Post Modernist Literature/ assignment 3/ Aguila Cinthia

1. Which 2 readings did you choose, and why did you choose them?

The atrocity exhibition by J.G Ballard and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.

2. Are these readings very good or excellent examples of post-modernist literature, basing your analysis on the ppt presentations given in class? Why/Why Not?

They are good examples of post-modernist literature because this period is regarded to show things without decorating and making them more beautiful as in modernism. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most modern life: art will do what other human institutions fail to do. (http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html). This means that in modernism literature authors try to portray beautiful moments because real life and world are not beautiful at all. They thought life was unfair and in some cases meaningless.
Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense. (http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html)
It takes themes such as irony, playfulness, black humor, pastiche, metafiction, historiographic metafiction, temporal distorsion, technoculture and hyperreality, paranoia, maximalism, minimalism, and magic realism.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas tells the story of a journalist called Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo when they arrive Las Vegas to report Mint 400 motorcycle race in 1970. However, they quit their job to start experimenting with drugs such as cocaine, LSD, cannabis, alcohol and mescaline.
This fact takes them to hallucinate, imaginating anthropomorphic desert animals, trips and made them to destroy hotel rooms and wreck cars.
The major theme of this work is the usage of drug as a mean of escaping the coarse realities of American life. Many passages of the works tell the decadence of American culture and people who thought that drugs usage was the answer to society’s problems. Throughout Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the protagonists go out of their way to degrade, abuse, and destroy symbols of American consumerism and excess, while Las Vegas symbolizes the coarse ugliness of mainstream American culture. Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo give it little respect. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas).

The Atrocity exhibition is a novel which counts on several fragments. But the definition as a novel is disputed because all its parts has an independent life.

Each chapter/story is split up into smaller sections, each only a paragraph long; Ballard has called these sections "condensed novels". There is no clear beginning or end to the book, and it does not follow any of the conventional novelistic standards: the protagonist (such as he is) changes name with each chapter/story (Talbert, Traven, Travis, Talbot, etc), just as his role and his visions of the world around him seems to change constantly. (Ballard explains in the 1990 annotated edition that the character's name was inspired by reclusive novelist B. Traven, whose identity is still not certainly known.)
The stories describe how the mass media landscape inadvertently invades and splinters the private mind of the individual. Suffering from a mental breakdown, the protagonist -- ironically, a doctor at a mental hospital -- surrenders to a world of psychosis. Traven tries to make sense of the many public events that dominate his world (Marilyn Monroe's suicide, the Space Race, and especially the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy), by restaging them in ways that, to his psychotic mind, gives them a more personal meaning. It is never quite clear how much of the novel 'really' takes place, and how much only occurs inside the protagonist's own head. Characters that he kills return again in later chapters (his wife seems to die several times). He travels with a Marilyn Monroe scorched by radiation burns, and with a bomber-pilot of whom he notes that "the planes of his face did not seem to intersect correctly." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atrocity_Exhibition).

3. Of all the readings you did this semester, which one was your favourite? Why?

My favourite reading was The Old Man and the Sea since it represents the idea of showing ourselves we are capable to achieve our goals with honor and determination. On the other hand, this novel shows courage as an important instrument in a person´s existance – courage that leads to fulfill our goals in a way that despite the fact of fighting against all odds – man in the end can feel kind of destroyed but never defeated.
Another thing that captured my attention from this novel was the way Hemingway presents Man in conection with Nature. This, in my opinion, is the perfect balance of each element in the universe where they have a very specific and important role and Man is just another element in it. In other words, Man is just part of a kind of circle which is in perpetual motion. What we can interpretate as Life itself. Perhaps, we might discuss this from a religious point of view or a philosofical one. We might even compare the main character Santiago with the image of Christ – as some critics and analists have stated in some essays. However, I think Hemingway tried to show Life as a process with a beginning and an end. And how Man should live his own life experience in the best way possible and connected with nature. Death is inevitable as part of the balance of life, so one should be prepared to face problems, find a way to stand up if we have fallen and see life as a gift , a gift we must treasure, respect and no matter how small are the things we might do, we must be confident and think that they are important.
Well, that is part of the reasons why I really enjoyed the novel. It invites people to think and analyse.

4. Of the 3 time periods we looked at this semester (Victorian, Modernist & Post-Modernist), which did you enjoy the most? Why?

I enjoyed most modernism because it deals with themes such as honor, individualism regarded as the necessity to leave a mark in life. In one life which is so temporary we need to be remembered by having done something different, which might show our individuality. Another reason why I liked this period is that I don’t think this world is a really place of pleasure, but a place where since we born we are imposed to do some things we do not really want to do, so to escape this, art seems to be a very useful a pleasant mean to block out from the world. Personally, I use music and literature for this reason and sometimes movies.
Moreover, during my adolescence I did not agree with the fact of being born, growing, studying a career and then just dying and I needed to give sense to life. I coul not comprehend how people lived most to have material success, I felt human life was undervalued. So I think I identify myself with this period of literature because I look for fighting against social conventions.