Observation #1, 9/27: Shanty

(Theme: travel)

I awake somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean awash in blue. Someone has taken glaze and made bold, seamless strokes until the sea very well could be the sky or maybe we are flying upside down? The rest of the plane sleeps around me and shafts of bright, salt daylight knife the simulated darkness of the cabin.

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I resist sleep with the sounds of gulls around me, the sea is a sound not a color, a churning, roiling sigh through the thrum of the ferry engines and the sky is muffling felt, a hand clamped down on a tin hiding fireflies or frogs, and the land great hulking skulking spines between them. And nothing but the bite of the wind. Nothing but one pale light, circling, lancing out at us from across the water. 

tan·gen·tial: back with a vengeance and potentially also on rails

Hello all you lovely people in the internet at large!

tan·gen·tial is back and will, until the end of the quarter, serve as a forum for my part of Kelly Magee's ongoing project, Finding Frequency, through her class "Recycled Writing." Other things, like excerpts from writing I'm doing for other classes or in my spare time (if I have any), might also appear here.

Sincerely and with many mixed metaphors, away!

Post #6: New Seeds and the Children of Men

Over the course of the quarter, I’ve noticed a trend of paradoxes in our novels. In Parable of the Sower, there is of course the paradox of the Universe and God shaping each other (78), and also Lauren both preaching and resisting Change (262). However, Parable of the Sower introduces some new features.

One of them is meta! “Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction” (123).

Another is direct reference. Keith describes the pyro addicts: “Paints. They shave off all their hair…and they paint their skin green or blue or red or yellow” (110), and later Lauren refers to them as “painted faces” (157), which is exactly what the Omega generation are called in P.D. James’ The Children of Men (1992). I think this is especially interesting because James’ novel also deals in strong Christian/religion themes.

Blog Post #5: Contradictions in Terms: the Many Meanings of Nova

The title of Samuel R. Delany’s novel Nova does a lot of work in terms of the book as a whole. This is partly due to the numerous meanings and uses of the word ‘nova.’

When plugged in to the University of Notre Dame’s LatinDictionary site, ‘nova’ is related to the following forms and meanings:

novo : to make anew, refresh, revive, change, alter, invent.
novus : new, fresh, young, inexperienced, revived, refreshed.
novus : novel, unusual, extraordinary / news, novelty, a new thing

These are extremely similar to the definitions we established in class, with ‘novel’ being “that which is new.”

The etymology of ‘nova’ in reference to stars and their behavior goes back to 1572, with Tycho Brahe’s observance of the appearance of a ‘new’ star in the constellation Cassiopeia. He wrote about his findings (including his conclusion that it couldn’t be a local phenomenon due to lack of motion) in a book entitled “de Stella Nova,” or, “Concerning the New Star.”

However, we know now that his nova stella was actually a supernova, a star which collapsed with so much force that the resulting spike in luminosity caused it to outshine the rest of its galaxy: it was so bright that its light made it to Earth when none of the light from the rest of its galaxy could do so. The new star wasn’t new – it had died, probably hundreds of thousands of years before, and violently. As it turns out, the stellar remnant of SN 1572 can still be ‘seen,’ with the help of x-ray imaging through the combined technologies of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope.

Based on all this, there is inherently a contradiction, because ‘nova’ is a misnomer. There’s nothing ‘new’ about a star ex/imploding.

However, in terms of the novel, the word ‘nova’ has a dual role and can retain both its meanings. The first is more straightforward. Lorq Von Ray and his crew literally seek a nova, an exploding star, so that they can perform the insane stunt of flying through it to obtain Illyrion.

The second usage is abstract. When taken as its Latin form, “to make anew, refresh, revive, change, alter, invent,” and with the related definitions of “fresh, young, inexperienced,” the word ‘nova’ reflects the two principle characters: Lorq and Mouse.

Mouse, based on the dates given in the headers, is eighteen at the time of the voyage with Lorq, and the language of the novel reflects this youth not only through Mouse’s (perhaps willful) ignorance in his discussion with Katin, but even more so by referring to him as “the boy by [Lorq’s] knee” (134, emphasis added). While ‘inexperienced’ would certainly be a stretch in terms of cyborg studding, wandering, and playing music, “fresh, young, inexperienced” are all words which seem appropriately applied to Mouse, especially when taking his political obliviousness into account.

In contrast, Lorq is reflected not through his personality, but through the promise of his transformation asserted multiple times throughout the novel. In the initial Tarot reading, Tyÿ predicts Lorq’s future:

The only positive influence from the major Arcana the Devil is. A card of violence, of revolution, of struggle it is. But also the birth of spiritual understanding it signifies. […] You the spiritual understanding of which I spoke will receive. In the…coming struggle, the surface of things away will fall. (118-121)

And again, with Lorq’s aunt, Cyana Von Ray Morgan:

“The Hanged-Man.” She closed the deck. “Reversed. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Doesn’t the Hanged-Man imply a great spiritual wisdom is coming, Cyana?”
“Reversed,” she reminded him. “It will be achieved at a great price.” (160)

These promises of spiritual understanding tie directly in to ‘nova’ as “to make anew, refresh, revive, change, alter, invent.” Lorq will be reinvented by the experiences he has on this voyage; he will be new.

Questions

1. Is there a similar connection to the several and contradictory meanings of the word ‘nova’ with the Red family? How does it interact with the meanings for Lorq and Mouse?

2. What is the significance of a system of mysticism being so well established and respected by a community of the future? Or can it really be explained with psychology and the power of suggestion, as Katin seeks to do?

Bonus Round: While reading this, did anyone else think of space westerns and Joss Whedon's Firefly? I sure did.

Post #4: Schuyler and the Art of Predicting Technology

The aspect of George S. Schuyler’s two serialized novels, The Black Internationale  and Black Empire, which intrigued me the most were the inventions and science with which the followers of the insidious Dr. Belsidus conquered Africa and became a world power. The first of these is Hydroponic farming. 

The Black Internationale’s Sam Hamilton, a chemist, devised the means to grow crops without soil:

One can best describe it by calling it a mile-square rectangle of cement, gridironed by cement dikes a hundred yards apart. These gridirons converted the artificial lake or reservoir into contiguous pools, each about…four feet deep and half filled with greenish water in which plants were growing in serried rows. At intervals of about two feet, slender concrete posts were spaced across the pools and…On to these the plants clung. (48)

Hamilton, at Slater’s questioning, goes on to explain that the pools are kept at proper temperature through the use of steam and that the water is enriched with “chemical food, the same elements vegetables extract from the soil” (49). In the foreword, John A. Williams observes that “[hydroponic farming] was[n’t ] recognized as a viable method to grow food until the Israelis began to use it, mainly through the drip process, after 1948” (xiii).

However, it turns out that hydroponic farming was nothing new, by any means; the growingedge.com article “History of Hydroponics” cites Howard M. Resh: “The hanging gardens of Babylon, the floating gardens of the Aztecs of Mexico and those of the Chinese are examples of ‘Hydroponic’ culture. Egyptian hieroglyphic records dating back several hundred years B.C. describe the growing of plants in water.” But in modern terms, arizona.edu writes that “In the U.S., interest began to develop in the possible use of complete nutrient solutions about 1925” but that “While there was commercial interest in the use of such systems, hydroponics was not widely accepted due to the high cost in construction of the concrete growing beds.” In a different page from the samesource, variations on the hydroponic system are described, sounding shockingly similar to the fields devised by Schuyler’s Hamilton. The only substantial  difference is that the temperature is maintained by greenhouses as opposed to steam power.

In a twisted, contradictory sort of way, this recalls Carl Slater’s musings mid-flight en route to New York:

Physically, we live in the Twentieth Century; psychologically, we live many thousands of years ago. We come into this world made for a life as huntsman or herdsman and find ourselves in an environment of whirling machines, confusion upon confusion for the sake of order…” (94)

While this passage is actually Slater inwardly whining about the complications of courting an active, independent woman (which, naturally, brings up its own issues in context), I think it can also be taken as an overarching theme for the novel as a whole, and especially for this issue. While Schuyler is undoubtedly trying to make an anti-machine age statement with this quote, it also emphasizes the ancient elements of his future, from the historical origins of Hydroponic farming, the Egyptian themes evident in Belsidus’ opulent chambers and the spectacle of the Temple of Love to the cyclic nature of history and conquest.

Questions

1. How do we reconcile the repetition of history evident in Dr. Belsidus’ re-conquering of Africa? His role as dictator/emperor? His attitudes toward Fascism and how he also resembles a Fascist?

2. What other factors in Black Empire can be said to look back (historically) while also moving forward? What about in the other books we have read so far?

Just a Thought...

What with the themes of race mixing in both Imperium in Imperio and Of One Blood, this seemed really pertinent. It also has a lot to say about how identity is, largely, what you as an individual (and, of course, what other people) "see," as was brought up in class. Enjoy.

"Black and White Twins" by Joanna Moorhead

Blog Post #3: Un-Romance in Of One Blood

One of the aspects which struck me the most about Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood was the use of Romantic or Romantic-adjacent devices in the story.

One of the first devices I noticed was the use of the weather. Right from the first page, the use of the weather mirrors the attitude – or, as Hopkins might have it, the ‘temperament’ – of the main character: “It was the first week in November and it had rained about every day the entire week; now freezing temperature added to the discomfiture of the dismal season. …Briggs could have told you that the bareness and desolateness of the apartment were like his life…" (1). Hopkins even goes so far as to acknowledge this fact. In chapter II, one of the concert goers jokes about just that: “Great crowd for such a night,” observed one. “The weather matches your face, Briggs; why didn’t you leave it outside? Why do you look so down?” (12). This direct acknowledgement is unusual for such a device, and I can’t recall Hopkins using it again in the rest of the novel. In light of that, the use of the weather and its acknowledgement almost seems like a literary joke.

The other device which I noticed was that of the ideal form in parallel to the ideal being. Two examples especially stand out in my mind. One is of Briggs:

Mother nature had blessed Reuel Briggs with superior physical endowments… No one could fail to notice the vast breadth of shoulder, the strong throat that upheld a plain face, the long limbs, the sinewy hands. His head was that of an athlete, with close-set ears, and covered with an abundance of black hair, straight and closely cut…the nose was of aristocratic feature…his skin was white, but of a tint suggesting olive…His large mouth concealed powerful long white teeth which gleamed through lips even and narrow, parting generally in a smile…indeed Briggs’ smile changed the plain face at once into one that interested and fascinated men and women. …His eyes were a very bright and piercing gray, courageous, keen and shrewd. Briggs was not a man to be despised—physically or mentally. (3-4)

Though there are parts of his description which would render him less of the Romantic “ideal,” like the long teeth and the large mouth, or the fact that his face is “plain,” Hopkins concludes her description with the positives: that his smile makes him remarkable and that he is not to be despised. These are significant features because he turns out to be Ergamenes, the lost King of Telassar and Messiah of Ethiopia. He follows the Romantic assertion that beauty equals goodness. Period. But that’s not the end of what’s going on.

Aubrey Livingston should also be considered under this light. When he first appears, she notes “The voice was soft and musical. …The light revealed a tall man with the beautiful face of a Greek God” (6) and, later, says “…the beauty of his fair hair and blue eyes was never more marked as he stood there in the gleam of the fire…” (18). However, Hopkins also lets the reader know immediately that there’s something to be wary about: “…the sculpted features did not inspire confidence. There was that in the countenance of Aubrey Livingston that engendered doubt” (6). While Reuel’s description (and, arguably, Dianthe’s) mirrors the goodness and beauty device of the Romantics, Aubrey defeats it and does so immediately. The reader is given little concrete description of him except that he is Aryan-looking and is reminiscent of a Greek God, but Hopkins seems to bring it up often, as though the reader might forget: this is significant because of how awful he turns out to be. In doing so, she effectively both uses and subjugates this device.


Questions

1. How does the description of Dianthe Lusk (14) interact with the Romantic device of beauty and goodness? How does her being a soprano contribute to this image? What is the significance of Hopkins’ giving Dianthe the most prestigious position in the choir?

2. In what other ways could it be said that Hopkins is either employing or subjugating established literary devices or conventions? To what end?