, and countless recollections, “remember when
we used to have to remember trivia instead of look it up on our smart phones?”
Maybe a little nostalgia
is not a bad thing.
Amidst BP oil spills,
tailored advertisements on Faceboks pages, and new online avenues of bullying,
perhaps a reclamation of past art forms and cultural practices is a good idea.
Go to the library. Rethink the ethics of mass consumer culture. Play Trivial
Pursuit without the iPad on hand.
Not that you have to
start listening to bands before they are cool or start wearing excessive
amounts of flannel any time soon. And by no means do you have to give up the
wonder of Skype or your Netflix queue.
2.
The macho culture the ad prescribes is not a good model for masculinity.
3.
Dr Pepper 10’s Imagined Drinkers: Mr. T doing one-armed pushups, the Browny man
cutting down a tree in flannel, and Crocodile Dundee wrestling the love child
of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. The reality: these macho prototypes don’t
exist. Thankfully.
4.
Women can drive ATVs in the jungle, too.
5.
Despite the attempt to find a niche with the man crowd like Dove Men+Care and
MACH3 Razors for Men, Dr Pepper 10 has perpetrated problematic gender
stereotypes for men and women in their ad campaign. Oops.
How did Hillary Clinton
rise from the ashes of being a “Harpy” and “Shrew” to being approachable and witty and America’s most admired
woman according to a Gallup poll in December 2011?
Perhaps it is because
Hillary Clinton has publicly stepped out of her former-president husband’s
shadow as Secretary of State. Maybe it is because she has proven herself a
stronger woman politician than other women in politics. Or perhaps it
is because, as Jezebelargues, America itself
has changed its attitude toward women in the public eye.
One thing is certain
about Hillary Clinton: she has successfully maintained a consistent reaction to
criticism insofar as she has maintained consistency as a woman in politics. She
was the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley College, twice-listed
as one of the top 100 most influential lawyers in America, a longtime advocate
for healthcare as well as children’s, women’s, and family issues, in 2008 won
more primaries than any other woman candidate, and has set records for
most-traveled secretary for time in office. In spite of the ebb and flow of
caricatures that portray her as an emasculator and a gender-bending annoyance,
Clinton has remained a strong presence in advocacy projects, business, and
politics.
So what has changed?
The rebranding of the
caricature. The ball-buster is now a funny and approachable ball-buster thanks
to Texts From Hillary’s repopularization of the old cartoon on the funnier side
of the same coin. In many ways, Hillary Clinton’s current moment as a witty
politician and woman is in stark contrast to her previous public incarnations
as a ball-busting, cold-hearted witch. But in many other ways, these
characteristics are not conflicting because they present an image of a woman
who has redefined femininity and women’s political presence. The other side of
the woman-in-power coin is now a funnier and more clever glimpse at the same
thing. This new image is less about politics and approval ratings and more
about portraying the same power as simply a sunnier side of women today who are
simultaneously smart, challenging, satirical, and feminine.
The film adaptation of
Jack Kerouac’s generation-defining On The Road is coming out this May, bringing up a lot of
themes of American identity, wanderlust, and existential fulfillment (or lack
thereof). Yet one thing that is often overlooked in readings of On The Road is its problematic portrayal of manhood and
womanhood. In spite of the novel’s nostalgic musings that defined the Beat
generation, its portrayal of relationships between men and women is jarringly
problematic, hierarchical, and abusive. How can we reconcile the book’s
timeless theme of soul-searching with the disturbing relationships between and
portrayals of men and women in 2012?
When Kerouac and Neal
Cassady made their odyssey across America
they were trying to break free from the suburban, pre-Kennedy corporate drone
that represented the norm for American men. Their characters, Sal Paradise and
Dean Moriarty, are in search of independence, ruggedness, and adventure and
often refer to themselves as cowboys. As incarnations of the modern cowboy, the
two men feel a sense of Western independence in the midst of the 1950s suburban
male prototype. They successfully create a new heroic figure that embodied
independence and rugged adventure, a stark contrast to the buttoned up
mid-century American man. Yet Kerouac’s version of the cowboy has a flawed
sense of masculinity that romanticizes and idolizes individualism and
selfishness.
The men’s relationships
with the women in their lives became complicated because they often represented
the social system the men are fighting against and they are characterized in
the novel with domesticity, maternity, and loyalty to relationships and
responsibilities (see Marylou, Camille, and Old Bull’s wife, Jane). Thus, the
women present a threat to Kerouac’s new man of the West and are repeatedly
abandoned and are physically and emotionally abused. Additionally, women’s need
for new gender roles in the 1950s is overlooked in the novel, and they are
neglected the opportunity for their equivalent of a cowboy ethic.
In an attempt to restore
the lost masculinity from the American West in 1950s America, Kerouac’s men
tragically become selfish and self-destructive and simultaneously subjugate the
women in their lives because of their association with this bourgeois domestic
system.
In 2012, how should we
read On The Road and its
revival in film? There are still problematic social expectations for both
genders today, and controversy about sexuality are frequently in the news, but
American culture has come a long way since the novel was published. Is it
possible to read the more positive themes of self-discovery, liberation from
The Man, and adventure in the upcoming film without getting prescribed
negative, dated themes of manhood and womanhood in our historical moment? Can
we separate the idyllic nostalgia for wanderlust from the reality?
