Subject: From Susan Hoyle: on The Vampire Tapestry.
Susan is having trouble posting to the list so I am putting these two on for her:
First one:
At last I received my copy of this book, but then was unavoidably away from home and computer for a couple of weeks. In my return, way behind on all sorts of lists, I decided to go first with this light volume.... These are my notes on the first three chapters, written before I read what y'all have said about them.
Like many others who have been reading it, this is my first vampire book. It is not a genre which has ever appealed to me, but I have hopes that I will learn something from VT -- if only why I will never bother reading a vampire book again. I'd like to find a better response in myself than that, of course.
I liked the opening: I like her use of punctuation; it made me feel confident of Charnas' control as a writer. However, I failed utterly to enter into Katje's conviction that Weyland was a vampire. It read like the sudden 'insights' one has, and forgets as quickly, because they are plainly daft. I could believe her immediate fear at that level, but not in a way that would allow me to continue fearful for her in his presence. Perhaps we weren't meant to, but it seemed to me that we were intended to see her in this light.
How sad it is how clear it is that this was written pre-AIDS.
Katje is an interestingly unsympathetic character. Unreconstructed late 70s Afrikaaners remain spooky, at least to this barely reconstructed 60s leftie. It may be hard to remember that at the time this book was written, however alienated Katje may have felt from her 'homeland', supporters of apartheid were still firmly in control of the government and, above all, the police; and no one surely ever imagined that Nelson Mandela would be let out alive, let alone to run for President and become the world's favourite politician... And this Katje is a hunter, with hunter's instincts, whatever they are. People with guns are dangerous. Her shooting Weyland seemed as weird to me as it did to the few who knew she'd done it.
And so to Mark and his lovely family. Mark is another interestingly unsympathetic character, a survivor who needs to live on his wits, like Katje; though he uses money rather than a gun. Less dangerous in the short term, but nasty all the same. Children can be very tough, and Mark is tough. I need to know much more about his relationship with the ghastly Roger in order to understand why he behaves as he does, but overall I found the dynamic much more convincing than in the first chapter: and when the poor lad offers himself to Weyland, I felt engaged by the plot for the first time.
I like the suggestion that if we, humans, are not at the top of the food chain then we need to rethink our ethics, and I like the implicit discussion of that -- and here in chapter three we get some explicit discussion. Very jolly. But we *are* at the top of the food chain, so I'm not clear where we are meant to take this stuff. If little green men arrive from Mars with ill intent, then the skills that Mark and especially Katje have will be at a premium, but until then I'd prefer to keep my distance. Or perhaps it is about power and those who believe that some humans are ahead of others in the foodchain (or whatever chain). That keeps the theme relevant to our lives, but I'm not happy with using the vampire as an example -- the point is that he/it *is* un-human and that his need for food is as important and by implication as legitimate to him as ours is to us.
It is now a week (and several house-guests) later. The newspaper this morning has a grim story, which I will not be reading in detail, about a woman convicted of murder in Germany who 'became a vampire' in Britain. Apparently she joined a group of 'vampires'. And yes, I did find myself thinking that Weyland would take a very dim view of all these shenanigans...
The middle story with Floria was, as I am pretty sure the rest of the reading group will have agreed, the most satisfactory -- although I am resistant to tales in which psychologists hold some key to the human condition. (I just wasted a few hours watching The Sixth Sense, so I am allowed to be bitter, surely.) If I read it aright, what got to Weyland was not sex, not loneliness, not boredom even, but an appeal to his imagination -- 'put yourself in this situation, in this person's shoes... and tell me about it...'. This may be a liitle self-serving of the (very imaginative) author, but I'm willing to let her get away with it, if she continues to use her imagination.
Which doesn't really happen. The last two stories seemed incompletely imagined. Weyland continues interesting, but the people around him are intriguing at best and ciphers usually. The operatic interlude did not convince me, neither in its premise nor in its detail; while the New Mexico univ story read more like a pastiche of something which I for one have never read... As the evidence piles up and the horrid Allan fellow draws closer, I could only think: "What kept you?" Perhaps these characters are meant to tell us how Weyland sees them, but if that is so it only tells me why vampiric society is not for me.
She also meant to add the following:
I meant to say in my original notes about VT that the other Big Change in the world (in addition that is to AIDS) is the impact of computers on academic life -- all those typewriters and carbon-copies, and no emails! Life would generally be more difficult for Weyland nowadays. But who knows what he will need to do to survive in 30 years' time (assuming it was 20 years ago that he went back to sleep). Perhaps not computer science.
From Susan Hoyle
Two quick notes, while I prepare my Gothic lit syllabus (URL shortly):
Yes, the Penguin book doesn't emphasize the German. Generally, studies of the Gothic tend to be nationally-focused, especially for English-language literature. I am increasingly thinking that such a concentration is a fundamental mistake, since the Gothic looks, over time, as a world lit phenomenon. Americans and Japanese deliberately pick up the imported Gothic to create native twists, then their contributions enter the world mix. French and German authors play key roles in the rise of the British Gothic. Local cultures play key roles in other regions' texts: Haitian voodoo in American, British, and Danish stories; continental vampire stories in *Dracula*. Would love to hear thoughts on this -
I'm not sure of the politics, yet, and am rereading the last section with an eye to this question. We have several explicit political topics raised already: South African apartheid, the politics of *Tosca*. Since the novel uses Weyland partly as a satirical implement, I suspect we might find him revealing a critique of contemporary politics.
(I think Davenport-Hines is way off on this idea of his. He simply skips the avowed radicalism of authors like Godwin or Charles Johnson, yanks Mary Shelley's novel like taffy, ignores the substantial, longstanding feminist model of the female Gothic. His conservative model, I suspect, is one reason Anne Rice likes his book.)
Bryan
From: "Bethany Nowviskie" A few thoughts on "The Last of Dr. Weyland," which is the chapter in which
both the character and the novel (it seems to me) gain the crucial measure
of self-awareness necessary for both holding on and letting go.
It's tempting to talk about this vision of the university and Weyland's
place as an academic -- about the literal vampirism here displayed in
faculty/grad-student relations, about the "hunger" of scholarship and the
need to "adjust one's hungers to the times." There is of course this:
"Scholarship was the best game humankind had yet invented: intricate,
demanding, rich with risk and reward -- akin in many ways to the hunt
itself." Some one will probably pick up on this thread. I'd be interested
to hear if you think the picture of academic life has changed in this
chapter from the opening scenes with Katje, for all the catharsis of therapy
and the opera.
I was relieved to find this section much less misanthropic than the last.
The constant vignettes of crass, stupid, self-involved, annoying opera-goers
in "A Musical Interlude" was more than I could bear -- the one who hates
"smart-talking women" but puts up with one in the hope of selling her some
artwork; the t-shirt-buying woman selfrighteously angry at her
possibly-drugged-out little sister. The sister's boyfriend who thinks it's
all "rutting music;" the man who falls asleep but will later rave about the
performance until he believes he heard it, the woman who finds Scarpia a
"nasty brute, but so virile -- better than Telly Sevalas." (Worth coming
from Buffalo for.) The woman in gold lame' evaluating the "boring
hindquarters most guys got." It was unremitting.
In "The Last of Dr. Weyland," on the other hand, we have Alison and Irv (the
warm center), Dorothea, who "likes a world with wonders in it," and Letty
(connected even through her wanderlust) -- even an affectionate
representation of a minor figure, Professor "Mapoblonsky." And the crowd
scenes this time have lost their cruelty. Where, in the last chapter, we
saw petty people in conversation at their petty worst, here we get passing
glimpses of untold stories, interesting lives -- the young man telling an
Anglo couple about floating under polar ice in a submarine. The view of
victims is kinder, too, and respects their own untold stories -- the girl in
a long dress and buckled boots, "heading to Denver with her calico cat in
her arms."
And of course there's Irv, who shows us real humanity and prompts real love
and grief. Our first sight of him is when he's encouraging Alison with talk
of needing "good people with good hearts" in the profession. He is a foil
to Weyland, even in his concept of scholarship: "I know taking down oral
history isn't large conceptual work, Weyland's style, but it's not sterile
scholasticism, either. We can rescue human lives and cultures from
oblivion. We can snatch history from the jaws of death." It is through
Irv that Weyland begins to understand the human condition (the "short
trajectories of human lives"), reflecting that "Alison can't wait a hundred
years for some swing of events in her favor."
The real connection between Weyland and the human race -- despite past bouts
with power and sex and art -- comes into focus in this last chapter, and is
first fully articulated by Weyland in the unmailed letter to Dr. Landauer.
Distressed humans need to have their vision focussed outward while a
distressed predator's need is for inner vision. Is this a chapter of last,
lost chances? Alan Reese "failed the final test." Does Weyland fail too,
by opting out of pain and love and memory?
Bethany Nowviskie To Litalk-l
January 6, 2002
Re: The Vampire Tapestry, Part 5: Our natural business lies in escaping
The quoted line comes from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons
and is one of the many resonant lines in the play which belong to
a specific context but echo in the mind because they embody a
real general truth. It's the way I see the end of this book. In the
last few pages at long last we get a real sense of the weird (using
the word in its supernatural sense) as Weyland turns away from
his act as a human being; at the same time he does what in this
world is wisest. Weyland's turn to sleep is not a paean
to death or oblivion, but rather a better alternative to suicide.
I agree with Bethany that there is much misanthropic in Part 4, but
I don't see this Part as any different from the rest and I like the
hardness; I find it a relief from cant. Irv is presented as likable,
but also a fool, a sap; someone around whom Weyland
could last and last and last, but he commits suicide and so
spoils it for Weyland. Dorothea is an irritant; of course
Weyland did nothing. she herself has no idea why Irv
killed himself. Nor do we. Still human beings seem to get upset
over suicide and investigate -- that's the ironic tone here.
Weyland feels for Irv as he feels for Mark, these are
the sensitive types who go to the wall. The last we
hear of Mark he has escaped too. Our natural business.
The remarks on the opera reminded me of remarks I have heard
when going to opera: once my husband and I as
graduate students got into a box from being in standing
room. There were three overly-dressed people in the box;
one man let me sit in the first row next to the woman (one
of the three) because I was short. Their remarks were things
like "great boobs" (for the soprano). Years of opera-going
and watching and listening to people in the foyers taught
me these sorts of remarks are common. Of course the
book is more unremitting than reality; here and there were
people who came to listen to the music or had some taste,
but they were in the minority.
The academic satire is similar too. Once you drop
out and end up in a scandal it is very difficult to get
back into such a niche. In other words, this chapter
was as naive in its approach (meaning unreal) as the
others. The story of Alison was painful but probable.
There was power to the ending, to the final revenge,
and everything was knotted up. Perhaps that was
the problem with this Part for me. Charnas needed to
end her book somehow, and as with, say, Anthony
Powell's final novella of his enormous A Dance
to the Music of Time, there is a straining for a sense
of closure that felt artificial.
What did seem different was that at long last we did
seem to look at the world from Weyland's point of
view. We were in his mind much more than we
had ever been in the earlier parts of the book.
Katje was the lucid reflector of Part I, Mark of
Part II, Floria of Part III. Weyland started to
become that center in Part IV and emerges as
it in Part V. Since he is seen as un-human,
or not-human and cold, calculating, a force,
the survival-self, that may be why these chapters
seem so cool. However, in Part V, he has
again integrated into relationships to the extent
he can -- to the extent it is safe for him to do so.
That give the chapter its quality. There was
also a sudden reversal: from man up on top,
the Big Professor, he turns to be man who is
a bum, the loner, the drifter, or at least at
first he considers it. I liked that. Another form
of outsider -- but this time making us see that
such a person is human -- or at least equal
to "us" in thought too.
And there was a depth of feeling in Weyland
in the last few paragraphs. Up to then he
is on the alert, watching for violence, watching
for the way human beings get at you. Now
that he can relax as he retreats, he gets
the gift. What is that? His dreams of these
people whose bodily warmth, brightness,
colour, simply protoplasms of life itself
gave him pleasure and to whom he responded
with reasonable kindness, as much as he
could afford. And what do we get out of life
after all? No more than that. I liked the
last three paragraphs of the book especially:
In the still vault of his mind darkness began
to thicken and drift. Tranquilly he recognized
the onset of sleep. He did not resist." This book did reach for the core
of the gothic in the end and here it was not so
much its center in grief as its cunning reachings
for safety. Weyland is indeed a survival-self.
Ellen Moody
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 Coming in here at the very end, I thought I'd remark on that having the
Weyland move from episode to episode to some extent avoids problems with
realism. Each chapter begins with a situation in which the vampire finds
himself; the way the vampire got there is not as important as how he
responds to that situation.
Although I agree with Ellen and Bryan that the ease with which Weyland gets
a new job is a little odd, in fact to me the main oddity is that people took
the trouble to help him. In my experience, it is not that odd for someone
who has prestige to maintain his professional standing even after a scandal
or major embarrassment. What is odd is for someone who isolates himself, who
has relatively few "connections" to get help making a new start. Either
Weyland had gathered a lot of prestige and "networked" ably in the time
before the book begins, or he was exceptionally lucky.
I wanted also to say something about point-of-view and how the novel moves
from seeing the vampire from the outside to seeing the vampire through his
own eyes. The therapy chapter marks a sort of breakthrough in how close we
(the readers) are to Weyland's thoughts.
Elvira
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 Like a cow's tail always behind, I'd nevertheless like to contribute a few
lines (now that I've finished Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann which by its
very German-ness of style neatly bricked my English vocabulary channels).
What pleased me most in Charnas' novel is that the vampire isn't some
grief-ridden fallen angel, but a predator down to the core - maybe a
by-product of evolution (or are we the mutation?) or even of
extraterrestrial origin. She also modeled her vampire in a morally very
ambigious way - beyond the reach of categorical imperative thinking - and
she doesn't make a secret of his elitist attitude, for numerous passages
explicate Weyland's contempt for (being dependent on) his "cattle-stock" and
he sneers at conventional Christian 'herd morality' according to his
'superior' uniqueness. In this context, there are two characters who
perceive a faint German accent in his voice (I hope I'm not
over-interpreting).
Furthermore, Charnas takes pains to make clear that Weyland's killing is not
existential -he's wiping out life for the pleasure of doing so and mocks the
anthropocentric double standard of morality e.g. when refering to the
habitual and unnecessary butchery of billions of presumed 'inferior' beings
through human hands.
Nevertheless, as has already been remarked on, there are many sections in
which
Weyland comes out positively - his insights in the human condition, his
ability to socialize (if only in a remote way) with persons of a certain
cast, his longing for "like closing to like". It's perhaps this latter
'separateness' that makes him likable and which reminded me of Shelley's
essay On Love in which he ponders upon separateness as the fundamental
traumatic experience in human life.
What furthermore arrested my thoughts was the blind willingness some
characters showed when confronted with his vampiric otherness and which
reminded me of Julia Kristeva's observation that "many victims of the abject
are its fascinated victims - if not its submissive and willing ones"
(Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection). Why is that so?
As this fascination comprises desire as well as fear, here nourished by
popular vampire representations (e.g. vampire movies), I think the
phenomenon of the vampire can be well illustrated by Lacan's concept of
desiring the other, not-present, as quoted in a passage by Toril Moi:
The relationship of desire and death is depicted as a central borderline
situation in human existence. When two lovers 'become lost in each other' (a
German idiom), the borders of the self are transgressed and the I dissolves
into a mystic union, a process resembling death itself. Esp. in German
romanticism love and death were inseparable, and dying was equated with
sexual fulfillment. This sexualizing of death is most successfully pictured
by the vampire figure, he is the iconic expression of an 'eternalized
desire' promising final satisfaction.
With regard to the gothic and its supposedly conservative core - first, I
can't follow the connection of the conservative/reactionary with the
atavistic/irrational? (are Dylan Thomas' works for instance
conservative/reactionary
because of their essentialism?). I have read several essays on the gothic
genre stressing its cultural oppositional nature, i.e. north/south , middle
(dark) ages/enlightenment, superstition/reason, utilizing the gothic to mark
everything that could endanger the civilized English identity. Ann
Radcliffe's novels are accordingly often reduced to the supernatural
explained and 'virtue rewarded, vice punished', ignoring the motif of the
persecuted and imprisoned maiden and the terror that goes with it. On the
other hand, there are interpretations ignoring the generic diffusion and the
often didactic strain in the gothic (e.g. Rosemary Jackson: Fantasy: The
Literature of Subversion (1981) or Allan Lloyd Smith:
Postmodernism/Gothicism. In: Modern Gothic. A Reader, hrsg. von Victor Sage
& Allan Lloyd Smith,1996). Perhaps 'the' gothic is too often understood as a
homogenous genre.
Eventually, I would like to thank the participant who drew my attention to
Ludwig Tieck's Wake Not the Dead (www.litgothic.com/Authors/t.html), a
story I didn't know before and which helped me to add a nuance to my paper
on Poe's Ligeia.
Ines Barg
ps: I'd love to participate in the George Sand reading, but I'm afraid I'm
too short of time at the moment. Hopefully, I'll be able to join the next
group reading, as I've never before been in a mailing list with so many
interesting postings and without any quarrels at all!
RE: VT "the lure of the great outlaw"
To Ines and all,
I certainly felt the lure of the great outlaw in Weyland
and also found the stance towards the emotional
lives of human beings appealing. The perspective
of Weyland through an ironic disquieted light on
this emotionalism as something not well understood,
and ruthlessly self-interested no matter what the
verbal rationales.
At the same time throughout the book I did feel
Charnas subverted or overturned many common
archetypes. Our vampire turns into our anima;
when the student wants to yield to him once
more, he is simply put off.
Take the thesis of an older 'seminal"
book: Denis de Rougemont's Love and
Death. Rougemont argues that the goal of
romantic love is death, perhaps an exalted one,
one which indicts the usual of society and refuses
to be coopted, to compromise, but death nonetheless
-- maybe in order imaginatively to reach some
other realm before going out. I saw that
in the 1941 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights
I watched this summer. To feel intensely you
must suffer. Now Weyland mocks this, and
we see him use his victims as so many dummies.
We've all agreed that VT is episodic. I like Rougemont's
idea that the plots in these sex as death/death as
sex mythic stories are arranged not with any view to
probability or consistently but rather to provide pretexts
for the reader to enjoy a certain (usually unacknowledged)
kind of emotion. This is certainly true of many movies
today and many novels. But note how often Weyland
does his drinking offstage, how little of his vampiric
activities we actually see.
I'm too tired to write any more. Ines I'm glad you are going
to stay -- and wish you had the time for George Sand.
As the whirligig of the categories comes round, I'm sure
we'll have a gothic of interest to you again. You can
nominate one yourself :). Not only am I hopeful
for Brown's Weyland, but also James Hogg's
Confesssions of a Justified Sinner which I've never
read either.
Cheers, To Litalk-l January 8, 2002
Re: The Vampire Tapestry and Violence
One of the things that has struck me about The Vampire
Tapestry is now little actually violence there is in it --
at least how much of the violence that occurs happens
offstage. We are given intense signs of violence, of
power: the arms of a chair break. We are told of scenes
of violence Weyland inflicts on others, but these
are not dramatized. Indeed what little violence is
placed before us is inflicted on Weyland. The concluding
scene with Reese is retaliatory and there is nothing
superfluous or particularly malicious and spiteful
about Weyland's behavior. He is as calm as a state
executioner and as swift: he gets it over with and
proceeds to feed.
Maybe I am thinking about this as today I am reading
Machiavelli's The Prince which seems to me to be
a book about violence: the uses and misuses of
violence by men. Machiavelli has seen that a state,
any state, is that level of organization which has the
means of legitimate violence in its hands -- the question
is how to get that legitimate violence by violent means
which leave you in power.
Bryan has suggested that war is at the heart of
gothic; I know we get war scenes in many, but again
not in this one. Nor will Weyland admit to grief,
not even to sexual desire. He is a remarkably
repressed vampire; could even make it through
a Jane Austen novel without attracting undue
attention to himself, without disturbing it. So too
are we deprived of the masochistic anima: she
is marginalized and scorned as not really what
women are about.
I can see De Sade reading it and tossing it
aside. A. S. Byatt's historical-gothic sequences
and some of her "realistic" domestic ones
have more direct violence, horrifying malice
and triumph and revenge over the weak than
The Vampire Tapestry.
I wonder if we have got to the heart of what is
particular and peculiar in this book as a gothic
vampire novel -- because it's more than the
feminism. I do realise we could see it as
dramatizing a Darwinian view of the world which
is one which is not anymore violent than
watching two birds building a nest and chasing
another pair of birds away while a crow sleeps
on the grass nearby.
Ellen Moody
Re: The Vampire Tapestry and Little Explicit Violence
In response to Ellen's fine post:
It's quite true, that there is little in the way of explicit violence in the
novel. Your argument reminds me of Moers' model of the female gothic, which
focuses more of traumas of the psyche, rather than the corpus.
There is quite a bit of tension anchored on likely, anticipated violence, as
well. Mark spends most of his section brooding on the captured's impending
doom and/or violent escape, while Floria's therapy reverberates with the
potential of bloodshed.
Since, through all sections, the novel concerns itself with the question of
hunting (predation, prey, etc.), this relatively goreless treatment forces us
to think of the hunt as problem, rather than tension.
Suzy
Subject: VT "the lure of the great outlaw"
In response to Ines' excellent email:
I'm fully in agreement. Is Wordsworth, even young, a reactionary for his
rejection of commerce and industry? Etc.
I think many of these criticisms stem from an unexamined, modernist progress
narrative, buying into the incremental but steady improvement of the human
condition model. According to this, looking backwards with fascination
reflects a nostalgia (literally, etymologically) for the sweetness and pains
of the receding social orders. In the face of the French Revolution's
Enlightenment/republican tornado, the reactionary follows Burke and misses a
hazy ancient regime (one part chivalry, two parts peasants knowing their
place), for example.
Further, this model rests on a fairly instrumental notion of texts, as simple
conduits of reader and object. Rich textuality, with its multiple ways of
articulating reader and discourse, is a very different mode.
Yes. There's almost a sense of slumming in these oppositions, isn't there?
The readers identify with one pole, visit and gawp at another, then return
home confirmed in their polarity.
Godwin's Things as They Are really doesn't fit, does it? :)
Very true.
Bryan
PS: Doctor Faustus always strikes me as strange and amazing. Some of the
best writing about the experience of listening to music, I think.
Subject: Gothic: Charnas, Brown
About Brown and Americana:
The students I mentioned in my older message spoke of Wieland's mix of
religion, violence, and homesteading. For these Europeans, that was very much
a rich sample of the America they'd seen from afar.
I'm entirely on their side. American schols prefer to move the clock
forward, pointing to the kinder, gentler Cooper and his frontier tales. I
think American lit crit was born in resisting Poe, and still can't quite
tolerate this country's persist turn to the dark fantastic.
-Bryan, burning bridges in his profession
From: "Ines Barg" Allison wrote:
I cannot discern any reason for your 'reproach', all the above points have been made and
more explicitly so. Most books have their flaws, but instead of harping on the not-so-well-
accomplished, personally I feel it much more enriching to let a book resonate with one's self as
well as one's reading background (and that of others). All topics that have been discussed
emerged from the text, which indicates rich textuality - multiple strata to be excavated. I don't
know if it's vulgar to label a book as mediocre pop fiction, I only sense it's a high-brow comment
which should be well supported by arguments, lest it should sound hollow.
The Vampire Tapestry deals with a very potent myth in a singular intelligent
manner; it is entertaining, vital; the protagonist gives the reader a demasking outside-view on
humanity, he is furthermore a complex character who defies simple development in an optimistic
Hegelian sense; it is consistent and well-structured despite its episodic character (well, "time has
to be different for a creature of an enchanted forest, as morality has to be different"); it is not
only a fine piece of work compared to other 'vampire novels', but also of its own
accomplishment. I found this 'blind date' very stimulating. thanks, Suzy Charnas.
Ines
From: malinger@juno.com Hey Penny --
At the end of the book, the Weyland character goes into a sort of hibernation. We are given
to understand that he "wakes up" as much as a hundred years later, wizened, naked, desiccated.
He knows nothing except that that hiker over there is lunch. It s unclear whether he would be
able to walk, or speak, or how he would learn to if he couldn't, but he definitely won't remember
how to read, as he doesn't leave behind any messages for himself, or drawings, or any gold
coins, or anything that he'd have to interpret.
In your estimation, assuming that he is not infantile, what is his mind like, when he
reemerges? [Weyland is not human, but a lot of research has been done on higher primates, and
we have to start somewhere.] If he had suffered no head trauma, just been comatose for a long
time, what things might he have "lost"? What parts of the brain are impacted by that kind of long-
term deprivation? What could he relearn? That Weyland is the protagonist, but cannot learn,
change, or undergo an epiphany, contorts the entire piece. Could this sort of repeated, long-term
"cold storage" of his brain make it less and less possible for him to learn anything?
Allison O.
From: malinger@juno.com ---------What I think I said, was that those posting -- and those avoiding it -- must have been
aware on some level that VT is substantively thin, or there would have been more talk about the
work itself. That the tone of discussion was pastel when it could have been passionate bothered
me, and I wondered if people were being diplomatic as a practice. The defensive and conflicting
responses tell me that I did not communicate this clearly; this is my failure, and I apologize.
Why I didn't volunteer an opinion about the book before now is an apology in another sense.
Penny was a team player when she didn't announce that she felt her work as a reader was
not being reciprocated by a commitment to her as a reader, and therefore, she'd stopped
reading. If she had, everyone s reading would have become about that, and not about the text.
Other large-scale critique is the same. It s unfair and self indulgent to discuss the efficacy of
fiction -- the characters in their entirety, the arc, the work s comment on larger issues -- before
the reading of it is complete. Opinions can be shared in an informal way, with still-reading
friends, but even then they are allowed to pound you if you blab about "Rosebud" because you
finished first: you've tainted their experience of the book.
Aside from that, unlike workshopping a book, it is not useful when discussing a published
work to comment on whether the writing works or not, or argue about the big elements, as one
reads. You have to consider the piece as a whole, take as given that it is considered and
complete, then deduce the intent and judge if that objective has been met. For these reasons,
debating the technical quality, and/or intent -- or presence -- of deliberate subtext in
VT was not appropriate during most of the schedule.
After the reading -- I was reluctant. In hesitating, perhaps I missed the appropriate moment,
but I didn't feel it was my prerogative to move the discussion to that level. I m the new kid, I don't
know why this particular title was chosen, or what the tone of discussion is generally. So, I
waited. Overt comment following was interesting, tame maybe, but with some meaty
commentary on the gothic subgenre. Pleasant enough, but not enough to make a diet of
commercial fiction palatable.
And again, it seemed as if we were following the: "If you can't say something nice, don't say
anything at all," rule. It appeared that negative comment was being made, was being "brought
up", by omission. Maybe some real discussion -- "Does the protagonist really have no impulse
control, or was that just a device to shove the action along?" or about voyeurism in this book, in
fiction generally, and gothic in particular -- was happening in off-list e-mails. I missed it, and
wondered why it was not out in the open. But it might have been bad form to say so, so I didn't.
I wanted to talk about the writing because I am interested in writing as a craft, and the group
was talking about commercial and fine art as audience. Maybe this just isn't the group for me --
no hard feelings. But, if I were not committed to continue reading with the group, I had no right to
challenge its culture, or start a debate I didn't intend to finish. So, I didn't.
Why bring it up now?
I guess that is what I should have said in my posting: what about intellectual engagement as
play? Is there a place here for that?
Re: The Vampire Tapestry: Negative Comments and "daring to get dirty"
In reply to Allison,
I will answer the last posting. I did have a number of reservations
about Suzy's book: I interpreted her dramatization of Katje in
a manner very much against the grain of what she intended; I have
repeatedly said that I like the model of female sexuality we find
in Radcliffe gothic which I remarked her book was configured
to refute; Bryan agreed with me that Chapter 4 (the opera
sequence) was thin, and the academic satire inadequate.
I used the word "tame" when I said Weyland could
be found in an Austen drawing room without undue alarm.
On the other hand, I found the book to be otherwise intellectually
challenging, indeed superb in many ways; I enjoyed it and
so did a number of my students. I am now thinking to
"set" it as a text in a class. I can read a book whose outlook
on female sexuality is very different from mine and engage
with it in an open fashion and emerge from it having learnt
something. I did that here. The read made me like
Chapter 2 better than I had, understand Chapter 1 better
than I had, and see the role of Loren Eiseley in it.
I did like the idea that Weyland is the author's "survivor-self".
I loved that ending: our natural business does indeed lie
in escaping - and even oblivion. Thanatos is the obsverse
of eros for me. Quite personally too.
My view is you are characterizing the tone of people's postings
and also objecting to the nature of their content because you resented it and us.
Commitment to so-and-so as a reader. What could that mean? We answered
one another and endorsed one another and debated. Do you like people to
bow down before your views? We didn't do that to one another.
I like as we
go along to see a book at large and believe I have every right
to -- as if you prefer to stay with "small" things (e.g., an immediate
character or incident). I will continue to look at books in the
way I like to, in the way they are meaningful to me. If you want
to argue with my comments about the content of the book,
fair game, but not about the nature of my posts. Or my tone.
If I don't "get dirty," it's because I don't want to. I find much
more heat than light emerges when people do this: it usually
includes subtexts about other people's characters, backgrounds,
values &c. I have no desire to do this and will continue not
to. It's not a matter of courage with me I assure you. I tell
you this because if you are "sticking around" to participate in
the George Sand read you should not expect me to "get
dirty", and if you do complain about my postings in that
way, I will say that you have no right to. Chacun à son
goût
Ellen Moody
From: "Susan Hoyle" Reading the lively discussion on VT I am once more assailed with the
knowledge that I read as an historian and as someone whose values are very
political -- not aesthetically, not for literature; not primarily, sometimes
not at all. Reading what you, especially, write about the book, opens up
aspects to which I seem otherwise blind. I did note for example that
Weyland is not sentimental and that he despises sentimentality, and I liked
that -- it seemed in character and was amusing (to this avowed
anti-sentimentalist), but I don't have access, except through what I read
here, to the literature of sentimentality or of its opponents, and I don't
seem to think of looking for it.... Transgression appears to me as a
sociological or political statement rather than a literary one: which is
why I have avoided gothic stories all my life so far, I suppose, and why I
can read lots and lots of detective stories.
I did enjoy your taking us back to Cropper in his Mercedes! Somehow I
don't think AS Byatt reads vampire stories... (and I could be wrong). I
was happy to regard Weyland as sexually attractive until we got all that
stuff (only in the last tale I think) about his being 'everyone's dream
father'. Not mine, thank you, and father-daughter incest was never my bag
in any case. (See what I mean about my attitude to trangression in
literature! Am I a sad case?)
(The posts, which I tried to collect in date order, actually seem to be
muddled.) I have just read Laura Carroll's interseting post, and especially
liked her remark a propos Katje de Groot: < I am reading your account of the gothick as radical, as deeply critical of
society. I need to think about this, because I suspect that my strong
supposition has been that the gothick is profoundly reactionary (I think you
say that it is both radical and reactionary...) -- if only because it
ignores what is real. I come from a long line of Puritans, and a critique
of literature which attacks its escapism does speak to me, sufficiently for
me to feel guilty about how much fiction I do read, if not enough to stop me
reading it.... The world needs changing and literature should or shouldn't
play its role??? I quail at a policy of Soviet-style social realism and the
dreadful literaure that engendered; but where is the middle way? This is a
very ill-thought-out wail! And now I see you equating the radicalism of the
gothick with its melancholy; and I wonder whether the political radicals
with whom I have consorted despise literature (insofar as they do) because
of that pessimism; for we socialists have to keep the faith, you know -- be
optimistic! At the same time, I'm not sure where to go with this pessimism.
Post 11th Sept and post the bombing of Afghanistan it is easy to be
pessimistic about the world: but where does that leave you? Misanthropic,
reactionary, complacent ... I have a copy of Godwin's 'great novel' Caleb
Williams (is it called that?) packed away in those famous boxes in our big
room: is that gothick? should I read it in this light?
I'm reading Laura's post about the second story (16th Dec) and for some
reason it reminds me how very visual this book is -- or at least I get the
impression that Charnas wants us to _see_ what's going on -- that this is a
draft for a film script -- and that therefore we aren't told as much as we
should be because when the movie comes out, then we'll see how grey he is in
the NY cage, how suave he is on the NM campus...
I meant to say in my original notes about VT that the other Big Change in
the world (in addition that is to AIDS) is the impact of computers on
academic life -- all those typewriters and carbon-copies, and no emails!
Life would generally be more difficult for Weyland nowadays. But who knows
what he will need to do to survive in 30 years' time (assuming it was 20
years ago that he went back to sleep). Perhaps not computer science.
Well, the electricity is still off and anyway I have come to the end of
theposts I received on VT, so I shall stop for now.
best wishes
To:
Subject: Vampire Tapestry: Last of Dr. W
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~bpn2f
"At length, when possession of that life was
achieved, all was effortlessly let
go like a release of breath.
Reply-To: litalk-l@frank.mtsu.edu
From: Elvira Casal
Subject: The Vampire Tapestry
From: "Ines Barg"
To:
Subject: VT: "the lure of the great outlaw"
"Lacan's famous statement 'the unconscious is structured like a language'
contains an important insight into the nature of desire: for Lacan, desire
'behaves' in precisely the same way as language: it moves ceaselessly on
from object to object or from signifier to signifier, and will never find
full and present satisfaction just as meaning can never be seized as full
presence.[...] There can be no final satisfaction to our desire since there
is no final signifier or object that can be that which has been lost forever
(the imaginary harmony with the mother and the world). If we accept that the
end of desire is the logical consequence of satisfaction (if we are
satisfied we desire no more), we can see why Freud, in _Jenseits des
Lustprinzips_ posits death as the ultimate objects of desire - as [...] the
recapturing of the lost unity, the final healing of the split subject."
(Sexual/Textual Politics)
Ellen
With regard to the gothic and its supposedly conservative core - first, I
can't follow the connection of the conservative/reactionary with the
atavistic/irrational? (are Dylan Thomas' works for instance
conservative/reactionary
because of their essentialism?).
I have read several essays on the gothic
genre stressing its cultural oppositional nature, i.e. north/south , middle
(dark) ages/enlightenment, superstition/reason, utilizing the gothic to mark
everything that could endanger the civilized English identity. Ann
Radcliffe's novels are accordingly often reduced to the supernatural
explained and 'virtue rewarded, vice punished', ignoring the motif of the
persecuted and imprisoned maiden and the terror that goes with it.
On the
other hand, there are interpretations ignoring the generic diffusion and the
often didactic strain in the gothic (e.g. Rosemary Jackson: Fantasy: The
Literature of Subversion (1981) or Allan Lloyd Smith:
Postmodernism/Gothicism. In: Modern Gothic. A Reader, hrsg. von Victor Sage
& Allan Lloyd Smith,1996). Perhaps 'the' gothic is too often understood as a
homogenous genre.
To:
Subject: Against critical reading (VT)
I waited for someone to say, "the characters are flat and unsympathetic," or, "this
scene is gratuitous," or, "gee, where s the plot?" but read instead what appeared to be polite
departures, leading away from the text ...
To: litalk-l@frank.mtsu.edu
Subject: Vampire Tapestry
To: litalk-l@frank.mtsu.edu
Subject: The Vampire Tapestry
Re: "Why you didn't bring up your criticism of the book before
this. Why wait for someone to say what you wanted to say yourself?"
To: "Ellen Moody"
Subject: VT: further thoughts
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002
Susan
sue-jez@hoyle-knight.freeserve.co.uk
Suzy McKee
Charnas: On Writing Her Father's Ghost Interviewed by Gavin J. Grant
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