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Dialectics of Determinism
Calvino is a brilliant writer whether he is conjuring a fictional universe or when, as here, he brings his imagination to bear on the practice of writing itself.
In the essay, Cybernetics and Ghosts, actually a lecture delivered in 1967, he tackles head on the issue of computationally-produced literature. He uses the argument I feel most resonance with, which reminds us that human authors are really not much better than machines.
Human language is itself a discrete combinatorial system no less than any algorithm a machine might be induced to follow; and the writer himself is little more than a conduit for language, rather than the originator of novel art.
Whether discussing the finite algorithms of life (DNA) or the wealth of human discourse (literature), Calvino notes:
The processes that appeared most resistant to a formulation in terms of number, to a quantitative description, are now translated in mathematical patterns.
The essay decentres our notions of the Romantic author and the primacy of human agency; and of course provokes us to wonder about the future of human / machine collaboration.
Tags: algorithm authorship electronic literature machine narrative
The Venetian Blind [Jealousy]
Robbe-Grillet is recognised as the one of the foremost proponents of the nouveau roman - a genre which comes to prominence in the 50s and 60s, particularly in France. As such the genre takes its cue from cultural movements at work such as existentialism and the nascent ideas of structuralism, and ultimately, deconstruction.
The nouveau roman eschews such providential (authorial / narratorial) interventions as plot, narrative arc, chronological realism, intention, and even meaning and purpose. Instead, the surface of things becomes paramount: just as in Sartre's existential world, there is nothing behind objects, so in the world that Robbe-Grillet creates, there is no redemptive purpose, intention, meaning, underlying truth, or even allegorical or analytical logic.
As such, a novel like Jealousy divides readers: some will stare as the sentences pass them by, wondering blankly why they shouldn't go and do something else. Others however, find in the novel's studious avoidance of narratorial intervention and continual striving towards utterly objective descriptions of the surface of things, the geometry, the dimensions, the slowly decaying unity of space and time, and the obsessively repeated presentation of re-presented events and objects, the same intellectual joy that Roland Barthes is celebrating in his advocation of the writerly text - for what 'lies beneath' the surface of things is no more and no less than what we put there.
Critical Essays on Kafka
This is an old anthology of essays now (1962), but for any Kafka reader, it provides useful and provocative insights into aspects of Kafka's writing and influence.
Particularly interesting are essays on the comparison between K and Hemingway, and acknowledgement of Kierkegaard's influence on K's religious philosophy, and the perennial use of the subjunctive tense in K's writing.
The subjunctive tense is lost in English, since the translators choose to avoid the constant annoyance of each sentence being formed as 'He would go... the street would lead... K would think...'
The thread of subjunctive tense that runs throughout K's work reflects the uncertainty felt by the protagonist of "On the tram":
"I stand on the end of the platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family."
Tags: czech fiction kafka literature modernism subjunctive translation
Original
This chapter doesn't actually exist
Tags: author authorship literature originality postmodernism reflexivity