The “Picaresque” character of William Henry Devereaux, Jr.

In Jamie McCulloch’s “Creating the Rogue Hero: Literary Devices in the Picaresque Novels of Martin Amis, Richard Russo, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Steve Tesich” (International Fiction Review, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2007), McCulloch writes:

It's not just because picaresque heroes are more fun than other characters that I love them. It's not just the dissolute behavior that I find so appealing. And it's not just the dubious company they keep or the adventures they embark upon that I find so satisfying. All of these things make for a pretty good story. But what makes them really worthwhile is the romantic sense of sadness and futility that haunts them all—their honest recognition of their own shortcomings that gives them emotional weight and makes them resonate. Disappointingly, like young Hal in Henry IV, Part I, who eventually deserts Falstaff, all rogue heroes must grow up and assume a certain amount of responsibility. Often they settle down, give up their aimless wandering, and find a home. Unfortunately, settling down can mean letting go of "the impossible dream." We wish their peregrinations would never end, and so by nature the picaresque novel, whose trappings are ribald excess, is also fraught with a deep sense of loss and sorrow. We must not forget, however, that what makes the picaresque so much fun are the comic possibilities of an errant hero in pursuit of something impossible. He is at once noble and pathetic, a delight to spend time with and to laugh at, and heroic in his blindness to the humbling reality that confronts him wherever he goes.

[…]

A more scholarly approach to balancing the serious and the humorous in the picaresque is to mock the early romances just as Cervantes set out to do. The romance tradition is ripe for parody as are those who pursue "the impossible dream." In Russo's Straight Man, Hank has a not-so-subtle Cervantes-esque dream: "In my dream I am the star of the donkey basketball game. I have never been more light and graceful, never less encumbered by gravity or age. My shots, every one of them, leave my fingertips with perfect backspin and arc toward the hoop with a precision that is pure poetry, its refrain the sweet ripping of twine. And remember: I'm doing all this on a donkey" (364). Metaphorically shooting from his ass, Devereaux is weightless, ageless. The image is steeped in the mock heroic, an English professor as warrior is comic enough in itself—a man like the man of La Mancha riding a donkey while competing in a sports event is wonderfully absurd. At the same time, the dream is sadly romantic in the same sense that Don Quixote is a sadly romantic man—a man who sees the world as he chooses, not as it is.

Analyze Hank as a Picaresque (lovable rogue) character.  Does Russo present Hank as a man in quest, a man whose quest is stalled, or is something else at work here?  Could the mid-life crisis Hank and many of his colleagues are undergoing be a postmodern quest in and of itself?  Is Hank Quixotic, and if so, what are the windmills he’s chasing?  If there’s no quest, is it Picaresque (side note: I really did not intend for that to sound like a Johnny Cochrane courtroom rhyme, but here we are…)?  Have I asked too many questions?  Why are you still reading?  Out of a morbid curiosity to see how this prompt ends?  Something else?

Straight Man and the Contemporary Campus Novel

In Robert F. Scott’s “It’s a Small World After All: Assessing the Contemporary Campus Novel” (MMLA Vol. 37, no. 1, Spring 2004), the following assessment of the subgenre of “Campus Novel” is made:

In terms of their prevailing formal qualities and stylistic tendencies, campus novels are essentially comedies of manners.  And, because these works tend to dwell upon the frustrations that accompany academic existence, they often call attention to the antagonistic relationships that exist between mind and flesh, private and public needs, and duty and desire.  As a result, despite their comic tone, most campus novels simmer with barely concealed feelings of anger and even despair as protagonists frequently find themselves caught between administrative indifference on one side and student hostility on the other.  Thus, even when campus novels are lightly satirical in tone, they nonetheless exhibit a seemingly irresistible tendency to trivialize academic life and to depict academia as a world that is both highly ritualized and deeply fragmented. (83)

Further:

At the heart of most campus novels stands the much-maligned figure of the college professor.  Indeed, although there are notable (though few) exceptions, the professorial protagonists in recent campus novels are more often than not depicted as buffoons or intellectual charlatans.  Among the well-established stereotypes, for example, are the absent-minded instructor, the wise simpleton, the lucky bumbler, the old goat, and the fuddy-duddy.  Far removed from the inspiring figures of the kindly Mr. Chips or the dedicated seeker of knowledge, fictional academics—males in particular—are more likely to emerge as burnt out lechers with a penchant for preying on their students or their colleagues’ spouses.  In his analysis of the images of higher education in academic novels of the 1980s, John Hedeman convincingly contrasts the generally positive images of professors prevalent in academic novels of the 1960s, those figures “who wanted to make a difference in the world beyond their cloistered campus,” with the protagonists in the 1980s who “have given up caring even about their own disciplines.”  Maintaining that “[s]elf-doubt, self-absorption, and self-hate” characterize most recent fictional depictions of professors, Hedeman soberingly describes these protagonists as “average men and women with average abilities who live empty, unhappy lives” (152). (qtd. in Scott 83)

Do you agree with this assessment?  Why the shift from the “positive” depictions of professors of the 60s to the more contemporary campus novels?  Are these depictions realistic fiction, satiric send-ups, or is there something else at work here?  Further, what of the depictions of students in campus novels (no winners there...)?

Boredom and Metafiction

This prompt is for Group 1 (Avery-Leblanc)

Due Monday Feb 7^th by 10pm (200-400 words)

In addition to dark humor, satire (largely Menippean, but I’ve mentioned Horatian and Juvenalian), and 18^th century wit (specifically Voltaire’s), we’ve briefly discussed postmodernism—specifically postmodern metafiction (as seen in Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain”).

In the Wolff story, we had a man unable to distinguish between the written word and real life human interactive dialogue.  In Ames’ “Bored to Death,” we see a similar metafictional move (though not identical).  In the story, we have a man who’s both deathly bored with his life and immensely interested in the detective fiction (Noir) books he’s reading.  Answer one of the following prompts:

1)      What role does metafiction play in the story?  Further, this story is Noir-ish, but would certainly not fit in the genre itself.  What is Ames doing with the genre?

2)      Just as with the Wolff and Woody Allen stories we’ve read, boredom plays a large role in “Bored to Death.”  We’ve not discussed the boredom as plot device/motivating force thus far… but with this story, it’s unavoidable.  In an 1843 essay (“Crop Rotation”), philosopher Soren Kierkegaard writes, “Strange that boredom, so still and static, should have such power to set things in motion” (227).  Analyze the role of boredom in these three stories, and life in the postmodern era in general.

Woody Allen's Comic Structure

This prompt is for Group 2 (Lee-Wright)

Due Monday Feb 7^th by 10pm (200-400 words)

 “Humor is crafted ambiguity, and ambiguities do not easily yield certainties.”

-Elliott Oring

 “The perils of analyzing Allen should be obvious: academics who play around with him risk being played around with themselves.”

-David Galef

“Here is but a small sample of the main body of intellectual treasure that I leave for posterity, or until the cleaning woman comes.”

-Woody Allen

According to 18^th century poet and essayist James Beattie, “Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage” (qtd. in Oring 2).  Elliott Oring, in his 1992 work, Jokes and Their Relations, furthers this claim: “The perception of humor depends on the perception of an appropriate incongruity—that is, the perception of an appropriate interrelationship of elements from domains that are generally regarded as incongruous” (2).  This view, often attributed to Sigmund Freud (there is a slight difference, though, as Freud claimed this to be a “forced” juxtaposition) has appeared to reach a critical consensus in one form or other amongst humor theorists.  I shall not disagree with this thesis.  However, when it comes to the forced juxtaposition employed by Woody Allen, the depths of his particular brand of humor need to be plumbed rigorously, as he’s often working on multiple levels. 

In his comic essay, “Remembering Needleman,” from the 1981 collection Side Effects, Allen employs the conflation of seriousness and silliness/absurdity to deal with the darkest of subject matter—death.  From the outset, Allen forces disparate concepts into one cohesive thought par excellence, while presenting his comic essay as a mock eulogy of sorts.  Allen opens with the yoking together of the morbid and the juvenile: “It has been four weeks and it is still hard for me to believe Sandor Needleman is dead.  I was present at the cremation and at his son’s request, brought the marshmallows, but few of us could think of anything but our pain” (Side Effects 3).  Unless read by a completely humorless individual, this line results in an outburst of laughter.  What is the cause of this?  Once again, Freud argues in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious that all humor is based on the forced conflation of disparate ideas.  What’s at work here is not just the forced conflation of disparate ideas, but a third element—an element of humor that hints that the structure of the joke is as important as the conflation of disparate ideas.  In effect, Freud (and Beattie) hints at the main driving force behind the line by line witticisms evident in Allen, but neglects the structure.  As Elliott Oring reminds us, “To neglect […] structural elements in conceptualizing the messages of humorous expression is to risk reading into them messages that may not be there, thus increasing rather than reducing levels of ambiguity” (15).  I shall heed this warning, and further, claim that the particular structure that makes Allen’s jokes both wildly hilarious, and perhaps the main element in why we may consider Allen’s jokes as literary, is the comic non sequitur.

            Maurice Charney, in his 1995 article, “Woody Allen’s Non Sequiturs” identifies this particular logical fallacy as the basis upon which Allen constructs his witticisms.  Charney defines the non sequitur as joke thusly:

            In the study of humor, a non sequitur usually refers to a kind of joke in which the punch   line seems to have nothing to do with the narrative content of the joke proper.  In other           words, a non sequitur joke seems like a shaggy dog story.  I use ‘seems’ advisedly    because the hearer always makes some effort to connect the premises and the conclusion,     although there is usually an unbridgeable gap between the two. (339)

Analyze the structure of Allen’s humor in “The Kugelmass Episode.”  What’s at work here?  What role do comic non sequiturs play in this metafictional referential comedy?  What else is at work?